[LCM Articles] Bombs and Botox in Beirut

[Zeina Saab]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article4532900.ece

>From The Times
August 15, 2008
Bombs and Botox in Beirut
How do you cope with with living in Lebanon? Get a nose job
Alice Fordham

Here in Beirut, they love plastic surgery. They don't just love being
beautiful and glamorous - though the city does have a shop that sells
only gold shoes - they love the whole process of spending money to
change your appearance. Beiruti hoydens go out in the evening with
bandages still on their noses, to show the full-time people-watchers
of Lebanon the status symbol that is having the money and leisure to
make themselves even more beautiful. Older women, I am told, like to
go away for a special holiday and come back all healed up. Banks here
offer loans specifically for Botox or plastic surgery, which is
getting cheaper. You could bounce a squash ball off the breasts at the
private beaches. Surgery is a national obsession.

Now, there is something of a backlash. An exhibition of paintings has
just opened, depicting women with their bandages still on, lips
painted scarlet and a look on their faces that might be anything from
haunted despair to indigestion. It has been received as an indictment
of the shallowness of this national quest for physical perfection and
the status of beauty.

Scratch a little deeper and it is not just that it is shallow for the
Lebanese to be obsessed with their appearance. There is bewilderment
at the morality of the rich and sociable being interested in beauty
when there is so much horrific stuff happening around them. Can these
people, the thinking goes, literally not see beyond the end of their
noses? How can they expend so much time and effort on something so
vain when, as earlier this week, there was a bus bomb in Tripoli? In
May, civilians were dying in sectarian gunfights in Beirut. The
violence was in Hamra, a louche and lovely party area. Within one day
of the May violence dying down, the bars were open and the girls once
again putting on the glitz. The mother and child who died in the
violence seemingly forgotten.

The glamour pusses of downtown Beirut are the rich and lucky minority.
But it is a Lebanese tendency to push aside troubles and focus on fun.
Some see this as a national psychological defence mechanism. These
people have endured decades of internal and external strife and they
live in a country where sectarian rifts are getting deeper and, very
likely, storing up trouble for the future. If they focused on what had
happened and what was likely to happen, they couldn't cope. So, in
Beirut at least, they go to the rooftop nightclubs or the road of bars
in the beautiful, battered area of Gemmayze and make the most of the
clubs that stay open no matter what the security situation.

Some are less charitable in their assessment of the mindset. "It's
sick," said a Lebanese friend bluntly. "They don't think about
civilians dying, they just party, party, party." The World Press Photo
picture of the year prize in 2006 was given to an image of young
beautiful Lebanese women, driving through a bombsite as if on a
sightseeing tour, wrinkling their (perfect) noses. Other Lebanese
friends said that in 2006, they heard people moan that the war had
"ruined their summer".

Sure, the young are vain and reprehensible, but I have sympathy with
their desire to distract themselves from reality. Because, like
everyone else who has come to Beirut in the summer, I am suffering
from a dizzying crush on the place. And the hedonism of the gilded
youth here is an indivisible part of its charm. Without the gold-shod
girls and champagne-buying guys, the mixture of chaos and charm would
not be nearly as intoxicating. No foreigner propping up a bar and
enjoying the beautiful melting pot that is Beirut has any right to
complain that the rich kids ignore the suffering and corruption.

And I am not the only foreigner sinking Lebanese rosé here this
summer. The country is crawling with tourists, and all over the world
you meet people whose eyes go all filmy if you mention sunrise on the
Corniche. Beirut is a crazy, jewelled mosaic of the brand new and the
bombed-out, of dust in the evenings and silhouetted palm trees in the
morning. And the economy of this country needs tourism. While it is
not a philanthropic urge that motivates Beirut's parties, the city's
reputation for fun and the Lebanese reputation for charm and
hospitality do attract visitors who support the many employees of
hotels, shops and beaches..

So, if it is denial that fosters this charm, then it is hard to
condemn it. A society that prizes artificial beauty seems superficial
but it is a symptom of a coping mechanism that creates one of the most
adorable cities in the world. In July, crowds gathered outside the
memorial to Rafik Hariri, the prime minister assassinated three years
ago. But they weren't commemorating him. They gathered in Martyrs'
Square to listen to Mika, and the Anglo-Lebanese popster's slick
melodies played to a euphoric crowd enjoying the zenith of one of the
best Lebanese summers for years.

Because, really, what else can they do? Read up on Lebanon. This
country has torn itself apart for ever; the differences are
implacable. If everyone in the crowd watching Mika stopped, and sat,
and started talking about their beliefs and about how to solve
problems, they would probably come to blows. Everyone here has deeply
held affiliations, inherited and totally incompatible with the views
of their friends. Who can blame them for skirting around the issue and
thinking instead about society, style and about how great they're
going to look after their surgeon is finished with them?