{"id":47131,"date":"2016-05-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/47131\/why-am-i-not-allowed-in-downtown-beirut"},"modified":"2023-08-30T06:37:15","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T06:37:15","slug":"why-am-i-not-allowed-in-downtown-beirut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/en\/47131\/why-am-i-not-allowed-in-downtown-beirut\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Am I Not Allowed In Downtown Beirut?"},"content":{"rendered":"<big>Surprisingly, it\u2019s not because of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/l\/45204\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">lewd<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/l\/46137\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener\">weird<\/a> shit I\u2019ve written over the years.<br \/>  <br \/>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/47131-1.png\" width=\u201c100%\"><br \/>  <br \/>  <br \/>  The real reason I was denied entry into Nejmeh Square, the heart of Downtown Beirut, is because I\u2019m a young Lebanese citizen. Here&#8217;s what happened: last weekend, I arrived in Downtown Beirut with my dog.<\/big><br \/>  <br \/>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/47131-250x140.png\" width=\"100%\"><br \/>  Phoebe, aforementioned dog &#8211; 3 years old &#038; spayed so don\u2019t message me asking to mate her.  <br \/>  <br \/>  <br \/>  <big>The weekend was brimming with possibilities; mainly the possibility of my dog taking an unplanned shit that I would then have to awkwardly pick up whilst avoiding eye contact with those around me.<br \/>  <br \/>  As I walked up to the first military checkpoint right after Le Gray hotel, the army personnel stopped me and said, \u201c<i>ma feeki tfouti min hon<\/i>,\u201d (you can\u2019t enter from here). \u201cThat\u2019s what she said,\u201d I promptly replied. JK. I asked why &#8211; he said he had been given orders and that I could try the next entrance, but he doubted I would be able to get in.<br \/>  <br \/>  I thought for a second that this may be because of my dog, but I spotted a couple of dogs inside, so that couldn\u2019t have been it. <br \/>  <br \/>  I approached the next entrance where a much more obnoxious army guy with a huge chip on his shoulder and a major power trip stopped me and said, \u201cnobody gets in on my watch.\u201d You guys, he really said that. I asked him about the people I could see who were already in there, he told me <b>only families are allowed in Nejmeh Square &#8211; a man and his wife and their children, no single people allowed.<\/b> <br \/>  <br \/>  Apparently, after several incidents of activists staging protests around the parliament, officials are worried (read: scared shitless) that the youth will mobilize, enter individually, and gather inside. <br \/>  <br \/>  Does the Lebanese parliament even work? Am I missing something?<br \/>  <br \/>  Are we not allowed in our own nation\u2019s capital anymore? How many more roads and areas will get closed off and sectioned out? Will Lebanese politicians keep chipping away at Lebanon until we\u2019re left with one street?<br \/>  <br \/>  Anyway, bite me &#8211; I walked my dog in Beirut Souks and it was fan-fucking-tastic.<\/big>    <figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"250\" height=\"140\" data-id=\"413559\" src=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/47131-250x140.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-413559\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/47131-250x140.png 250w, https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/47131.png 576w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/figure><\/figure>    ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Surprisingly, it\u2019s not because of the lewd, weird shit I\u2019ve written over the years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":413561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ai_generated_summary":"","_preview_accessed":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"media-embed-type":[],"class_list":["post-47131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"authorship":[102],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.7 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Am I Not Allowed In Downtown Beirut?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Surprisingly, it\u2019s not because of the lewd, weird shit I\u2019ve written over the years.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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