Roadtripping Lebanon: It’s Grand Theft Auto!

“Mum!” yells Z from the rear seat, an unusual position for someone who has pursued shotgun since shortly after he started talking. “This is TOTALLY Grand Theft Auto! But I want to be in that car, not our car.”

We are endeavouring to extricate ourselves from Beirut, using only a guidebook and a hire car, and I too would like to be in any car but ours.

I’m not a fan of automatics. With only two pedals, it feels like you’re driving a dodgem, particularly in a small car.

Though the constant evasive action required when driving Beirut and the, umm, flexible approach of my fellow road users also contribute to that impression. What with the constant steering, it’s like being in a really low-rent video game.

I’d assessed Beirut traffic as being, on my personal scale, not as bad as Cairo, and more like Athens with a hint of Indonesia. Now I’m in it, I’m thinking it’s Cairo with a bit of Saigon verve.

I’m used to seeing motorbikes driving the wrong way up a major road, but to see a car doing it is… well, disturbing.

“Mm,” I say, eyeing the yellow Lamborghini which is working its way through nigh-on invisible traffic gaps at speed. Fellow road users are obeying the Arabic right of way – AKA “If it’s in front of you, no matter how it got there, it’s YOUR PROBLEM,” – and braking and slewing.

“I know what you’re saying,” I continue, hauling slightly to my right to avoid the fallout from the Lambo. I’m used to adjusting course by a foot here and there on a motorbike, but in a car I still kind of think in lanes. “But I need to concentrate right now.”

Seriously, if there’s any place in the world other than Macau where you’re more likely to be cut up (nay, lethally endangered) by a penis in a penis car than the coast road north from Beirut to the party town of Jounieh, I’d like to hear about it.

The road widens by a couple of metres meaning that the theoretically two-lane road – complete with YAY! lane markings – expands from three to five “lanes.”

A white van, already gynaecologically close to my bumper – Lebanese, like Egyptians, routinely park so close to one another that even my skinny kid can’t fit between the bumpers, as is obvious to the casual observer from the state of most cars’ front wings – gets RIGHT UP MY ARSE and starts to hoot.

As in, “Hey! Foreign lady! In the hire car! This is a five lane road now, no matter what the white lines say! Get intimate with that rubbish truck to your right! MOVE OVER, BITCH!”

I can see him mouthing in my rearview mirror, to which I devote the appropriate nanosecond glance while watching my sides and my front.

I mouth right back. And, obviously, move over, still mouthing. I even indicate!

I think of my friend M, who gave me my first London driving lesson after I passed my test. “Right, love. You drive, I’ll swear. Now, get right up his arse and stop her pushing in. Good! Right up his arse now, up to the bumper!”

He’d do great driving in Lebanon.

“Z!” I say. “Look at the map. I need to know if we’re headed north.”

“Where’s the map?” he says.

“I don’t f*cking know,” I say. “Look at the signs. Now look at the map. The COUNTRY MAP. In the GUIDEBOOK. We want to hit the coast road and bear north. Look at the places on the road signs and find them on the map! JESUS!”

A chap has missed his exit. So, being Lebanese, he has stopped dead and is reversing erratically at high speed down a 2-5 lane (depending on the time of day) highway. Which would be disconcerting even were I not directly behind him.

I guess his thinking is, “She can see me. She’ll move!”

But as I’m not Lebanese, and still adjusting to road conditions, I brake and hoot rather than veer and hoot, so end up stranded, despite the fact that everyone behind me has seen him reversing and so veered in anticipation.

“Woah!” says Z. “Those brakes are bad.”

“It’s not the brakes,” I say, wishing I’d paid the extra for the zero-excess insurance, and pulling out at a Lebanese distance into traffic, although without the signal fishtailing flourish.

Automatics have first gear? Who knew?! “They’re good brakes. It’s a brand new car. I’m braking hard because we’re in Beirut. And this is an automatic. And automatics suck arse.”

That’s one good thing about driving Lebanon, actually. Everybody’s geared for so much crazy shit that a tourist who can’t cope with the brand new brakes on an automatic and is virtually bunny-hopping around town barely even registers.

In Australia about 20 people would have rear-ended me by now.

But then again, I probably wouldn’t have been braking so much.

Because people wouldn’t have been pulling out directly in front of me or leaping in front of my car in the manner of what Hezbollah calls “martydom seekers”.

I clock a road sign. “Tripoli!” I say. “That’s definitely north! YES! We’re getting out of Beirut! Do you reckon it means that lane? Or that…. Oh sh*t.”

I slew back off the chevrons and into the correct lane.

No one bats an eyelid. They do not even hoot. Whereas, when I failed to jump a red light because – well, even if the road’s empty, it’s still a red light, right?! – it was like Ramses Station during rush hour.

“Hahaha!” says Z. “The speed limit is 50!”

Which is about right, frankly. Lebanon is the only country in the world where I have found myself automatically doing the speed limit or less than the speed limit.

Everybody else driving anything other than a rustbucket is at 80+. My dodgem, I realise, has surprising amounts of vavavoom, which it deploys on occasions it appears to choose itself.

Did I mention I hate automatics? I like to CHOOSE what gear I’m in, thanking you. Rather than floor it and end up in a racing change.

The sea appears. On my left.

That’s good.

This IS the coast road. And we ARE headed north.

“F*CK!” I say. “Did you see that?!”

“No,” he says. “What?”

“That van. Just pulled out in front of me and u-turned across the entire f*cking road. It’s why I braked…”

The screech of brakes, like the symphony of horns, is a soundtrack to driving Lebanon. “Are you wearing your seatbelt?” I say.

“Sure am.”

“Did Dad ask you to do that?” I say. “I mean, sit in the back seat and wear a seatbelt?”

“No,” he says, unconvincingly. “Just felt like it.”

“Good,” I say. “Seatbelts are good. Back seat is good. Turn to the directions to Jeita Cave.”

“What page is that?”

I hit the horn and haul right to avoid another cock in a Mercedes CLK; a second prick in a Mercedes CLK slows his overtaking to avoid hitting me, but doesn’t bother to hoot, probably because he’s trying not to hit the BMW X5, which is almost certainly driven by a chick with a bad facelift, good shades and GREAT makeup.

“Use the index,” I say. “From memory, it’s 149-151.”

Silence from the back. I try to find a vehicle that’s travelling slowly in a predictable direction, or even, heaven forfend, a straight line to sit behind, and fail.

“I need to know which town we need to turn right at,” I say.

“It’s all about buses,” he says. “This guidebook sucks arse.”

“BELOW THAT!” I say. “BELOW THAT! It says, head north out of Beirut on the coast road and take a right shortly after… somewhere… Look, it’s in italics. Just read the whole f*cking thing to me. I NEED TO TURN RIGHT. SOMEWHERE NEAR HERE. TELL ME WHERE.”

Sulky silence from the back. I feel stabby.

A sign appears. “Jeita Cave.”

I indicate – quite why, I don’t know, but I guess it’s in my DNA – and get off the road.

A cheery hoot announces that the guy behind me is cutting across the chevrons to overtake me, where he will duly brake hard to avoid hitting the guy two cars’ length in front of me.

“Hey! Mum!” says Z. “You know this car came with a map? It’s right here! I didn’t want to mention it earlier, because I thought you needed to concentrate…”

The journey continues…