“See that?” my friend pointed to a pylon on the hill opposite the window. “That’s the dawla.” The dawla (pronounced “dowleh”) is Arabic for state, and my hostess was telling me about an essential feature of life in contemporary Lebanon: the ability to understand when there is electricity and who is providing it. If the light on the pylon was orange, I would know that power was coming from the national grid.
If, like good Net Zero citizens, we eschew gas, it could also mean no heating, hot meals or hot showers
It was my first trip to Lebanon for almost fifteen years. In the early 2000s, I went repeatedly to research a book about the country, but this was just a personal visit to my friend and my godson, planned before the latest hostilities with Israel.
I wasn’t going to any of the areas under aerial attack and, apart from a couple of bombed-out buildings on the drive from the airport, didn’t see much evidence of conflict.
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