the kindness of strangers

Anyone who has travelled outside the world of guided tours and mini bars has that story. You got lost, robbed, stuck on the border of country A, who just tossed you out, and country B who has yet to approve your visa. My story is less desperate but just as true. 

I needed an apartment. I moved to Beirut and, eternally hindered by the frugality my mother instilled in me seemingly from birth, I was tired of taking advantage of friends and tired of calling fully booked hotels, begging for any availability. 

I was being dramatic, this I know. I have heard horror stories thousands of times worse than my situation here. However, the desperation of a situation is directly proportionate to the experiencer's ability to handle it. And I was ill-equipped for such uncertainty. I could be embarrassed at this confession. I could compare myself to the free-spirited wanderers one meets in hostels the world over and wish to be more like them. But, comfort and security are in the eye of the beholder, and of this, I have decided to be unashamed. 

It is in these harrowing situations, no matter if the struggle is only internal, that we turn to the only option available to us. The traveler's saving grace: complete and total strangers. 

And in this particular tale, my stranger's name is Ingrid. 

Perhaps it is a good thing that we don't get to choose our strangers. If we did, I dont think i would have chosen the 5' 11" blonde DJ from Holland who ended up in Beirut 12 years ago as a result of an extremely short-lived marriage and never left.

It is human nature to trust the familiar. But when we are relying on the strangers that find us, we dont get to choose. So we have to put our trust in the unfamiliar. And it's difficult, but beautiful. 

So i walked in an american-style diner to meet Ingrid, or Ingie as everyone calls her, for the first time. She had posted on a website that she needed a roommate and the price was right. When we found each other and Ingie got up from the bar stool where she was sitting to reveal her long long legs extended well below her micro-mini t-shirt dress.  She immediately ordered two mexican beers, which is really just a regular beer with salt on the rim. We talked in a zig zag pattern discussing everything and nothing until she said "yalla, let's go see it."

We walked the five blocks to her apartment and the hours after that swirled into a blur. Somehow we managed to agree to live together, go rescue my bags from the horrible hotel where I had dropped them and open a bottle of wine. 

And then I had an apartment and a new stranger in my life. 

Ingie is less of a stranger now. Since I started living with her we have had two nights of sitting up late, drinking wine (she stays about two glasses ahead of me), and talking. She does most of the talking as it turns out she is an excellent story teller and her life has had so many twists and turns that i have seriously considered creating a written timeline so that I can keep track. Two husbands. Dozens of jobs. at least 6 different countries. Several tragic losses of family and love. 

The bottom line, and perhaps the most important thing to know about her, is that her lifestyle: partying now, worrying later, living paycheck to paycheck, her striking minimalism in material possessions- it is all the culmination of 35 years of tumultuous changes and disasters. 

Perhaps this is why she feels so comfortable in Lebanon. She has not been back to her home country of Holland since she was born. But here, where you live today because tomorrow, everything may be gone, she has found a home. 

Her history is the history of Lebanon. She understands the people and they understand her, though neither may know why.