The Wedding-by popular demand

As many people have requested this story in print, I am taking this time to tell it.

While all weddings have their special moments, the last wedding I went to was especially exciting. It may be the fact that we had to leave early due to an altercation involving my friends, but that's just an assumption.

It began in the usual way. We were told to meet at a certain place at 7.00 even though the wedding would begin around 8.00. In Lebanon, as in much of the Middle East, weddings don't necessarily begin at a certain time. People show up, sit down at a table and wait for the bride and groom to arrive. Lebanon is unique, though, as most weddings are mixed. Men and women attend together and even dance together! This would cause great scandal in most other places, but people here don't seem to mind.

So we were running a bit late as we were visiting another friend in the same camp, and she was not ready to let us go yet. Nor was her daughter who has a fondness for Scott and biting people who don't do what she wants. You can see our dilemma. I called the house to see if they were really ready for us or if they were running late as is usually the case. I was informed that the girl we were meeting was not there. She'd already left for the party. This made us a bit concerned as we didn't actually know the way to the hall where the wedding was to be held. So I called her cell and she actually hadn't left yet, just her brother thought she was gone. But she did tell us to hurry over as everyone was waiting for us. So we hurried over (leaving before the biting kid realized we were gone) and then waited at the meeting spot for 30 minutes for the people who were all supposed to be ready and waiting for us.

Finally we made it to the wedding. We parked near the hall while our friends parked near the gate. So we waited at the entrance to the hall for our friends to meet us to go in. While we stood there, the nervous wedding coordinator tried to hustle us inside. We told him we were waiting for our friends, but we could see the wedding drummers assembled outside, ready to enter, and I wanted to go in so that we wouldn't miss the excitement. After several long agonizing minutes of waiting for girls in high heels to amble our way, we went in and found a semi-empty table near the front. We were just in time to watch on the projector screen in front of us the arrival of the drummers and the bride and groom. We quickly noticed that had we still been standing at the spot where we'd been waiting for our friends, we would have been in the midst of the drumming and dancing and waving. That would have been a bit awkward.

The wedding began typical to most weddings here. Several young men dressed in traditional clothes drummed and tootled on horns and danced around swinging prayer beads over their heads while doing intricate kick dances. Amidst all this fanfare, the bride and groom are escorted in by more kick-dancing young men. They wave amiably at the cheering, ululating crowd that you can't actually hear because of the even louder music. The groom is dressed in a typical tuxedo/suit thing and the bride is wearing a cross between lingerie and a wedding dress. She is the first bride I've seen who wasn't wearing the head-covering and she was definitely willing to show off her body. The bodice of the dress was similar to a corset made of some kind of see-through netting which revealed the excessive curves of her body. While Song of Songs compares the Beloved's neck to the Tower of David, in this case the bride's hair more closely resembled an architectural triumph over gravity. Together they stood awkwardly while the dancers performed several more numbers, including an elaborately choreographed sword fight. No Arab wedding is complete without swords. At this point, I started helping Marian take notes for her own wedding. Finally the happy couple was escorted to the couch throne but not for long. They had to get up and dance the first couple dance. During the dance, the helpful wedding coordinator whispered instructions in their ears at various moments.

Then the festivities began in earnest. People spilled out to the dance floor, joined hands, and began the debke. This is a glorified hokey-pokey dance that really looks cool. The young men make it look good adding in energetic jumps and turns. Emily and I made it look awkward, trying to keep up with the steps that kept changing. Finally the debke was over and we could actually just dance. After the dancing slowed a bit, the lights changed as a signal to all to vacate the dance floor so that the staff could wheel in an enormous 12-layer cake. The soundtrack to this momentous occasion was none other than Vanilla Ice's musical masterpiece "Ice Ice Baby." The crowd at our table went wild. (Emily knows every profound lyric of this work of art). While swaying gently to the music, the bride and groom together grasped a long sword handed to them by the ever-present wedding coordinator and chopped the cake in half. Then, still dancing, now to "I Like to Move It-Move It," they shared cake and linked arms to drink the juice. This looked awkward and possibly threatening to the poofy white gown below. After the exchange of the rings, the dancing got started again.

