Dinner Trip to Saida

Our first excursion together outside of Beirut was two weekends ago (sorry for the delay in this posting - school has been keeping us busy!). We headed to the ancient city of Sidon (called Saida in French and Arabic), just 40 kilometers south of Beirut.

Bobby, a high school English teacher at ACS, invited us to an iftar dinner with his friend Hanadi. Iftar is the breaking of the Ramadan fast each day at sunset.

Bobby, Megan, and Hanadi taking in the Crusader Sea Castle in Saida.

The traditional Lebanese restaurant Bobby and Hanadi took us to had a great view of the castle, which lit up at night. On the left-hand tower, you can see the outline of words in Arabic that were projected onto the tower – they say “Ramadan Kareem,” or “Happy Ramadan.” In 1110, after two unsuccessful attempts to capture the city, Saida fell to a joint fleet of Norwegian and Venetian vessels. Thus began about 150 years of back and forth conquest of Saida’s castle that involved people including Saladin, the Templars, St. Louis of France, and eventually the Mongols.

Megan, Hanadi, and Bobby inside the Khan al-Franj, an Ottoman-era marketplace, with a children’s performance in the background. Bobby originally hails from New York City, but he’s bounced around the world teaching English the last few years. He has been at ACS for the past two years.

Hanadi, who teaches English at another school in Beirut, was born in Saida. She grew up in the southern suburbs of Beirut and after making it through 15 years of civil war had the misfortune of having her home destroyed by the Israeli air force during the 2006 “Summer War.”

Saida is usually a pretty sleepy town. We went down on a Saturday in the middle of Ramadan, which meant that there was a hopping street festival. This picture and the following one are of Palestinian children performing a traditional Arab dance. The song they danced to, “Jerusalem,” was sung by one of Lebanon’s most famous singers, Fairuz - here's a translation of some of the lyrics:

It is for you, oh city of the prayer, that I pray

It is for you oh splendid home, oh flower of the cities

Oh Jerusalem, Oh Jerusalem, Oh Jerusalem, Oh city of the prayer

Our eyes are set out to you everyday

They walk through the porticos of the temples

Embrace of the old churches

And take the sadness away from the mosques…

The gates of our city will not be locked anymore, so I am going to pray

I will knock on the gates and I will liberate them

My face will be cleansed by the holy water of the Jordan river…

This is our home and Jerusalem belongs to us

And in our hands we will celebrate the splendor of Jerusalem

By our hands peace will return to Jerusalem.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is alive and well down here.