andave's place

I'm going to send a message to Malek (my cousin? my great cousin? He's my mom's cousin.) on Facebook so he can come read this.

Ok, so tonight Malek came and picked us up to go to a Bible Study at his church. It was a real blessing to be among Christian people again; Lebanese people are polite and funny and moral and naughty, too, but there is something divinely comforting about being among Christians who hold the same views as you do. It was sort of a regrouping time for us; the last week has been Hectic with a capital H. Another blessing: although it's been some ten days only since we got to Lebanon, my Arabic has grown better by leaps and bounds. I can understand Arabic very well now and speak far better than I ever have been able to, so I was able to understand most of what the preaching was about. It's just a tiny bit surreal being in Lebanon because it's not that different from San Francisco except for one thing: the language is Arabic not English. I almost feel like I'm eavesdropping because it's a foreign language and I understand it.

Anyways, after the Bible Study Malek took us to visit his family. We got to the house (the houses in Lebanon are different from what we're used to in America; they are stacked on top of each other, full houses with bedrooms, living rooms, salons, kitchens, etc.) so we went to the elevator, which said in Arabic that only three people are allowed in the elevator at a time. We were five.

My cousin, laughing to himself said, "go on, come on, it'll be fine." As the only alternative was walking up five flights of stairs, we piled in and pushed the button. My Mom answered, "Ok. What's the worst thing that could happen? We'd get stuck."

Yeah.

The elevator lifted up maybe a foot and then stuck. As we were pushing different buttons, the lights flickered and went out.

Well, we're Lebanese, right? We'll fudge it. We can do anything, and do it with aplomb, too.

Suddenly, the lights come back on and we go up again. The moment the elevator reaches the first floor Malek pushed the stop button and we got off.
The EXACT moment we got off the electricity went out. It's a common occurrence so there's always an extra generator, but if we hadn't gotten out we would have been stuck.

My cousin was choking with laughter all the way up the five flights of stairs we had to hike. "Don't tell my Mom," he said. "She'll kill me."

Halfway up we meet Malek's sister's husband. "Hey, the electricity went out; you had to climb up the steps hmm? I pushed the elevator button but it never came."

Then we understood. Here's what happened:
We were too many in the elevator. If it wasn't for Elie calling for the elevator we would have stayed stuck between the two levels until someone could come get us out, which probably would have taken longer than usual since the electricity went out the split second we left the elevator.
So, we would have been stuck had he not called for the elevator and pulled us up at that exact moment. We made it stick with our weight but he brought it up just before the electricity went out.

After the general "ahhh, so that's what happened!" we went into the house.

My cousin was still bubbling over with laughter.

We greeted his mom, his dad, and his sister.

He was still laughing.

We sat down in the living room.

He could not stop laughing. There is an Arabic idiom I absolutely adore; it is so onomatopoeic and sounds just so perfect. Let me see if I can do a proper transliteration: Farrrr-at min id dehik. As close as I can get it, it means something like let loose; couldn't hold himself together because he was laughing so hard. In the end he covered his face with his hands and stifled his giggles, although I could still see his shoulders shaking with mirth.

I have honestly not seen anything so much fun so far in Lebanon. Everyone is a family here, sure (I'm planning to talk a LOT more on that later) but they are still too decorous to laugh so very hard. It just felt GOOD!! Church and laughter! Oh, God is good!