Prelude...
The radio was playing an Arabic song, or rather a song in Arabic that i knew so very well - the tunes of "Comandante Che Guevara". I thought he's so loved in the Middle East, they translated the whole song. half a second later I felt how I detested it, how no other version but the Spanish could relate the story any better, even to those who speak no Spanish. I expressed this though outloud and the driver laughed his victorious laugh, the one that means "Lady, your perception of the Arabic is very embryonic". he explained it was a commercial for a nargile. Nargile is most fashionable. Well, it's always been. But add nargile to the booming semi-pubbing everything and anything industry and you've got yourself a profitable business in the ancient land of phoenicians.
It's not the pub, it's what the pub...
One can't ask for a full scale pub as we know it in Europe, well, Northern EU Member States, to be precise. I, too, being a proud outcast from the land of Eurasia, a fancy word the ex-USSR citizens like to associate with, never particularly liked being in the pub, but as an Irish friend explained to me - "you shouldn't focus on the pub, you should focus on what the pub represents", e.g.
-close to the office,
-accessible for anger management and burger+cigarettes+beer combination at lunchtime,
-a place to write one of those lousy office reports required either by your underlings or upperlings,
-emergency relationship discussion spot at a random 3pm meeting with a friend,
-Happy Hours,
-Friday evening after-work gathering of all colleagues to get relatively drunk in order to better strategize how to construct the bridge, under which to release the murky waters of damaged relationships caused by office politics,
-Saturday night live bands, hopeful meetings with a one-night-stand-turned-into-regular-date-turned-into-girl/boy/friend-with-a-potential-of-a-life-partner, and
-Sunday hangover cures at 4pm....
-Something interesting to talk about on Monday morning at the office...
Yes, the Eurasian me found this long list too demanding, too much waste of time, money, energy. I'd prefer a place that for European standards would be considered too fancy. What if I wanted to wear something really really nice, put a nice make-up, go out with friends to a fancy place where I could have something I can't cook in my kitchen (which I think the standard for anyone going to restaurants, hence, the simplicity of menus anywhere North of Vienna for a what American's call "an average citizen" in terms of economic and social standing), not discuss office politics, not be obliged to be too close to various perspirations of people around me, not fight for a chair, not sit at a table from mahogany that's been absorbing too much pub humidity and scents witness to remnants of someone else's physical and spiritual pub antiques and/or antics, not really try and convince someone that I'm REALLY married and only at the pub because it's a TEAM-BUILDING trip, not try and explain why even though I'm from Armenia, I'm not from Russia and no, it wasn't them who attacked Georgia first... What if I wanted to return home looking exactly as sober and fresh as when I left home... usually, I'd end up making a long list of compromises-vs-requirements every single time I had to face the pub, even if it was a friend's birthday party.
Enter Lebanon...
Knowing how much insufferable my Saturday night fever was, some nearly felt sorry for my departure to Lebanon, as if I'd be stuck somewhere in public-transportation-less Beirut just as murky waters under a bridge in a subconsciousness of a pub of Western denomination. But just as I expected Lebanon's nightlife has the same power of welcoming with an open embrace as the old aunties, uncles, relatives, friends living in Beirut. Especially when it comes to Gemmayzeh, a little street in the historical center of Beirut with at least two-centuries-old buildings astonishingly preserved (some well, some not well),. Gemmayzeh is Beirut's answer to bar hopping. It's taken to a VIP level if compared to an "average pub". They're clean, expensive, have valet parking services, waiters snatch the unnecessary items from the tables faster than one can utter shukran (which is why i guess no one says shukran as much as one had to say "thank you" or "merci" to comparably very lazy waiters in the "other" pubs), the interiors are outstandingly decorated, everyone is beautiful, everything is beautiful, even the music is beautiful, well the acoustics are beautiful because it's absolutely possible to both enjoy the music AND conversations with friends without the loss of voice cords or hearing... And, there is the nargile... It's funny how a cigarette smoke hater can absolutely not mind the nargile smoke your friend just covered you with... It's as dangerous as second hand smoking but there's something delicious about this death-by-a-friend-ly-nargile... And at this point I can proudly say that I overcame my fear of smoke by
"It's not about the nargile, it's what nargile...."
Little by little i discovered that when you place a nargile anywhere, that place ultimately becomes a pub... Here, you can pose and have about 10 minutes to daydream about this concept... Start from a fancy restaurant, go through a techno dance club, neighborhood cafe, pizza place, garden, home... Nargile is the ultimate shrink of Eastern denomination. It makes people talk, even when they don't... It make s a woman truly look mysterious and victorious, everlastingly beautiful, even if she's smoking her long list of problems away -
- lack of electricity, water and other essncials,
- kids problems,
- friends problems,
- relationship problems,
- war and peace,
-future and past...
Nargile is the one utility that can have one think locally and act globally. It's a silent secret weapon of mass instruction, it's the rosary beads that can bring together people of various social/religious/gender/political groups together at one table and make them calm at each other's presence...
Last month I read that Hamas was about to ban women from smoking nargile in public spaces because it was un-feminine... Such a big misconception. Unhealthy - yes, unfeminine - no. It is an escape, an exit strategy for a woman who's been running like a hamster in a wheel for the whole day... Wherever you go in the evening Beirut, women beautiful, women well dressed, women speaking softly, women with smiles and/or sadness, women young and old, women dressed in burqa or not, women with kids or not, with families or friends, but women always with nargile, the sounds of it filling up the air adding to the symphony of a Middle Eastern evening. It's the most important tool of cross-cultural or inter-cultural or intra-cultural communication or whatever else "experts of Western denomination" would have the nargile pheomenon classified...
A classification of an Eastern denomination would sound something like this: when banning smoking, one should separate the concepts of smoking and smoke... banning smoking as in smoking cigarettes dumped onto the developing and/or underdeveloped world is a very good, very necessary idea and campaign... Banning smoke not so easy... There's a lot of emotions invested into a nargile, every time someone blows a smoke away from nargile in the Middle East, a prayer for peace in direct or indirect manner is released onto the universe. the smoke for such a prayer is a necessary commodity to living and not merely surviving. Thus, in this case of cigarettes vs. nargile, nargile serves a purpose of a global necessity. To further support this point, one can find both cigarettes and nargile in Middle East's pubs, but one can never find nargile in Europe's pub who're suffering losses because of the ban on smoking. There ARE such things as Nargile Bars in Europe, though. The disciplinary aim of such a place is to go, sit on red cushions stuffed with sponges of suspicious quality, enter a realm of smoke acoustically irrelevant to the state of mind one has at the moment of entry, there are no cooked, uncooked, undercooked delights offered as garnishes... In short, the nargile is decreased from its notrious standard onto a lowly cigarette level... A better solution would be offering nargiles at Cuban cigar lounges, the sole places where one can smoke in Europe these days... And THAT's when it hit me that Che Guevara had somehow become the symbol of unity of cigar (without "ette"s) of Western denomination and nargile of Eastern denomination... They're both about peace that come at high cost.
