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    "Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.” -Jane Perrone, The Guardian

    renatoobeidsworld
     
    Saturday, October 06, 2007  
    Just got back from my walk to Jounieh.
    The slippery roads (‘’black ice’’ as the taxi driver so aptly called them) after the first rains of the season and a high security presence made it a particularly long walk.
    The army were out in force ahead of this afternoon’s parade at Jounieh stadium commemorating the army martyrs from the Nahr el Bared conflict and I must have been stopped by every solider in Lebanon.
    It was more like inspecting the troops than taking a walk.
    My beard makes me look like a Syrian worker or an Islamist terrorist (none of them too popular in Lebanon at the moment).
    Once they established my bona fides they were pretty friendly and professional - as the Lebanese army are – with one of them even asking me to stop for a cup of tea.
    Eli did not accompany me on this walk – fear of slippery roads was today’s excuse.
    His excuses vary from fear of puppy dogs to fear of the security situation to fear of slippery roads* (even when it’s not raining!).
    He’s doing well for a twenty year old – most people don’t establish such a comprehensive list of phobias until they’re at least twice that age.

    I was coughing earlier on in the evening, so Eli said the usual Lebanese pleasantries for such a situation (Lebanese have pleasantries for every situation under the sun).
    I interrupted my choking to rattle off the pleasantries that one usually replies with to that.
    When I recovered, I told him that the last thing that somebody choking wants to do or can do is to exchange pleasantries.
    But I suppose it distracts you from it.
    The Lebanese bereavement ritual, whether by design or coincidence, does exactly that – the afflicted are distracted by days of process (mainly receiving condolences) that they can be forgiven for forgetting the actual bereavement.


    *UPDATE At least they’re better excuses than the one he gave me the other day about not being able to go for a walk with me because he didn’t have ''a can of deodorant spray for dogs''.
    It’s not that he wanted this to deodorise any dogs we encountered so they would smell nice and fresh and not be sweaty when they attacked us (I have this mental image of Eli lifting up each of the snarling dog's legs and spraying underneath them) but he wanted to use it as a flame thrower to fend off said dogs.
    I didn’t think he was entirely serious until now, 8.45pm on Saturday 13th October 2007, when he appears with a can of deodorant called ‘’Hector for Man’’ (sic) made in Turkey which he bought for all of 2000 lira.
    3:30 am

     
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