In every country there's always one item that serves as the perfect scapegoat to get out of unnecessary moodiness. In Russia you can always get away with "I was drunk", in Armenia "It's the oligarchs", in France "I'm depressed", in Belgium "It's the weather"... Thus far, Lebanon is the only country were every mischief is brushed aside by everyone simply by referring to their country - "This is Libanooon!!!"...
- "Why are there no recycling garbage cans?"
- "Why no one gets their driving license by actually passing a driving test?"
- "Why are the women wearing full make up even when swimming in the sea?"
- "Why is someone's mistress issued a license to block an entire highway and get a fashion shoot video-ed?"
- "Why do women remember to call someone only after they start the engine of their cars and get in line to drive onto the highway?"
- "Why is everyone hooked on cigarets or shisha or panadol or all of those items?"
All these are questions that can be answered with one short "This is Libanon!"...
So much that one has to perfect strategies of approach whereby getting things done will never be hampered with "This is Libanon" followed by "Inshallah one day..."... Even though, everyone you talk to absolutely dreams of "one day". In fact, so vivid are they dreams that they can give you a clear description of a clean, shiny Beirut with architectural building standards respected, green zones enhanced, sewage canals cleaned and tucked away from residential areas, factories moved away and immigrant workers enjoying a respectful position inside the files of Labour and Social Affairs Ministry.
So, every morning as I go through things planned and unplanned I prepare myself for a journey of "This is Libanon"-less conversations with starting from the concierge of the building and the plumber, ending with clients and, yes, sometimes even friends.
One day, just like any other Lebanese day, I decided it was time to have my youngest son's dream come true. He loves to dance. Everything he does involves dancing. The way he runs to turn off the light, or fetch the water, or chase the cat, or run down the street with multiple jumps and turns in the air. He doesn't like the sound of traditional music I usually play in the house - Greek, Armenian, Arabic, Irish, Russian. No, he only rushes in when Shostakovich or Chaykovsky are playing and he just starts dancing... Then I told him what he does is called ballet and showed him the photos by Stanislav Belyaevsky, who - himself a long time lead dancer at St. Petersburg's world famous Mariinsky Theatre - is now running from stage to stage photographing ballet scenes right during the performance. He also has a large collection of photos that are shot during practice hours. My son, terribly concerned with what he calls the "womanness" of ballet, suddenly saw the practice of male ballet dancers, how strongly built they were and high their jumps were and gave me his verdict "Ballet is like karate, except it's dancing".
Once I got his "ok", I started to enquire who was the best ballet teacher one could get for their son. Call after call, school after school, I started to realise that there were no ballet lessons available for boys. There were two reasons for this - a/ there were no boys in the ballet groups and there never have been, b/ the ballet teachers themselves having studied ballet but not the art of teaching ballet could only have their girl ballet dancers simply repeat what they knew and had zero knowledge on how to teach ballet to a boy.
This perk aside, I started to get lots of "This is Libanooon!"s over and over again when I'd ask why don't boys dance ballet in Beirut. And not just from schools and teachers. Even my friends explained that what I was looking for was an extraordinary thing because no one here would "voluntarily" send their boy to a ballet school. No, Beirut is not a place where boys dance ballet - the highest art form of dance, it IS a place when starting from the age of four boys are rushed to Asian martial arts classes that usually are overbooked. The same boys that are continuously reminded to swallow their tears throughout the kindergarden and school years because "this is Libanon" and here "boys don't cry" is still the rule. never mind that the drug use and many other deep societal breaks are due to "boys don't cry" form of bringing up. With all the Frenchness of their body language, with all their urges to get hooked on the hookah/nargile/shisha the day they stop drinking milk, with all the depending on mom and dad getting them everything they demand, there isn't much independence left to these boys except to go to the karate class and let the steam off by "ha-yah":"hi-yah" shouts. They've never been allowed to kind of naturally choose their path. The entire family system is based on creating hiearchies of mutual dependence from father to son, so they'll always stay together no matter what. there is no individual choice. And this problem at macro-level is mirrored right through the way the government operates in Lebanon and the way people are dependent on personal political connections to get ahead in their lives in order to claim they're someone... They're someone because they know someone and not because they know something...
I don't mind this as long as this is the internal cuisine of other families. But the frowns and objections I get upon delivering the news my son wants to do ballet - I do mind. Immediately stereotypes are brought in - ballet is more a feminine thing they say, even though every Lebanese won't miss a chance to boast about the world famous Rahbani's musical theatre (where there are plenty of boys who dance great but had they done basic ballet their bellies wouldn't shake as much when jumping in the air and they wouldn't sweat as much to get the front row nauseous with scents transcending the stage limits) . I was even cautioned by one that my son "won't grow tall". I told her she's confusing ballet with gymnastics but not much success.
I finally found proper ballet lessons at the Russian Cultural Center where, again, my son will be the only boy but the teacher can teach a boy, too. He's super-excited and will start on Friday, every week twice, 1,5 hour each time without realising that what he's doing is what an ice breaker does in the Siberian rivers in winter - he's going against "This is Libanon" and proving that "Inshallah" is a concept that can also happen now, today and not sometime in indefinite future.
