Boys and Girls of Summer

Another hallmark of summer in Lebanon is the return of Lebanese expatriates on vacation from their work and new lives abroad. Many more Lebanese and their descendants live overseas -- I've seen estimates as high as 17 million -- than live here in the old country, where the population is about 4 million.

Overseas Lebanese are crucial to the survival of the actual Lebanon. Last year, they sent home $5.6 billion in remittances, just over one quarter of the country's GDP. About half of all real estate sales are purchases by Lebanese expatriates. Which in part is why, after last year's war, another summer without expatriates would have been devastating, and which is one reason why it's comforting that they've started trickling back.

Now that there's a bombing hiatus in Beirut, I've started noticing lots of Lebanese students home on vacation from universities in Europe and the States; weekend wedding-guests by the stretch limo-load; and young Lebanese men and women who are back home and back on the market. I for one can usually tell Lebanese-American women apart from their non-hyphenated peers in Beirut bars. All curly hair and beach-burnished skin being equal, the giveaway is the eyes. Lebanese-American women keep their eyes wide open, not bothering to shade their gaze and appear mysterious and inaccessible, which is the local pose par excellence.

But for all the good-time Fadi's throwing their new Gulf money around at bars, and for all the sorority sisters doing shots, it's the local Lebanese girls and boys of summer who are giving this season its special frisson, its doomed Dionysian feeling, making merry while the sun shines. When autumn comes the cousins from America or France or Australia will be gone, leaving the rest of the family to its domestic discontents. There may or may not be a presidential election in September, there may or may not be two rival governments this fall, there may or may not be another war before the year is out. Gather ye rosebuds is the theme of the day.

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut