Lebanon may be riddled with problems but its people have an insatiable spirit

Lebanon may have its troubles but its people, with their generosity of spirit, that help to retain its charm.

I am sitting, minding my own business in the lounge at Copenhagen airport. A waitress is clearing the adjacent table, which is occupied by a very dapper elderly man of Mediterranean appearance. “You have beautiful eyes,” he says. I groan and thrust deeper into my paper. He is old enough to be her grandfather.

She thanks him but the acknowledgement initiates a salvo of questions. She tells him she is from Portugal. She is a recent graduate. He tells her she looks like his daughter. My anxiety levels rise. Give it up old boy.

“I am from Lebanon,” he declares. “You must come one day. It is a very beautiful, like you. Promise me you will visit. It’s God’s country.” She smiles graciously and walks off. The mild, and as it turned out, utterly harmless, flirtation is over and I feel foolish for feeling so uptight. An old man is happy and a young woman feels appreciated. And yes, of course he is Lebanese. My father would often pull the same stunt, often in front of me, and I would die a thousand deaths of embarrassment.

From Copenhagen, it is to a similar setting, this time at London’s Heathrow, where Middle East Airlines shares a lounge with other carriers. That said, you wouldn’t know it two hours before the Beirut flight, when it’s the Lebanese who run the show.

If there is any unspoken airport lounge etiquette, which I like to think there is, then the much-travelled Lebanese didn’t get the memo. They dump their bags on the coveted sofas and then go shopping; they scream into their mobiles and give withering looks to passengers who don’t meet their standards of grooming or deportment.

And get this: the flight screen will indicate that the flight is closing – but do they panic? Not a bit of it. They blithely order another hot chocolate or help themselves to another slice of quiche, because they know the long-suffering and supremely patient station manager will round them up, and, if they are lucky, drive them to the gate.

A British Airways ticket is roughly the same price and leaves roughly at the same time, but serves infinitely better food by infinitely better-trained cabin crew.

But BA won’t greet you with a kiss, nanny you on to the plane or be flexible with excess baggage. And this is why MEA continues to make a profit. It knows its customer base.

That night in Beirut, I had dinner with an old American friend who is married to a Lebanese and who I hadn’t seen in nearly two years. We were at one of the capital’s best known restaurants and he wanted to celebrate our reunion with what he called “full Lebanese catastrophe”: eating too much, much too late and fussed over by half a dozen waiters dressed like Aladdin, amid decor designed for one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces.

It was nearly midnight, but the diners were in no hurry. On the next table, four wonderfully overdressed and lip-enhanced women smoked shisha. One rose to go to the bathroom, clomping past in a haze of perfume, shredded jeans and killer heels. “I love this country,” my friend said wistfully.

“In fact, I want to die here.” He thought for a moment. “And when I do, I want the full Monty.” Full Monty? “Yeah. The five-star funeral. I want the hearse convoy with the sirens blaring. I love the sirens. Will you make sure I get the sirens?” I promised.

“Because if I die in Minneapolis, no one will care. Here everyone shows up, looking really well-dressed and that’s why I love this place.”

OK, so Lebanon is a basket case, currently riddled with economic tumours and gripped by political paralysis with only itself to blame. But it still exerts a hold over those, me included, who have at various times vowed to wash their hands of the place.

And it is the people like the charming old man in Copenhagen, the spoilt MEA passengers in London and my American friend who made me realise that maybe, despite being at times wildly frustrating we have a rare sense of humanity and generosity of spirit.

Maybe all is not lost after all.

Michael Karam is a freelance writer who lives between Beirut and Brighton