Hummus With a Side of Olives
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: Today we’re on the train, leaving Vienna to go to a village in the Alps. We have to find out whether the hills are alive with the sound of music. SorryNotSorry.
Hummus With a Side of Olives
Years ago—maybe a decade, or more—Lee’s mom started planning a trip to Lebanon. We talked her out of it, because who wouldn’t? Lebanon, if the news is to be believed, is a hotbed of terrorism and violence, corruption and lawlessness. A society always on the verge of collapse or war, or both. Would you let your mother hop on a plane and go to Beirut?
So of course, in 2018, we went to Lebanon. I feel kind of bad about that. Not that we went (we loved it), but that we talked Virginia out of going. (*waves*—really, I’m so sorry!) Beirut is a fantastic and fascinating city. We had some peak life experiences there—and also some truly sobering lows.
On the anniversary of last year’s devastating port explosion, we’re seeing story after story about the collapse of the currency, the collapse of the medical system, food supplies, the electrical system, and everything else. It sounds like a society coming apart at the seams.
And it may very well be—if I’ve learned anything in the last six years, it’s that the world is complicated, and my experience can never be anything more than one thin sliver of a kaleidoscopic reality.
But prompted by the ubiquity of the doom-stories (is there ever any other kind of story about Lebanon?), we looked up one of our favorite Beirut restaurants on Google Maps the other day, curious whether it was still hanging on. There are reviews and photos stretching back through every month since the explosion; the most recent from four days ago.
To eat at Em Sherif is a lesson in abundance. There are no menus. You sit down, and eventually, 39 different dishes appear on your table. Or maybe it’s 42–I can’t remember, but it doesn’t matter, because at some point, you realize that if you finish something, clean the plate, because that’s what your Mama taught you to do, it will be replaced. Because who doesn’t need seconds, when there are 39 or 42 things to choose from?
In case that doesn’t sound indulgent enough, the tables are topped with mirrors, doubling the visual effect of So. Much. Food.
The mirrors may sound a bit over the top, but they work within the Lebanese aesthetic. Em Sherif is all silver and crystal and stained glass, with Arabic geometric designs represented in both delicate filigree and bolder modern motifs. It’s elegant and perfect, and in case you can’t tell, writing this has given me a wicked hummus craving.
I have no idea what Lebanese people are going through right now. I also know that even if I were there, I’d still have no idea.
When Italy announced, a few weeks ago, that vaccine verification would be required for dining in restaurants, the news told us that the country was exploding with protests. It took me two weeks of actively looking to actually find one of those protests—it was two blocks from our apartment in Florence, but we had seen/heard no evidence of unrest. By the same token, when Italy won the big UEFA football match, the cheer that went up was apparently loud enough to trigger seismographs. We heard nothing. Not a peep.
Maybe it’s all a matter of timing, or proximity, or chance. We definitely saw (and heard, and smelled) protests when we were in Chile, but if we’d been in a different neighborhood, we might not have.
It’s a lesson we’ve had to learn over and over. If I’ve visited a place, the image I have of it in my head usually contradicts the doom and gloom stories that make good headlines. (Admittedly, Covid has changed that equation a bit—too many people I actually know in person are struggling to survive the downturn in tourism.) Terrorism and protests and lawlessness—those things are real, but they rarely impact tourists.
On the anniversary of the Beirut explosion, no one’s writing about the table settings at Em Sherif. But I think—I hope—they’re still there, still inviting diners to slow down, sit for a while, be still in a beautiful space. I recognize that the average Lebanese person can’t afford to eat at Em Sherif, and that story is essential, but it’s not the whole story.
All of this long-winded rambling is just to say that I’m still reminding myself, daily, that nothing is ever as simple as the headlines would lead us to believe.
From my writer’s notebook:
Sursock Palace, which is a beautiful historic building in Beirut, now used as an event space, was badly damaged in the explosion. A lot of art was destroyed and/or damaged, but a couple of interesting pieces were salvaged: two paintings that are now being (possibly) attributed to Artemisia Gentileschi.
Gentileschi was a Renaissance painter who was apparently remarkably successful, but whose legacy and story were mostly lost to posterity. She has recently been rediscovered, and is being gradually restored to her rightful place in the canon of western art.
The scholar who is arguing for the attribution of the paintings at the Sursock studied details of the jewelry portrayed in the paintings, and realized that it’s identical, or nearly so, to the jewelry in several established Gentileschi paintings (which I saw week before last at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence).
Now I want to scroll back through my bazillion photos and see how much I can embiggen them.
Take care,
Lisa
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