During this bout of dancing, we were on and off the floor. We were served the sweet but bland tasting cake with crunchy fruit surprises hidden at random places inside. During one of these rest times we noticed a mass exodus of guys from the room. We were informed that a fight was going on outside. We stayed out of it, but later Ashley went out and came back with the exciting news that there was blood on the steps outside. Later when we ourselves were quickly vacating the premises, we noticed this blood. We thought that would be the most exciting part of our night there when another fight began. Apparently, our friends were dancing when an aunt of the groom told our friend (a relative of the bride) that she couldn't dance in the middle of the debke circle which is traditionally reserved for relatives. Then someone pushed our other friend who was dancing with the relative. Her brother went up to defend her honor, but he is a little guy, and he was grabbed by the throat by the aunt's relative. Our friend inserted herself between her brother and the other guy while the other brother rushed back to our table and told us to get up because we all had to leave now. We quickly gathered up our stuff, and left the hall.

Outside there was much confusion about whether or not we should go back in and make nice or just leave. When the lady who had been told she couldn't dance in the circle came out, she made the decision for us. She said she was not going back in and we all should leave. So we did. We tried to be very huffy about it to make a point.

So on the whole, the evening was a great success. Emily and I had wanted our sisters to experience an Arab wedding. And we'd had the bonus of getting to see a fight and being involved in another fight and best of all, we didn't have to stay until midnight because we got kicked out early!

Little added tidbit for your benefit: the next day while ordering food to go in a restaurant near my house, the waiter recognized me and Marian. "You were at the wedding last night, right?" He queried. "Yes," I told him. "Pretty wild night, huh?" That it was!

A photo of the sword cutting the cake that was obscured by the many guests and the staff. Use your imagination!

Wintertime

So, it's winter now. Or so I've been told. I was informed of this fact several times last week. First when trying to get a bus home from Sidon. Here is a snippet of our conversation, translated for the benefit of my 2 readers.

"We need to get on the bus to Tyre. Where is it?"

"Bus to Tyre? There are no more buses to Tyre. It's 8.30 at night!"

"I know it's 8.30. That's why there should be buses still going. I've taken a bus from here at 10.00 at night. Why did the buses stop so early?"

"Because it's wintertime! In the winter, we stop the buses at 6.00."

Instead of a bus, we ended up catching a taxi home, which cost way more, but we were mildly entertained by the Elvis figurine hanging from the rear view mirror. Apparently, according to my very wise taxi driver, Elvis died of AIDS. I'm sure if I'd given him the chance, he would have told me how the Jews managed to infect him with the disease and cover it up so that no one could find out, but we made it home before he could get to that part of the story. Amazing how we did it without snow chains on the tires!

The other time I was told of the new season, was by friends of mine when I invited them to come swim with us at the beach. Their response: "WHAT?! You're swimming now? We never swim during October! You will catch a cold and DIE! Don't you know that it's winter now?"

Now I admit that I am not the world's expert on winter, having grown up on a tropical island that is as close to paradise as many people will ever get. But I did think that 25 degrees Celsius (the temperature seen on an outside thermometer) and 86 degrees Fahrenheit (the temperature on our car thermometer) still counted as pleasant weather. I mean, I get cold when I eat ice cream, and at this point I am only in need of a jacket when I get in the car with Scott and Emily. Their way of dealing with culture shock is to make the inside of the car resemble the climate of Alaska (their adopted home state) as much as possible. Usually, when I start being able to see my breath in the car, I politely ask them to turn down the air conditioning. But, in spite of my Emily Post approved etiquette, Scott always thinks it's hilarious to turn the air conditioning colder (I turned it down! Hahaha.). But if I ask him to turn it off, I get the same response. So, I think I'll just leave a blanket in the car from now on. It's always a good idea to have blankets in the car during the winter anyway.