Arrival in Beirut

I've now had a day and a half in Beirut, and although it somwtimes feels like the air is trying to claw my eyes out, the weather is everything summer in the middle east should be, and there are even more traffic barriers and jumpy young guys with M-16s than ever, it still feels comfortable.

So far I'm staying in what could charitably be called a flophouse. It looks like it hasn't been painted in at least a decade, and I am sleeping in what would seem to be a balcony which has been converted into a room by hanging a tarp over it. Nonetheless, it's reasonably clean, it's a lot more quiet and private than the hostel I was at in Istanbul, and for $8 a night for a place two blocks from the waterfront it's hard to complain too much. I've arranged for a studio apartment starting from tomorrow, which I'll be sharing with my friend Anand who will be coming here starting tomorrow to spend a month or so journalizing.

Nothing terribly exciting. I met up last night with my friend M (who is as big a curmudgeon as ever) and today with Ghassan from TYMAT.

While I was wandering around today I found a very odd Jordanian magazine, the name of which escapes me; it's sort of a glossy men's magazine written by intellectual, mostly-Arab lefties, with a regular column by George Galloway two pages after a review of the newest Porsche. The writing leaves something to be desired (partly because there is not very much of it -- 3/4 of the space in the features is taken up by pictures) but it's interesting nonetheless: I picked it up for a piece on how Hamas is operating a police force in the Gaza Strip.