Worldfocus special correspondent Kristen Gillespie reports on sexual attitudes in Beirut. Read her blog from in the field: Beirut’s underground gay community congregates discreetly.

Gemayze has a vibrant night life. Photo: Kristen Gillespie

Worldfocus special correspondent Kristen Gillespie reported on the signature story “From streets to clubs, sexual attitudes shift in Lebanon.” Here, she writes about her experience reporting on the underground gay community from a small bar in Gemayze. 

It’s Friday night at a bar on a side street in Gemayze.

Two young women sitting at the end of the bar discreetly hold hands. The female DJ wears a T-shirt that reads, “My boyfriend is out of town.” Everyone in the bar is female. In the underground gay community, Friday nights at this particular bar is known to be ladies’ night. The gay scene in Beirut, says one woman while sipping her drink, “is big, but people aren’t open about it. You have to know where to go.”

The woman, 33, lives at home, but her parents don’t know that she is a lesbian. For now, they don’t have to. For younger people looking to date casually, it’s not difficult to meet people, have fun and stay in the closet.

But for homosexual couples looking to have a serious relationship — or children — the choice often boils down to staying in Lebanon and compromising, or moving abroad. I ask if it bothers her that she can’t be “out” with her partner. “What I want is to live with my partner and have a family. But realistically, I wouldn’t be able to have children and give them a good life here.” It upsets her that she would have to leave the country to do that. “We’re not there yet,” she says about Lebanon.

As it gets later, the music gets louder, the drinks keep coming and the narrow bar fills up. Another woman, 32 years old, sees me taking notes and comes over to chat. She echoes the sentiments of the first woman, emphasizing that she will remain in the closet. Her parents ”will never know” about her, even as they pressure her to get married. She is unsure how things will turn out for her.

The bar hosted at least a couple of dozen women that night, most of whom probably live at home with their parents. While Beirut is the most gay-friendly city in the Arab world, it is still a conservative society where gay couples are not socially accepted.

Homosexuals are at the beginning of a struggle for rights in Lebanon. It is one that will set an example for the rest of the Arab world.

- Kristen Gillespie

See more Worldfocus coverage on Homosexuality Around the World.

Worldfocus special correspondent Kristen Gillespie ventures through Lebanon’s vineyards.

Below, she blogs about her experience in the field.

From the Field

Let’s be up front about it: this story is unapologetically biased. I love Lebanese wine.

Putting together this story wasn’t exactly a hardship assignment. There are so many excellent producers in Lebanon, but I chose Chateau Belle-Vue because Naji and Jill Boutros represent a new generation of winemakers. It’s not just about the product — they are creating meaningful social change in their village while producing organically grown, award-winning wines. Jill made sure we had tasted plenty of samples from the oak barrels, which is where the wine from each specific grape variety lies for two years until it is blended to create a new vintage.

Chateau Ksara is one of Lebanon’s oldest producers, and aside from the consistent quality of their wines, the miles of mysterious, Roman-era subterranean tunnels fuel speculation as to what they were used for. Ksara graciously opened their doors, and their wine cellars, for us to film.

Another top producer not to be missed is Chateau Kefraya, which produces a reliably crisp Blanc de Blanc for about $6. For travelers to Lebanon, it’s available, along with many others, at Beirut’s airport.

Sahtain! (Cheers!)

- Kristen Gillespie

In the back corner of the fourth floor of West Hall, the Secular Club shares a small room with the Palestine Culture Club. The room is big enough to hold a few desks and chairs.

As we get ready to film the discussion, the students start joking about how the space is divided down the middle of the room by a row of paper Palestinian flags taped to the ceiling. Typical Arab unity, says one, Palestinians alone and everyone else on the other side. Laughs all around.

But it’s the most practical arrangement, says another, and everyone agrees. A poster of Yasser Arafat from the 1970s is turned to face the wall. For this filming, the Secular Club is crossing into Palestinian territory.

I was looking for a student club to talk to for this report and happened to wander in to West Hall, where Ahmad, the young man with the dark beard and leather jacket who participated in the roundtable discussion, was exhibiting his watercolor paintings. One is on the poster for the Secular Club, seen in the report.

Ahmad and some other friends from the club sat down to talk about secularism as the only solution for the future of Lebanon. A system based on religious quotas means a fractious, divided society where intermarriage is discouraged and people live within prescribed geographical and social boundaries.

