{"id":2448,"date":"2014-09-01T08:34:23","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T15:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?page_id=2448"},"modified":"2014-09-01T08:34:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T15:34:39","slug":"bumper-cars-in-the-beqaa-valley","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/GXL\/?page_id=2448","title":{"rendered":"Bumper Cars in the Beqaa Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

15 May, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n

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To my surprise and then delight, after an copious afternoon-long banquet in the town of\u00a0Zahleh, Lebanon<\/a>\u00a0in the\u00a0Beqaa Valley<\/a>, Lebanon, I discovered an operating\u00a0bumper car rink<\/a>\u00a0full of enthusiastic teen-agers.<\/p>\n

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It didn\u2019t take long for me to join them.<\/p>\n

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At first I allowed myself just a single ride, since I was afraid of missing the bus, and so rushed down to the assigned meeting place about three hundred yards away.\u00a0 Once there, I learned that bus would not be leaving for another twenty minutes or so.\u00a0 I immediately threw down a dare to Solo Raharinjanahary (former Dean of the\u00a0Facult\u00e9 des lettres et sciences humaines, Universit\u00e9 d\u2019Antananarivo<\/span>, Madagascar, and until the day before Vice-President of\u00a0<\/span>AFELSH<\/a>).\u00a0 Solo (pronounced \u201cSeul\u201d) is easily the wackiest of the colleagues, mostly Deans or former Deans in French-speaking universities.\u00a0 We are\u00a0<\/span>\u00e2mes soeurs<\/span>\u00a0of a sort.\u00a0 I knew he could not resist. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The race was off.<\/p>\n

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I had the decided avantage. Although I had not been in a bumper car for what I figure was over fifty years, it is like riding a bike.\u00a0 It comes back instantly.\u00a0 Solo had never ridden one, so it took a minute or two to get the hang of it.<\/p>\n

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But\u00a0 then he turned the tables.<\/p>\n

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I had utterly forgotten the existence of dodgems, but once behind the wheel — and I was decidedy DWI after two hours at table\u00a0 —\u00a0 I plunged momentarily back into\u00a0 the world I inhabited at the point in time when the going gets tough and we are torn between the untrammeled play of boyhood and the daunting new dimensions of life hormones are catapulting us into.<\/p>\n

One of those, surely, is the loss of spontaneous joy, perhaps of spontaneity itself.<\/p>\n

Or so it seemed to me as I dozed in the bus on the way back to Beirut, reflecting on the peals of laughter which had broken over me on the rink.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 May, 2010 To my surprise and then delight, after an copious afternoon-long banquet in the town of\u00a0Zahleh, Lebanon\u00a0in the\u00a0Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, I discovered an operating\u00a0bumper car rink\u00a0full of enthusiastic teen-agers. It didn\u2019t take long for me to join them. At first I allowed myself just a single ride, since I was afraid of missing … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Bumper Cars in the Beqaa Valley”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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