This afternoon I was invited over to my landlords for a Saturday afternoon lunch. He has been asking me numbers of times to come over, and now that I am in between semesters, I have some time to break and enjoy a bit of Lebanese hospitality. I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Ghanoum or Captain, as everyone refers to him , just after my arrival here in Beirut. A colleague at the university had been apartment hunting and was kind enough to pass his number to me. It turns out that the apartment was perfect and him and his family even greater. I have been over a number of times already in the past three months. They live only two blocks over in a 150 year old home overlooking the sea. The Captain is a retired pilot and tells many a story of living in New York City making once a week flights to Anchorage Alaska and/or Amsterdam. But now he and his family are back in Beirut, where he watches sports on his big flat screen tv and plays tennis on the AUB courts.
This Saturday I was asked to come over to lunch as his daughter and family would be there. Lunch was at two. I had to actually call my local Lebanese friend to find out if that meant 2:30? In surprise he said it actually meant a little before 2. I grabbed some nice little chocolates from a local bakery on my way over and arrived about 10 minutes before 2.
Though the Ghanoum’s do live in a 150 year old home, several stories have been added about 30 years ago. They live on what was the top floor, the third. Their home is a classic Lebanese layout with a central living room that stretches front to back with three arches as the windows. The main living room and dining room are there filled with many a gilded item, an elephant tusk and an incredible hookah pipe collection. The bedrooms are off to one side of this space and the other side houses the kitchen and what I will refer to as the “parlor.”
I arrive with the captain in his “parlor” with his hookah pipe at his feet. He doesn’t smoke those flavored kinds, but the real deal, plain ol’ tobacco. The room is lined with couches on both sides with one end in book shelves crowded with family photos and a tv. The other end is walled with full glass French doors with amazing views of the sea. We walk out to the balcony to take a look at the sea and enjoy the incredibly warm and clear day for January. Across the street a 30 story luxury condo is going up, now with only the underground parking slabs in rebar exposed…the yellow construction crane makes its way across the site, the extent of its steel arm within only one meter of the Captains home.
I am early and we sit on the couches. I am served some fresh squeezed orange juice (one cannot imagine drinking cartoned juice after living here) and watch as the Ethiopian and Filipino maids make their way around the place, preparing the lunch. We talk of subjects like “do you like politics?” without getting into detail. “Do you play any sports” gets nowhere with me, so we talk about hiking and the recent plane crash and the missing black box. Around 2:30 the family arrives, the daughter and brother in law and their two cute little curly topped girls. We make our way over to the dining room, the table set before the hookah pipe collection lit up from behind.
