Is Lebanon a victim of Bottle-ization? and The Saudi twist.

When I was a kid, growing up in Lebanon, we had 2 brands of bottled water: Evian and Perrier.  Rich people washed their cars with Evian and the poor people drank  Perrier to pretend they were rich.  That is how the rich stayed rich and the poor got poorer!  

Now, drinking water is the bottled kind.  Tap drinking water is, if "running" not trusted by anyone.  It's bottled water and the brands are many.  When you sit down at a cafe in the "new" Beirut downtown, you are greeted with a cold bottle of water placed at your table.  The land that prides itself on its beautiful nature and abundance of water springs is now a captive to bottle-ization.  

The leading brand is Nestle, yes Nestle people apparently know how to filter water and 100 million arabs don't.  Nestle has licensed the Saudis to bottle water.  Imagine that!.  The desert is bottling water and selling it.  Nop, no kidding, that's what the bottle on a Delta flight from Amman to NY said.

Ironic that the land of "Nab3 Safa"  (Clear -water- Spring) would be so commercialized and no one in the private or public sectors would do something about it.  Any country should provide its citizens with some basics:  Clean air and clean water are basics.

Now, in my mind, I am still a kid growing up in Lebanon :)

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This is ONLY in Beirut.

Cave of the Miraculous Lady of Boobies???  Are you kidding me?

May 2011
Beirut, Lebanon

kint raye7 3al ashrafiye
ma fi shi 3a bele
hal 3alam, hayda raye7 w hayda jeye
w tili3 ha sign 2bele

"m8aret

sayyidat lebzez

al 3aja2ibiyyah"

The Cave of the Miraculous Lady of Boobies.


There are nicer words in Arabic for "breasts".  Bzez is the the equivalent of boobies and hardly appropriate when talking about the "Lady".  I asked my cousin about it and she laughed.  I literally asked if I were reading this properly and she said yes. She had even visited the place and I wondered if it's mainly visited by small breasted women that wanted larger breasts and couldn't afford surgery and hoped for a miracle.  My cousin, as if she was reading my thought said that it was about breast milk and the women who lacked in that area.   But for God's sake, "bzez"!?  If you are asking yourself about my cousin.. she is not breast feeding; her kids are university graduates.


Well, as much as I wanted to I did not go to visit the cave.  I did not know what to expect but I know it would not be the same to imagine the "Lady" with this specialty and that word.. Bzez!.   


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