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COMMENT: Beirut blues —Munir Attaullah

What is it about the Mediterranean that makes the people who live along its shores so different from us subcontinentals? Why, for example, are the Italians, the French, and the Spanish, not to mention the Lebanese and the Egyptians, world leaders when it comes to creativity in music, art, literature, cinema, fashion, design, and even food

When I grudgingly confessed to a well-known columnist friend how much I envied his lucid and spare writing style, he was gracious with his response: he claimed to enjoy my asides, and frequent rambling forays off the well –trodden track.

As a factual matter, I suppose that is a fair comment on what is a pronounced (and deliberate) stylistic quirk of this column. Whether the method serves the hidden purpose I intend (and I am not about to reveal what that may be), is for the reader to fathom and evaluate. But one advantage of the approach should be clear enough: it allows me to escape from the normal constraints of having to find a suitable and relevant subject for a column, and then having something worthwhile to say. For a writer, nothing is more worth throwing into the rubbish bin than the obvious.

So it is that, with little really new to write about today (too busy having fun in the ‘sin city’ of Beirut), I can conveniently fall back on my stock-in-trade to meet the column deadline. But before we start that journey, you might be wondering why such a generous soul as I should refer to the confession I made at the start of the column as ‘grudging’?

As Gore Vidal put it, “Every time a friend succeeds, a little bit of me dies”. Why is it that we are quick to demand honesty from others but applied to oneself it is usually a reluctant virtue?

“Le style cest le home meme,” said Georges Buffon, the distinguished 18th century French naturalist. But style is also, often, revealing of a person. For example, would a real-life social failing of mine — the ease with which my mind regularly tends to wander off in all sorts of unexpected directions even in the most inappropriate of situations — surprise you unduly? The dear wife, who knows me better than anyone else, and is a stickler for social niceties, does not approve one bit of this proclivity of mine. But even she has long given up trying to get me to desist from doing so, at least in public. “You are just weird”, she regularly ends up saying, with a resigned shrug.

Am I? Let us find out.

I am sitting in a crowded Beirut nightclub late into the night, with the Godfather and his normal coterie of suspects, sipping the usual. All eyes are focused on the energetic dusky Nubian belly dancer, gyrating suggestively only a few feet away to the hypnotic beat of a well-known Arabic dance number. However, the trance-like state she induces in me, as she spins ever more furiously, produces an unexpected result. Before anyone can say, “Well, what do you know!” I am gone from the scene, mentally.

Why am I suddenly thinking of Kerr’s solution of the Einstein field equation for a rotating black hole? Is there an obvious and immediate connection? Or, could the reason be that Roy Kerr was, like me, an international Bridge player, and I subliminally remembered our discussion many years ago, in a similar setting in Colombo, where we both were participating in a tournament?

Why does the mind next flit to thinking of pulsars, those super-compact distant objects composed of elemental matter crushed and squeezed to mind boggling density, that radiate the most awesome amounts of energy as they spin frantically about their axis? Is ‘spinning frantically’ the common element between the dancer and a pulsar that has given rise to the thought? Or is the thought an oblique metaphor for the pathetic insignificance of my existence in the larger scheme of things, despite all the luxurious pretensions to the contrary of my present privileged surroundings?

If so, do I really need such aggravation when I am supposed to be having fun?

But perhaps I am just being stupid. Could the simple answer not be that the mind will always wander when bored with whatever is currently happening?

While I am thinking about that, the belly dancer, with some final breathtaking whirls a champion figure skater would envy, finishes her routine to a thunderous ovation. For a brief moment the phrase ‘angular momentum’ threatens menacingly to replace the subject of possible boredom caused by a surfeit of the good life. Fortunately, my young companion for the evening, who is obviously having a great time, and is clearly unmoved by such philosophical concerns, comes to the rescue. She does what I should really be doing: re-filling our glasses, tempting me with some more mezze from the lavish spread before us, and keeping the small talk going (despite the loud music in the background), with a dazzling smile and twinkling eyes.

She asks me the usual silly question (in good English; the urban Lebanese is generally fluent in that language, as well as Arabic and French), to which I respond in the simple affirmative, checking the impulse to trot out that obvious but over-used Shakespearean quotation, “If music be the food of love, play on”. For, music is not merely the food of love. It is an essential vitamin for the healthy life because of its organic link to language, through poetry, which is but verbal music.

“Let us go and dance then,” says she, for by now the dance floor is crowded with couples and singles, young and old (including many old enough to be grandparents), shaking a leg or two in uninhibited fashion. Normally, I too would be delighted to do so. For, is dance not the oldest physical expression of the joyous vitality of life? And yet, this time, I decline for no clear reason. Unfazed, my companion decides to go it alone.

Her absence sets off a new train of thought. What is it about the Mediterranean that makes the people who live along its shores so different from us subcontinentals? Why, for example, are the Italians, the French, and the Spanish, not to mention the Lebanese and the Egyptians, world leaders when it comes to creativity in music, art, literature, cinema, fashion, design, and even food? Is it the blessed climate that infuses such a worldly zest for the good things of life? Or is it the silent accumulated legacy of thousands of years of easy intermingling between civilizations, each borrowing the best from others and adapting it to suit its own needs, and thereby increasing its own level of sophistication?

As I gaze blankly at the revellers I reflect that while most of my fellow countrymen are blessed in that they have all the answers, all I can ever think of are endless questions. Is that being ‘weird’, as the wife says? It saddens me that that is yet another question, and not an answer. What should I do?

I decide to go and dance. For, at least I do have the answer to the question, how should one shut down a hyperactive mind? Take refuge in some primordial and energetic physical activity.

The writer is a businessman. A selection of his columns is now available in book form. Visit munirattaullah.com

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