The fig tree is a plant that is content with little, growing a bit 'all over the world, it is virtually pest and without too much care is loaded with fruit. What feeds my house in the country four or five families of humans, two dogs, an unknown number of birds. And then I still advancing, figs.
My memory of Beirut is a fig, a tree that grows back. The first living being to repopulate an open area covered with debris, probably a building in his previous life, before the missiles and the last war. This fig tree grows in waiting to be cleared with the reconstruction and then maybe grow again, after the next war.
Beirut strange city, sea and mountains, and Islamic extremism raging nightlife, beautiful women (often reworked) and characters unpresentable, historic outpost of the Christian and Muslim masses that grow, dozens of ethnic groups and religions live together for better or worse, millions of Lebanese emigrants. Lebanese Arabs who are a bit 'as the Italians are the West: small town, good people a little' caciarona around the world, the small scoundrels who say all but basically no one wants to really bad.
Beirut did not know what to write. I was there recently and we'll be back soon but I was nothing, apart from the fig tree and the hotel pricked with bullets that has become a tourist attraction and not put in place because it's okay. Then yesterday I found a nice article Hugh Tramballi Il Sole 24 Ore online and I was reminded of this introduction. The most interesting steps dell'aticolo you write them below, do not carry over in full for obvious copyright issues. I tried to summarize his thoughts and respecting my feelings, I used parentheses and dots to indicate where I cut and the few additions that I made to reconstruct the meaning. I hope it's readable and I hope sporattutto Tramballi not angry ...
Here.
Suddenly the big hotels on the corniche are (...) filled. "Les accrochages" to the border with Israel, as they called with the lightness Lebanese all the shootings have caused only a rapid motion of the eyebrow. Then everybody in the boat, in the restaurants of the coast and the mountain that dominates, in the elegant shops. As the city's inhabitants, even the wealthy Gulf emirate of each come to spend the summer in Beirut have thought the worst. No one believed the war (...) the money to spend in Beirut (are) not limited. (..) The Centre Ville was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri - its great legacy left to Lebanon with the airport - seems exhausted . (...) This year too the season is plenty of prejudice. (...)
The Lebanese, or rather, some Lebanese are getting rich as well as Hezbollah is becoming stronger politically and militarily. The danger that the power of the second is the stability of the country does not stop the first from investing and earning. (...) 2010 is just arrived in August and transactions increased by 39.5%. (...) It is money in most of the Lebanese expatriates. (...), The great merchants in Africa, the professionals in Europe and America. More than 40% of medical graduates in Lebanon in the last 40 years practicing in the United States. Working abroad and make a home in Lebanon. It is built in every district Beirut, for Ashrafiye Maronite, Sunni in Verdun, in the Shiite southern suburbs. Space there is not much. Sometimes you flatten ancient villas and beautiful (to make room for) dozens of anonymous skyscrapers, some (...) just finished, others under construction (that) are changing the city skyline. Beirut for the first time begins to look bad, its destructive and constructive chaos is losing appeal.
This smodatezza in one direction and the other is a form of madness. Because if nobody believed that the clash at the border could ruin the summer, everyone is convinced that soon or later there will be war. Among Christians in the cool evenings of Brum, a balcony above the lights of the harbor of Beirut, among the few secular Shiites and Sunni bourgeoisie, in the smell of salt water pipe and the Ain el Mraisseh, discussions are just about the war. "Break out, do you?" It's a rhetorical question (...) (...) fingers are those that will press the trigger again, the hand is the usual one: that of Israel, Iran, Syria, (...) of Ezbollah.
(In a country with 17 denominations and many international sponsors) the political seasons never last long and the (agreements) Doha (two years) is rapidly wearing out. (...) (...) Hezbollah now has his agenda, written more with the Iranians, the Syrians with that (...) the field is getting another break point. Why Lebanon should stop a reconstruction so rich? Because here's economy has never been a deterrent, because after the destruction there is always a reconstruction. And because the Lebanese summers are not for everyone. 0.5% of the population owns 45% of the savings bank, while 28% live on $ 4 a day. The doctors practicing abroad but half of the Lebanese do not have health insurance. The poor are always the first and sometimes enthusiastic recruits for war.
"Beirut is enriched waiting for the next war"
Ugo Tramballi article, Il Sole 24 Ore online Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Note that the picture is not really cool to Beirut, but it makes quite the idea.
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