YOGA IN BEIRUT
Everyone swooned over the beauty of the space. Clean hardwood floors and white walls that bent seamlessly into a vaulted ceiling. The criss cross arches above reminded of a cathedral, and descended into traditional pointed Lebanese windows. A fading afternoon sun streaked the floor with yellow and matched the warm smell of cinnamon incense. Best of all, the quiet. Outside loomed the endless traffic and construction noise of Beirut, but the yoga studio offered respite. I snapped a photo to remember it by, for when I returned to the fray. Only then did I notice that everyone else had unrolled a black yoga mat in one of three neat rows. Mine lay to one side, glaringly oversized and purple.
As I return to my eyesore, I take in in the other women as I walk. I am the only one with silver hair and a face that has not gone under the knife and who bothered with a tank top over her sports bra. Yoga and fashion often intersect, but still I chuckle softly to myself as I sink onto my mat. Here I am, yet again.
When was the first time? I cannot remember exactly. Maybe fourth grade? Definitely by sixth. At school, I remember comparing myself to my peers and concluding that I was too reserved, not athletic enough, my bangs were too poofy (even for the 80s) and I was too tall to ever fit in.
I know I was not unique. My husband and fellow classmate quips that we met at the end of the line, because classes often filed into an assembly by height, and we both towered above our friends. Adolescents excel at hyper focus on friends and appearance and how to belong to a group. In case I ever forget this I am lucky to have two teenage daughters, and a third who moonlights as a teenager in her spare time, to remind me. Recently, my thirteen-year-old walked in with her best friend and I blinked because the two of them looked so much alike. Same hair, same clothes, same attempt at eye shadow and lip gloss. They list each other in their phone (same pop socket) contacts as “Twin”. The need to find, or create, visible similarities is real.
This need gave my husband and I pause when we considered relocating outside of the United States in 2010. We moved to Costa Rica when the girls were one, four and seven, and then to Beirut in 2016. Would they adjust ok? Would they find friends? Would their nationality hinder their ability to connect with kids from other cultures? In other languages? The transition to Costa Rica felt relatively easy, for two reasons. Its status as the most stable democracy in Central America and its proximity to the United States mean that North Americans and Western attitudes abound. We easily found friends who spoke English and shared the worldview we were raised with. Second, small children do not see the lines of convention and language the way that adults do. My four-year-old’s first friend was a little girl who spoke only Spanish. They played easily and babbled to each other happily in their own languages, seemingly oblivious to any barriers at all.
The decision to move to Beirut challenged all of us, from our nuclear family to our extended family and our close friends. Geographically, the war in Syria continued across the border, and the refugee crisis within it. In 2017, Human Rights Watch estimated that 1.5 million Syrian refugees lived in Lebanon, a country roughly the size of Connecticut. In addition to current events, stories of the Lebanese Civil War still dominated our knowledge of the country. The conflict ravaged the entire country from 1975-1990 and included the lethal bombing of the American Marine Barracks in 1983. It seemed that we sought to live in a part of the world perpetually ablaze.
Before 2016, I too had neglected to update my image of Beirut from a hostile collection of bullet-pocked buildings. Indeed, I knew very little about it except for the drinking game called Beirut that I used to play in college, that involved launching a ping pong ball into an opponent’s beer, in an effort to make it splash all over the table, like shrapnel from a bomb. My husband and I needed current information and understanding, which we achieved through a visit and seemingly endless research.
What we found is a safe and stunning city with a diversity of thought and custom that we never could have imagined. For example, at the kids’ school, largely because of the diaspora resulting from the Lebanese Civil War, their classmates hail from over 65 different countries. They encounter visible differences daily, like kids who speak in a rapid mix of Arabic, French and English, and girls who wear hijabs to school. If they want to buy lunch in the cafeteria, it is chicken taouk and saj bread. During Ramadan they ebb and flow around the traditions of their Muslim classmates, respecting the ones who fast.
Through this lens, my perception that I stood out at school sounds really silly, if not petty. We were all so much the same. Largely White, largely middle class, from the same 50 mile radius within the United States. If it is possible to feel unlike people within your own cohort, how do you find similarities among much greater cultural differences?
Sitting on my extra-long purple mat in the Beirut yoga studio, ruminating about my unpedicured toes, I realize I am still trying to figure this out.
I wish that I could tell you that I do not make snap judgements about women who invest in plastic surgery or who wear heavy make up to yoga classes, but I do. I am baffled by the Lebanese tweens who cannot tie their own shoes because they have nannies to do it for them. I have stopped complimenting any item of clothing on anyone, for fear that it will become a gift at my doorstep. These are just the differences that I can see. There are times when the cultural gap feels insurmountable. Generally Lebanese girls are not allowed sleepovers, but my daughter wants one for her birthday. What do I do? Then there was the time that I hired an artist to lead a few crafts at a birthday party, including hair braids that the veiled girls could not enjoy. I felt ignorant and guilty.
The yoga practice begins with a song, played on a small instrument called a Harmonium. I close my eyes and instantly I am transported back to my yoga studio in Costa Rica, where the same music signaled the start of class. I recall my tightly knit group of friends there.
I go back further and summon the soul mates that I found in San Francisco in my 20s. Then the confidantes I met studying abroad in France during college. When was the first time?
Senior year in high school. After three high school years of contrasting and comparing my idiosyncrasies with those of my peers, amidst our final year, something clicked. I stopped worrying so much about how I might stand out and focused on how much we shared. I don’t know if it was a shift in my lenses alone or if others would agree, but to me, by the time our class graduated, we had fused into a group that worked together well and connected deeply. I fell in love with the feeling of finding cohesion and collaboration and followed it for as long as I could. I went on to visit Bancroft friends across the country and in different countries, and to meet them for parties under the electric blue lights of Worcester county long into my 20s. That experience became a touchstone for every other group of friends I have sought to date.
How did I change my lenses? My small high school helped a lot. We were (mostly) the same 47 people stuck with each other for eight hours a day, five days a week over four years. The only options were to jump ship or to keep trying different combinations until one worked. I, and here I think I can safely say we, tried endless variations of boyfriends and girlfriends and best friends and worst enemies. Of sports or drama or music, or how about sports and drama, or music and student government? We kept trying and learning and growing.
The music ends and I remember that all I need to do is change my lenses. Maybe I will discover that the woman next to me on her black yoga mat is a writer or that she has also lived in Costa Rica. Or maybe I will learn that she has an extra-long purple yoga mat at home.
