Lebanonwire, December 31, 2002

The Daily Star

Rachael Claye
Special to The Daily Star

Christmas is over and it’s time for conspicuous consumption of a more fluid sort: New Year’s Eve, and all the social hubris that goes with it. Here the nation is playing to its strengths.
“The Lebanese? They’re party animals,” says financial consultant Nehmat Harb, who believes the occasion offers wealthier Lebanese a chance to be themselves ­ to mix break-neck socializing with elite dining.
“They reserve a place at some restaurant, then after midnight they go jumping from one place to another because they know lots of people,” and want to greet them all, says Harb.
But as the SUVs down Monnot Street on a Saturday night attest, no worthwhile social ritual can be enjoyed without a wedge of cash. A four-course New Year’s Eve dinner at Circus  ­ with DJ, dancing and champagne ­ costs $165 in the restaurant and $135 if you rough it in the lobby.
Still more up-market is L’Auberge Faqra, where an eight-course menu and luxury open bar ­ no fine beverages off-limits ­ will cost $180 before value-added tax.
A bit cheaper ­ a bit ­ are the clubs. Lobby in downtown Beirut is offering a dinner costing $150 (including VAT) with open bar ­ $200 if you want champagne ­ or “just” $75 for an open bar plus canapes. Strange Fruit is eschewing food for an open bar with champagne at midnight for $35, but most of its customers arrive late from sit-down meals elsewhere.
The bustle of downtown Beirut in party mode is not for everyone. As one punter put it: “It must be hell just parking your Mercedes over there. It’s the last place I’d spend New Year’s Eve.”
Dima Karam, a public health graduate, spent $140 last year on a dinner at Otium and dancing afterward at a club ­ “it’s like a regular party at a regular place but more expensive.” She says it’s time the Lebanese reached for a more civic spirit.
“Martyrs Square is a nice place when the clocks strike midnight because you feel it’s part of your city, it’s open and public,” she says. “All the people can go there and walk in the streets, it’s free and you feel you can reclaim your city.”
As the wealthy fill out the clubs and pubs of Beirut, many more are doing what comes naturally up in the ski resorts ­ posing on the slopes by day and cruising chalet parties by night. The point is to enjoy a little winter romance, and at midnight to go rubbernecking in the streets greeting fellow urbanites who have also swapped the city for a night in the snow.
“The thing about Faraya or the Cedars or these resorts, it isn’t only your chalet,” explains Harb, who used to have her own chalet and annual New Year’s Eve party for several years. “Everybody is celebrating … There are people in the road at midnight and everybody is outside. It’s something different.”
Something different still again are the festivities of those who don’t have the connections to land such exotic invites. Abd Rahman Najen, who sells cheese in a Beirut supermarket, says the Palestinians have precious little to celebrate this year, but all the same, some may fire off guns at midnight in traditional style.
“It is not everyone, especially in the miserable economic situation, who can go out to a restaurant,” says Najen. “They meet at home to make something special for this day. I may get, for example, a cake, some Coke and for one hour or so between the old year and the new year, we celebrate.”
For others, the solution is more drastic.
“Me, I want to change the rules to make it a normal day,” says Hamoudi Mohammed Issa, who works in a Beirut laundry. “I’m going to sleep before it’s 12 o’clock because I don’t want to celebrate New Year’s Eve because it isn’t something nice to celebrate ­ like the last year, the new year isn’t going to be good.”
Some find refuge in family. A teacher from Amchit says she spends New Year’s Eve tucked away with three generations in her grandmother’s house, and admits that “you invent things to make it lively but it’s just another evening.” Her aunt stokes things up with a tombola of small gifts distributed by raffle ­ “sometimes it’s a nice present, sometimes it’s a gag, for example, sometimes the man wins an apron.”
This is the kind of home comfort, however, that sends chic young things running for their passports.
“I’ve been doing my best to be away on New Year’s Eve for years,” says interior designer Hubert Fattal, who is leaving Beirut this year to spend Dec. 31 in Egypt.
It’s an option that’s catching on, with many Lebanese cluttering late December flights for places like Sharm el-Sheikh.  Fattal avoids such resorts.
“The whole point is to not see Lebanese during this period,” he says. “I’m spending New Year’s Eve in Aswan because I want my horizon to be different on Jan. 1 … Chirac used to spend all his New Years in Egypt, so I’m following him ­ a good book and sailing up the Nile in a flouka.”

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