Beirut: No Reservations

I was watching late night television one evening, when a familiar thought confronts me. Before anyone assumes incorrectly, it was not the, "My life would be so much more productive if I didn't watch TV," conviction. What was the thought? The writer of Proverbs 30 stated:

There are three things which are too wonderful for me, Four which I do not understand: The way of an eagle in the sky, The way of a serpent on a rock, The way of a ship on the high seas, And the way of a man with a woman.

If this was written today, the author surely would have included a fifth thing which he does not understand...namely, how, with over 100 channels of cable TV, can there be nothing to watch? While flipping through reruns of Law & Order: SVU on TNT and USA while carefully avoiding Bravo's Project Runway (lest Carita wrestle the remote away from me...which I'm not ashamed to admit has happened before...don't mess with her when it comes to Project Runway), I stumbled upon Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel.


This is a hidden gem of a show. Bourdain is the host of this part-travelogue, part-cooking show, whose motto is "be a traveler, not a tourist." We find him often sampling local delicacies like sheep testicles in South America, cobra hearts in India, and seal's eyeball amongst the Eskimos. Don't think that this is an attempt at some kind of Fear Factor gross-out, though, because he truly does try to immerse the viewer into the local culture. He's a cranky, cynical, chain-smoking Rachael Ray (who he apparently doesn't like..."Anyone can eat on $40 a day if they stiff the waiters!"). He's also the chef at some fancy French restaurant in New York City, the name of which I can't pronounce. I wouldn't necessarily want to be his roommate or have him as my brother-in-law, but he seems like the kind of guy who would be fun to travel with.

Just this past week, No Reservations aired an episode recently shot in Beirut. They managed one day of regular filming before all hell breaks loose. Hezbollah had just caputred Israeli soldiers, prompting Israeli airstrikes in southern Beirut. So, for the next 9 days, the crew gets shuttled from one location to another and try to navigate the absolute chaos that descends on the city. It wasn't some hard hitting journalistic piece from the frontlines, but it was really good TV nonetheless. These guys do a cooking/travel show, for crying out loud. This isn't supposed to be part of the bargain. Here are some more impressions:

1) Surreal image #1: The first night of fighting, many locals are still partying...footage of young, rich locals drinking and dancing at the Sky Bar while bombs are going off in the distance. Beirut is apparently a very cosmopolitan city and the locals are very westernized...and apparently very used to exploding bombs. Totally cavalier attitude displayed by the people there was surprising. The party must go on, no matter what, I guess.

2) Surreal image #2: Many foreigners and a few locals with connections manage, after much effort, to find shelter in the northern part of the city...at a 5-star hotel situated on a hilltop. The airport has been bombed and there are no flights out. The best that most can do is wait for alternate means of evacuation. So there are the foreigners, lounging by this fancy pool, which offers a panoramic view of the southern skyline. Each day, people gather by the pool to drink beer, work on their tans, and watch more Israeli airstrikes. It's not like they could have been doing anything else. Given the circumstances, I'd be doing the same things. But the imagery was striking in its paradox. A city being ripped apart, people dying, homes and lives torn apart...with little kids as witnesses from a hotel swimming pool.

3) Anthony Bourdain's local guide, "Joe", upon hearing the initial gunfire and subsequent Hezbollah demonstrations, is quoted as saying, "They'll destroy the country and we'll all pay for this." The fact that he was so resigned to it was heartbreaking. It was a hard climb back from the civil war for Beirut, so it must have been terrible for those who went through the carnage of that war to see what was happening.

4) Eventual evacuation from Beirut was maddening. Disorganized, chaotic, stressful, and a bit dangerous. The crew secures passage, by virtue of their U.S. passports, on the USS Nashville out of Beirut. The way Bourdain described it, the chaos ended the minute they passed the security checkpoints and were put into the hands of the U.S. Marines. From that point on, there was order, calm, and a humanizing effect felt by the entire crew. He was very complimentary of the Marine corps, which may or may not have been the case under "normal" circumstances. But they were his ticket out of Beirut. In light of their experience those past few days, the relief was obvious. He had one interesting observation, though. While he and the crew were overjoyed to be getting out, what was clearly written on the faces of many who were also being evacutated was confusion. The difference was that they had left behind some clothing items, some equipment...these other people were leaving behind loved ones, homes, their entire lives. Big difference.

5) On a much smaller, yet more positive note...I'd like to visit this place someday. It is a beautiful and vibrant place. The food looked incredible, too.