The Distance Between Eastern Coasts - Letter Three

A letter exchange with Kara Daly that unpacks how our two homes are undergoing linked crises

This is part 3 in a 6-part correspondence between American wine writer,

Kara Daly

, and me, Farrah Berrou. I’ll be writing parts 1, 3, and 5 here and Kara will respond in parts 2, 4, and 6 on her Substack, Wine is Confusing.

Links will be added as the letters get published: letter 1, letter 2, letter 3, letter 4, letter 5, and letter 6. A final recap post will be shared late-November.

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Penny, a bellweather for Lebanon’s mood

Hey Kara,

Before I get into it, I want to thank you for being up for this exchange. On my end, unpacking all of these big life questions right now has been more exhausting than expected so I’m glad you were/are willing to join forces to do so.

I also want to thank you for doing the work to understand what’s happening over here. Like you said, context is important. It’s also overwhelming when you are confronted with how much you don’t know about so much of the world. When I first started getting into wine, I wanted to cover all of the territory that was considered part of the “Ancient World” (from the Caucasus to the Eastern Mediterranean, quite the mileage) but I also realized my own limitations in that ambition. These places, while having tons of shared history, are complex, individual cultures too. I couldn’t possibly claim to be an expert on them all. Even though Lebanon is tiny, I eventually decided my niche would be the place I knew best. I would learn about other places but I would teach what I knew about mine as I continued to unearth more about it on my own. Even the title “Lebanese wine expert” makes me uncomfortable because when do you know enough to be called such a thing?

Now that the U.S. election has passed, I know the vibes have understandably dipped on your end. Given the results, I thought responding to your letter could wait just to see how the discourse unfolds. Mostly, I’ve watched activists announce that they’re pulling back “to grieve” Harris’ loss. While I understand the need to take a second to regroup, I’m worried that their pause - that most are choosing to stretch through the holidays until 2025 - will devolve into discouragement/disengagement. And now, while depressed Harris voters unironically pick out a pinot noir for turkey day, more parts and people of Lebanon and Palestine will be lost. It’s hard to see folks not feel the urgency but then again, it’s been over a year of that. As my friend Hisham said in his sarcastic reel posted after Trump’s win, “you’ll survive it, we might not but you will.”

The only good thing about Trump winning is that Americans might stay politically engaged and critical about what their whole government is doing from now on. What do you think?

Source

Before noon yesterday, warning tweets (it’s still absurd to type such a thing) were given for 11 targets in Beirut. We counted as strikes hit, spaced out by about 20-40 minutes so that another would land just as the dust from the previous one had dispersed. After what we thought was the last one, another strike hit near the runway of our only airport. Then a thirteenth.

Beirut was caped in a haze all day. It looked like the cloud that forms when a teacher claps two chalk erasers together except this dust was pulverized residential buildings. And that was just in the capital; they were hitting the Bekaa Valley and the South at the same time too. The aerial onslaught then continued overnight. When it gets dark, there is a black hole in Beirut’s skyline because a piece of our city is off the grid and marked for death. Meanwhile, Israelis are trying to get hornets drunk.

As I type this, six more warnings have been posted.

The U.S. is not separate from the colonial entity that they fund and, from what I just shared above, Lebanon is not immune from that imperialism. Noura Erakat puts it beautifully in the reel below.

vivien.sansour

A post shared by @vivien.sansour

The way the Dems handled voting for Harris reminds me of how the wine industry has handled the dip in wine sales. Instead of doing some introspection, they’re demonizing another group that they could ally with. Jancis Robinson writes that WHO is “waging a war” on alcohol and takes the measured Asimov route which I shared in my last letter. Lately, I’m agreeing more with the tone of the exasperated Kristen Bear in “The Wine Industry Is Worried About Neo-Prohibitionism. It’s Far Worse.”

Once again, Dr. Catena asks that drinkers be more discerning of published information. In the linked article, she cites The Lancet as being one of the most reputible research journals. It’s the same journal that, in June, included a study that said the reported death toll of Palestinians in Gaza was underestimated (and was likely upwards of 186,000). I hope the media literacy wine folks are using to debunk anti-alcohol sentiment is also being applied to media on other topics.

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Donate to the mutual aid fund for Beirut’s relief kitchens who are preparing thousands of daily meals for the 1.4 million internally displaced people of Lebanon.

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You wrote, “I now understand the significance of mutual aid, even though I don’t fully know what my place in it is—maybe this is it. Is being a writer enough?” and ouf, I felt that. I’ve been stuck on that question too as I clack clack clack on a laptop while airstrike-fog clogs the air. Does any of my clacking matter? Does writing have an impact in the way Ta-nehisi Coates believes it does?

When I chat to an American friend or cousin via socials, it’s obvious that they’re not seeing what I’m seeing in terms of news, hinted (and now explicitly-stated) intentions, and nonstop massacres. That’s when I feel nanoscopic conversations over socials and shared resources over Substack are doing something, providing a counter for the warped media out there.

I was wrestling with this very question of whether sharing online matters after a year of war and genocide. I posted it on IG. Some answers insisted I take a break if sharing is taxing for me but that wasn’t why I was asking. I wasn’t looking for permission to stop. I wanted confirmation: Does this do anything for you, the viewer? And what are you doing with this information?

The DMs I got were more enlightening. Posting online helps because it: sheds light on informative accounts, amplifies voices, or simply gives space to vent. Sharing’s also a self-serving act in that it’s a rejection of what’s happening, like saying I refuse to get used to this.The one reason that has motivated me to keep posting was that it gives others comfort; they feel less alone in what they are also seeing and feeling.

When it comes to incorporating all these things in our wine writing, I think we experience the same pushback that any food writer would. From what I’ve been told, bringing politics to the table is a faux pas. The preference is to keep food writing in the realm of pleasure and indulgence. Like a dollop of fluffy meringue, words should be dreamy and light. But the idea that food & wine are neutral products of a culture is utopian because it denies the violence that has been swept under the same table. What are you talking about at dinner if not the things that affect our daily lives?

My friend who brought me in to write this for

Vittles

doesn’t drink but we talk about craft and culture. Like you and your sober pal, we talk about broken systems, food, family, language, food, cookbooks, migration, food, and cats. To me, wine is a device so we talk about the things it’s connected to (which can be everything), not the act of consuming it as a beverage. I’ve had subscribers tell me that they don’t/rarely drink but still read Aanab. I love that because it also makes me feel boundless as a writer. I don’t have to stay in one lane even if it’s what got me to the station.

Separate from these letters, you told me that you finally had a day off after five straight weeks. What are some of the ways that you recharge when it feels like there’s no space to do so? What keeps you going?

The view from my grandparents’ house in the South, with their olive trees below (2023)

I think you will experience the food and wine here one day. My olive trees are long gone but there are many dimensions to this place, ones that they can’t erase no matter how hard they try. You’ll see.

Love & olives,
Farrah