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I've returned to Beirut, where the moist Mediteranean air has made me nostalgic
for memories I don't even have. And the food: I think just breathing the
air is making me fat - surely I'm gaining 5 kilos a day. I'll need an
extra plane ticket for the return. It truly is the
Paris of the middle east.

Recommended: Le Chef, Gymnasie at the bottom of the big stairway. "Food of your grandmother" according to the man who is host, waiter, prep-cook, and entertainer. Anyway, not my grandmother.

A few days in Yemen: transported by some special time traveling airplane to the late Ottoman empire. The women in Yemen are flowing black draperies looking like casper the ghosts with little rectangles for eyes. Occasionally a pair of glasses interrupts the pattern. The men are dressed in some variation on the theme: light colored robe, dark blue sport coat, Yassir Arafat style red checked head scarf, and a decorated belt with a curved knife (jambia) that is entirely phallic. I could laugh except that it is oddly dignified, especially compared to the Saudi white angel look.

Having just finished a video on the drought in East Africa, I was drawn to this article by Anver Versi:

Once again Africa’s starving will stalk television sets across the world as the drought in northern Kenya and the Horn bites in earnest. Once again charitable organisations will issue heartrending appeals for funds and once again the mute beseeching in the bewildered eyes of children will persuade the compassionate among us to put our hands in our pockets.