The boys are playing with plastic guns outside. I observed little street wars during the last two days in Beirut and today also in the old city in Saida (city in Southern Lebanon). “Traditionally” the boys are having those guns as a present for the feast, girls are getting dolls, we were told by a man working in a toy-shop in Saida. Sometimes little plastic bullets come out of the guns, sometimes they have the special effect of leaving red points at the wall. Somehow it effected me seeing this young and sometimes not that young boys running “armed” through the streets...
Nevertheless, during the feast days children are more visible in the public life here in Lebanon. During the last weeks I was asking myself sometimes, where are all the children? They aren’t very present in the streets. Only if there’s end of the school you see them coming out, often picked up by their parents. Otherwise there seems not much space to play in Beirut, except a very few gardens and the Corniche perhaps.
This evening in Saida, it was quite clear: feast days are children days.
The kids in Yemen and Oman are playing with the same guns. But I guess it feels different in Lebanon.
ReplyDeleteWhat else were you doing in Saida? Is it still possible to visit hte Hizbollah exhibition?
so it seems to be a "transnational tradition"...
ReplyDeleteoh, i didn't hear about the hizbullah exhibition, but min 3arif, perhaps it's still there.
we were mainly walking around, having coffee with old men in the old town and another coffee with some young people who invited us to their house when we were taking photos of their nice old building.