How Looking for the Perfect Wedding Ring Got Me Handcuffed in Lebanon
In hindsight, getting arrested overseas with my fiancé was an appropriate initiation to marriage
Before going to Beirut — the Paris of the Middle East — I wasn’t sure what to expect, but you better believe I didn’t anticipate being in my birthday suit on Saturday night, face to face with a female cop (with a really nice butt), my pubic hair on full display, doing squat thrusts to the ground in the Gemmayze Police Station. Down and up. Down and up.
“Go lower,” she said, and showed me how it’s done. For a moment, I felt like I was in a cardio boot camp class, and not one of the most corrupt police stations in Lebanon. We were just two chicks doing squat thrusts. At the time, it was a blessing and a curse that I hadn’t read the article “Lebanon: Police Torturing Vulnerable People.” A woman with the pseudonym “Gharam” is quoted:
“I stayed in Gemmayze station for three days and they treated me and my daughter very badly…. During my time there one of the officers came to me at night and told me that if I didn’t let him sleep with me, I’d go to jail for 10 years and my daughter for even longer. I was so scared that I let him.”