It’s common for a taxi driver who lives in Muslim West Beirut not to be familiar at all with major landmarks in sections of Christian East Beirut. He may never have even been there before, just a few miles from his home.

The Secular Club, and the slowly growing secular movement in Lebanon, want to move beyond these social boundaries; for people to be Lebanese citizens first, and to be judged on their merits, not on their religion.

- Kristen Gillespie

Worldfocus correspondent Kristen Gillespie reports from a college campus that promotes a radical idea in the Middle East: free speech and democracy.

Goksel makes an appearance in Worldfocus Signature Story Hezbollah heads into mainstream Lebanese life and politics.

One of the expected big winners is Hezbollah, which commands a huge and growing influence in Lebanon.

Some call it a state within a state; a movement that is all too willing to fill any gaps it perceives left open by the government. Hezbollah, with its close ties to Iran, has become very influential — and though the U.S. government considers them terrorists, they are heroes to their many followers.

Worldfocus special correspondent Kristen Gillespie reports on Hezbollah.

Read more and view pictures from Kristen Gillespie’s reporting experience in Beirut: Scenes of Hezbollah in south Beirut

One out of four Lebanese citizens lives in the south Beirut area known as the Dahiya, or “suburbs” in Arabic. The war with Israel in 2006 hit this area particularly hard, with blocks and blocks of neighborhoods flattened. I covered the 2006 war from Beirut, and came back three years later to see how much progress had been made in reconstruction.

The overload of billboards, posters, Hezbollah souvenir shops and the oppressive security presence remind visitors that the Party of God is organized and ready for battle. It’s a war mode, even when there is no actual war.

This partially explains the secrecy and distrust of outsiders. The American government says Hezbollah is a terrorist group, but within Lebanon, it’s more complicated. The Hezbollah political party actively participates in the Lebanese government, while not only refusing to disarm but actively stockpiling weapons outside the scope of the state.

“Now they have a say in national politics,” says Timur Goksel, who liaised with Hezbollah for 20 years as a senior United Nations advisor. “They are not going to give that up, but they also know they got there with Hezbollah’s guns.”

- Kristen Gillespie

Photos by Kristen Gillespie.

Hamra Street. Photo: Kristen Gillespie

Kristen Gillespie is currently reporting from Beirut on an upcoming signature series about life in Lebanon. She recounts life on Hamra Street in Beirut, where cafes and eclectic storefronts mask the past scenes of violent fighting.

Hamra Street in Beirut, Lebanon is a random mix of sleek cafes and sketchy nighttime establishments with names like “Tico tico” and “Goldfinger.” It is also the home of Bread Republic, part of the international Slow Food movement, and Café Younes, one of Beirut’s oldest cafes that still prepares its beans in the original roaster from 1935.

The past two years have brought new life to a once-desolate Hamra Street. Restaurants, cafes and lounges are opening, and in a city where the short term can bring just about anything, it is a much-needed sign of confidence that the future will be better than the past.

For a country known more for being politically and socially divided along religious lines, Hamra Street is something of a refuge from the unrelenting sectarianism that haunts Lebanon’s past, present and future.

In the past four decades, the fighting has also swept over the street. It was occupied by Yasser Arafat’s forces, Israel’s army, pro-Syrian factions and Hezbollah, in addition to countless other militias. But Hamra, ultimately, has never belonged to one group, and it is that freewheeling spirit that makes it what Rami Khouri of the American University of Beirut calls “the last, great cosmopolitan neighborhood in the Arab world.”

The Tico Tico club. Photo: Kristen Gillespie

Nearby, a woman from the Arabian Gulf, dressed in head-to-toe black, looks at the risque lingerie in a shop window. A little further up Hamra Street, readers have their choice of well-stocked bookstores, which confidently present their wares in Arabic, French and English. While a café sits on nearly every block, international coffee chains along Hamra threaten the famous café culture of the neighborhood.

Young shoeshine boys wander the street to attract clients, and then set up their portable shoe-polish stand, squatting on the sidewalk, furiously rubbing in the polish with their hands for a small tip. Maher, the host of the tiny Abu Hassan restaurant specializing in grilled meats just past Hamra Street, expounds on why he became a vegetarian as he serves picture-perfect salads and other Lebanese dishes at this shabby hidden gem. Cab drivers shove each other while yelling about some sort of internal turf war. Traffic jams up along the two-lane street, and frustrated drivers honk into oblivion, all to no effect.

- Kristen Gillespie