Pigeon Rock, Beirut
On the cliff immediately opposite, women who jumped to their deaths because of marital woe or other stress left their bras tied to the barbed wire fences running along the cliff edge. "It doesn't happen often, and not as much as it used to," says Parine, "But when it did the whole city was shocked for a week, whispering, frightened, and nobody would touch the bra because of bad luck." It is hard to believe somebody in despair would come here to end it all, but if a blaze of beauty makes the going easier, why not?
About this place:
Everyone says, dreamily, "it's the Paris of the Middle East." It's not. Beirut is its own funky animal: tense, beautiful, cracking with growth, assaulted by civil strife, graffitied with advertising for Starbucks and Applebees and perfumes from Paris, but without jobs for women, without futures for the young people bristling with university degrees. I love the city, love the friendliness of the people; I would live there permanently, but cannot stand to see so many talents withering on the vine, so many dreams dried into dust rather than wines.
Beirut, Mohafazat Beyrouth, LB
Discovered by seanie blue
on 23 November 2007.
714 views.
