12/7/2003
The rainy season is upon us. Today's variety is a hushed, steady fall. Quieter than a downpour, but more substantial than a drizzle. The air is perfectly still so that the only way I can tell that it's raining is to see the dancing, concentric circles sparkling on top of large, broad puddles on my patio.
Yesterday we had a torrential flood of rain that fell loudly and suddenly. An hour later, the sun illuminated white fluffy clouds and large patches of deep blue sky behind them. The night before there was a full-blown, cataclysmic thunderstorm. Lightning turned night into day in ghoulish flashes and thunder shook the windowpanes.
Everyday we seem to get some kind of rain. But there are long stretches of sun and clarity that sometimes last for hours. The sunsets on the Mediterranean Sea have been spectacular with dark clouds providing relief on the distant horizon. The seaside boardwalk has been packed with spectators on those late afternoons that have been pleasant.
And, just yesterday, snow appeared on the mountaintops to the east. It looked as if they had been lifted and dipped upside down in powdered sugar. The lower reaches of the snow form a perfectly horizontal line across the tallest peaks. I am told that it won't snow in the city of Beirut. Temperatures may dip occasionally into the low teens (Americans read "40s"), but will rarely reach single digits and certainly never cause freezing. That's good news because there is a particularly steep hill near my campus that would be treacherous if it were covered by ice.
I am excited about the change in weather. It means that I can wear clothes that I hadn't worn in years. My raincoat, for example, was practically moth-balled during my internment in Egypt. Sweatshirts, sweaters and pullovers now have a permanent place in the laundry rotation. I almost got teary eyed when I caught a glimpse of the L.L.Bean tag on the collar of my saddle-brown, cotton-lined original canvas fieldcoat.
I'm not sure palm trees lose their leaves in the autumn, but I have noticed that the hibiscus plants have fewer flowers on them than normal. The trees are still green even if the colors are a bit muted by gray skies. The sea changes color more than the foliage does. Sometimes it appears metal-gray and flat. Other times it will be a whitecapped, spotted blackness. Yesterday it was multicolored, green near the shore, a deeper aqua-marine blue farther out.
The changing season is also evident on the radio. "The Mix!" (104 FM) and "Radio One!" (105 FM) both broadcast "today's best music and hottest stars." Sometimes we get "twenty commercial-free, uninterrupted minutes of today's hits!" (At the moment, Kyleigh Monogue is instructing me to dance with her ... slow.) These two stations appear to share the same playlist of about thirty songs and may have the same Herb Tarlick handling their advertising accounts. If a recorded voice-over didn't periodically inform me that I was listening to "The Mix!" or "Radio One!" I'd have no idea which station I was listening to. Like clockwork, on December first, I began hearing Christmas related stuff. That Dido Christmas song, ads for Christmas sales, radio station promotional Christmas parties, clubs offering catered Christmas dances, sophomoric DJ Christmas gags involving a drunken, ill-mannered Rudolph making a pass at a visiting Miss World model, you name it.
The streets are also festively decorated. Lots of lights, trees, candy canes and ornaments. Taxi drivers wear Santa hats and hang shiny garland from their rearview mirrors. It may not be a white Christmas in Beirut, but it certainly is a festive one. I don't have to worry about missing out on all of the commercial trappings of a capitalistic-free-market-society-created traditional holiday season. It makes me yearn for home in a way. Norman Rockwell aside, I can't wait to trawl the malls on Christmas Eve to do my last my last minute shopping, which is to say, ALL of my shopping.
Love
Stu