San Maria Pullman Bus Station, Dora, Beirut.

Tuesday 15th January

San Maria bus station servise area is a great place for people watching. It helps if you can speak Arabic, but only a little. As every good person watcher knows the essence lies in the art of non-verbal communication. Rather like watching TV with the sound down and trying to figure out what everyone is up to. We arrived around 11am and immediately got embroiled in a huge altercation. The bus station is government sponsored and everyone that came to hire a servise taxi took the next available taxi in a queuing system to ensure fair trade and some sense of order. This didn’t stop opportunist from trying to grab fares as they came in the front gate and thus jump the queue. This is what happened as we arrived. Our driver took our bags and locked them in the boot of his car. Then he took our passports to have them processed. It turned out he had been a naughty boy and had jumped the queue. There is nothing Damascenes like more than a good old ruck, I have discovered, and they went at it with gusto. Our driver, who was a big guy, was an irascible fellow and really took offence to being accused of fare pilfering. A big crowd quickly formed and several people began screaming at each other. We had no idea what was going on at this point until we heard a familiar voice cutting through the sway. “Ah you’re in a bit of fuckin’ bother here!” I was never so glad to hear such a welcome profanity. Charlie explained to us what was going on and we decided to ditch our sneaky driver and go with the guy at the front of the queue. If nothing else he was leaving earlier. Unfortunately our driver was having none of it. Unbelievably he decided to hide his keys in his pants and fold his arms and sulk like a petulant child. It wasn’t until a gang of drivers ganged up on him and physically remove the keys from his pants did he relent. I was very impressed by their bravery. I wouldn’t have retrieved them.

We had a chai and chat to Charlie for while and then it was time for hour taxi to leave.

The journey was pretty pleasant, if you can ignore the death-defying actions of the motorists. The temperature improved considerably as we descended through the mountains to Beirut. We got caught in a massive traffic jam coming into the city and sat on the motorway for over and hour and a half. We finally got moving and began to pass a number of military vehicles and armed police as we entered Beirut. Something was definitely up.

We arrived in Doura and headed to Nat’s flat. Nat was at work but Leah was in. She was pretty freaked out and told us a massive explosion had occurred about an hour ago. We turned on the TV in the flat which had Al-Jazeera but in Arabic. We could see quite evidently that a bomb had gone off on the freeway. We all ran over the internet café a few blocks down and checked online. A bomb had indeed gone off that afternoon on the freeway. Just 30 minutes before our servise taxi had arrived. Very close to Doura. Leah had literally just stepped out of the front door when in was detonated and stood in blind panic as people ran for cover in the middle of a week-day afternoon. The internet café owner thought we were journalists. He could not get his head around what we were doing here as tourists. I think the words he used were – ‘You must be fuckin’ mental!’ I did wonder if he was related to Charlie.

As I’ve said before, it’s a funny thing travelling in countries that your government considers high risk areas. My family and friends are constantly asking me when I am going to leave the Middle East. Merryl has confessed to me that she scans Al Jazeera online every morning looking for reports of kidnappings or bomb attacks, but that was just her attitude when she was in the UK. When she was here she loved it. And so she should. It is a beautiful and safe place to travel. The media treats it as a sub-continent of maniacs. This is a shame. There are, unfortunately, fanatics that do give people cause to worry. But then there are fanatics everywhere. It shouldn’t stop you from experiencing the beauty of a culture. You should be aware of the dangers though. In this instance the bombs that are being detonated are part of a political power struggle. The pro-Syrian Hezbollah backed faction of the government is trying to increase it’s representation in Parliament and tip the balance of power in its favour; a balance that hitherto now has been in favour of the pro-western party represented as Christians. Yes it does sound an unfair balance. A parting present of the French Mandate left to keep power in western favour. The politics here are anything but secular and the deadlock that was caused when the last president stepped down is becoming increasingly tenser every day. Myself, and - from what I have gleaned from other travellers in Lebanon - however look at it differently. We are not visiting here to thrill seek or to see a war torn country. We realise there is civil unrest and we are aware the country has just started to put itself together after a particularly vicious civil war. We have come here to visit a country steeped in culture and history. We accept that there is a possibility of being caught up in an internal struggle, but we realise the focus of the altercations are between political factions. We are very unlikely to be targeted because we are tourists.

We all went back to the flat. Leah was still not feeling good about the bomb. Mainly because it scared the living shit out of her, the blast was less then a kilometre from her and it was big. It killed four bystanders and wounded several others. Nat got back a little later. She was pretty unfazed by the whole thing. She had been living in Beirut for over a year and this had happened more frequently than anyone would care to like.

We tried to lighten the mood by going out for some food. Nat took us to a funky little Indian restaurant over a shop by the bus station. They did a great Dahl and Byriani and we grabbed some wine and had a couple of glasses back at the flat. We found an amazing pair of glasses left over from the previous owners and had a lot of fun with them. Well I did anyway. Leah’s mood had far from lifted however and I suspected she’d be leaving us in the not too distant future.