It is a sad reflection on Lebanon’s inability to sell itself that two women, a lawyer from Baakline and a business consultant from Beirut, may have done more to promote Lebanon’s image in recent years than any government-led initiative.
By now most of us will know that the impossibly beautiful Amal Alamuddin married the American actor George Clooney in a preposterously public ceremony in Venice last weekend. It means that the 36-year-old barrister, who has defended, among others, the fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, is on the verge of becoming one of the most, if not the, most photographed women in the world.
If Clooney eventually enters politics, their combined weapons-grade credentials — his fame and her reputation as a human rights lawyer — will surely make them one of the most visible, not to mention influential, couples on the planet.
Which brings us to Christine Codsi. The thirtysomething former management consultant may not have snagged the world’s most eligible bachelor, but she has been quietly influential in establishing two small businesses within the hospitality sector that punch way above their weight and have had a significant effect in selling a new wave of Lebanese innovation and entrepreneurship.
Six years ago Ms Codsi walked away from corporate life to team up with Kamal Mouzawak, the high priest of Lebanon’s gastro-culture, to establish Tawlet. It’s a restaurant/kitchen that was born out of Mouzawak’s Souk El Tayeb, a movement that championed organic food produced by the country’s small farmers, while promoting a greener, cleaner Lebanon, not only to willing consumers but also to schools and universities, including senior MBA students.
With its minimalist decor, its six-metre ceilings, whitewashed walls and stripped wooden tables, Tawlet screams an urban cool that would hold its own in any major capital. The upshot has been that no self-respecting feature or travel writer tasked with capturing the new energy of Beirut would dare not include Tawlet on their itinerary. Tawlet did more to put Beirut on CNN and Condé Nast’s must-see destinations that any bloated state initiative.
But Ms Codsi is not one to sit on her laurels. With her Excel sheet-driven discipline, she was instrumental in establishing The Colonel, a craft brewery in the northern town of Batroun, helping to make a dream become a reality for its founder Jamil Haddad.
After just eight months, the company, whose premises have been built with wholly recycled materials including plastic bags and shipping palettes, has already been visited by CNN, which reported the venture on Marketplace Middle East. It is a bold philosophy in a country with a chronic (perhaps even terminal) rubbish problem, and where the concept of recycling is almost unknown.
Both women in their own way are PR gold dust for Lebanon. Both are exemplars of Lebanon’s highly trained human capital, which can restore a dollop of optimism to and change the default setting many people have of Lebanon’s image.
It is no secret that by and large, we Lebanese have had a bad press. For the past 40 years the country has been a byword for terror and instability. Even the most intelligent and rational people who visit Lebanon feel they dipped their toe in the water of Armageddon.
Oz Clarke, the food and drink writer and TV personality, had this to say about his 2012 trip to Lebanon in last week's Daily Telegraph. "About a year or so ago I also went up the Beqaa [sic] Valley in Lebanon, literally five days before they shut down the valley because of the insurgency".
“Insurgency”? It was news to me. But it seems that Lebanon, Syria and indeed the Middle East as a whole is all part of the same mess.
I don’t blame Oz. I was with him on the trip and there was indeed a frisson of intrigue and tension that would have been more acute to anyone not used to the rhythms of the region, but which in really added up to nothing at all. But subsequent media reports will have infected the reality of his visit with stock clichés to the extent that three years on, even if this wasn’t actually the case, the abiding memory of his trip would appear to be one of conflict rather than what he told me was Lebanon’s abundant “generosity of spirit”.
In the meantime, maybe Lebanon could do with more stay-at-home dads.
Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton
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