It's dark outside and we're climbing towards a ski centre at 2000 metres of altitude. The melody coming out from the throat of the Lebanese singer Majida Rumi is filling the inside of the car through cables that are sticking out of everywhere. The wipers are smearing the occasional snowfalls to the windscreen of an old Mercedes that jerks every time when shifting from second to third gear going uphill. “It's going to be cloudy tomorrow,” says Ghanim, and takes a lady that was standing alongside the road inside my private cab. “Women aren't supposed to stand alongside the road at night, that's why I took her in.” Of course she pays for the ride after a couple of kilometres, when she gets out.
I see the first snow along the road. My ears are filled by a melancholic Arabic ballade. There's a dark Arab sitting behind the wheel. Alongside the road there's lights strung up and there's blinking signs saying Noël and Christmas in every shop, on every crossroads. Nothing fits here. It feels like I was caught in a Picasso painting.
In Lebanon about a half of the population is Christian, the other half is Muslim and everybody is divided in sects, which is why the religious as much as the social structure here are very colourful. After a long civil war everybody here lives in peace and understanding, the country got back to its feet, there's no middle class. The average salary is 200 USD, and you can only see passenger Hummers full option (with a smaller engine, which apparently is 5600 or 5800 cc, it only costs 85000 USD – compare those to the European prices), Mercedes MLs, new Porsches, BMWs, Range Rovers etc on the roads. They are all automatic which is a smart choice considering the traffic jams in the city and the hilly relief of the entire country. The car engine volumes go from two and a half litres up, because they don’t feel like dragging slowly along the hills. Of course, they all run on petrol. There's no middle class, you can live a pretty decent life with a salary of about 2000 or 3000 USD. In a country, half the size of Slovenia, there's twice as many inhabitants, apparently there's about 20 million more outside the country, mostly they work in the Gulf, which explains the gigantic auto fleet that's running ruthlessly across the country. In Lebanon I was afraid of the traffic for the very first time and in a way I was happy that I had left the car outside this time. Again Lebanon had a negative affect on me. Christmas, Noël, Christmas is coming, Happy… Lights everywhere around, everybody loves each other, a fireplace, a warm fire, snow, a Christmas tree, hand-shakes, smiles... Feeling lonely in a strange taxi, far away from home, far away from people that I care about, in the middle of the cold Syria, among Muslims, who feel just about the same about the holiday than we do about al-Eid saghir (which the Turks and the Bosnians call Bayram – a holiday in Turkish). Latter I'll nibble on crackers in the car alone on Christmas Eve, and then turn off the lights and go to sleep. And two days later a bunch of happy, celebrating Slovenians will arrive and they’ll come from a completely different cartoon. Yes, Lebanon in Decembers is strictly FORBIDDEN from now on. Haram.
Auberge Suisse – what a lovely name in the middle of the Lebanese highlands. It's really cold outside. Not true cold, right or correct cold. The cold you feel and smell, the one that bites your cheeks and hands, but you're not really cold. The body works and warms up. You smell snow. And you look around and see an apartment-hotel village, roofs under a thick blanket of snow, soft lights on the facades. Where am I, anyway??!! In Arabia, in the Orient? Flying carpets, dancing snakes, hot deserts, blessed oases? Ayna heeya? The room is padded with wood, IT'S WARM!!! I can't fall asleep. I hear the two o'clock, three o’clock, four o'clock beep.
Apparently last year there was up to 7 metres of snow, many people confirmed it. Now they're getting a bonus, since the ski season usually only starts before Christmas and lasts until the middle of April and now the ski slopes were opened on December 4th. There's not much of snow and there's rocks poking through the snow on the slopes. We can only ski on the trails, but otherwise you simply drive on top of the hill and choose which part of the slope you're going to descend from. In 80 km of ski runs you can find everything, from blue to black trails. Every night they stamp all the slopes down and I'm really sorry that there wasn't more of the snow. But you could find nice steeps in the preparedtrails as well. And the funniest thing was watching little (and big) Arabs, swishing in the slopes just like us. And the smiling tanned Arab, that greets you warmly from under a fur cap on top of every chair lift. And on the bottom station of every chair lift. Even in the morning, before I started skiing with the Beirut banker, that gives credits to the ski centre every year.
I also visited some ski stores, because one of my new friends (they gave me a ride to get a taxi in Beirut) was looking for new glasses. And who do I meet there? A young man that visits Begunje in Slovenia every year. It’s the place where the superb Elan skis are produced. Before Salomon came to Lebanon, Elan was no. 2 in the sales, while Rossignol still dominates the market. It's maybe not insignificant that Lebanon and Syria used to be French colonies and French is the second language in Lebanon. By the way, while we're speaking of Slovenian Elan, in the service station in Adana, beside some Turkish tools, they're mostly working on cars with tools from Slovenian factory Unior in Zreče!
If the weather was nicer, we'd go diving after skiing in the afternoon, which Fuad and Tawfiq often do. But that way I'd have to stay in Beirut one day longer, because the border crossing is at 1400 metres of altitude.
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