Back then, there were only a handful of surfers in Lebanon, including Mostafa Al-Hajj, the man local surfers consider the godfather of Lebanese surfing. “I used to watch Baywatch with my friends,” explains Mostafa. “They were all looking at Pamela Anderson, but I was interested in the boards, how people were carrying them and how they wore the leash.”

“I used to watch Baywatch with my friends. They were all looking at Pamela Anderson, but I was interested in the boards…”

To make things harder, Mostafa was born partially blind. But since as long as he can remember, he’s been drawn to the sea, and fondly recalls the day a French traveller gave him a Bic surfboard to try in Lebanon 16 years ago. “Sometimes I think I can talk with the wave,” he explains, before we paddle out to the point locals have named after him.

Mostafa is eager for newbies and beginners to feel welcome. “Come, I’ll show you,” he says, as he explains his break. There’s a forgiving rocky base at Mostafa’s A-Frame. Waves here are created by wind swell, but I’m told can range from a couple of feet to 30 foot walls. During my visit, they’re around five feet, clean, and beautifully peeling to the right and left.

Two minutes from the Golden Tulip Hotel in Jiyeh street, travellers will find a surf shop filled with new boards, wetsuits, fins, wax and all the gear you could ever need. On the beach below, Ali has created a brightly decorated hut with dozens of rental boards, where locals can sit and watch the surfing and sunset. “The surfing community only started to grow when Ali came,” explains Karim. “He opened it up when he started shipping boards over. We used to struggle – if we damaged our board, we wouldn’t know how to fix it. And if you broke a fin, it was a disaster. Where would we get another one?”

Ali and Karim joke about their first meeting, when Ali saw him on the beach with his Quiksilver board. “I asked him, ‘What are you doing with that?’ It was the kind of board that Kelly Slater used in the 1990s, and it wasn’t right for these waves,” says Ali. Now there are around 100 surfers in Lebanon. Some have really embraced the traditional surfer look, with dreadlocks in their hair, driving VW campervans. I chat to surfer girl Lana Allam, from Lebanon’s mountains. She is hooked on the sport to such a degree that she’s at the beach almost every day.

I sit under the warm sun with a handful of other surfers, we chat and watch the waves, some of them smoke shisha and the sweet smell permeates the air. Some guys are clowning around, singing, joking. Mostafa runs off, and comes back with a cooking pot of addas (hot lentils flavoured with lemon and mint). He offers it to everyone until they are full. Another surfer remembers a Lebanese saying: “You eat how much you love me.” Everybody laughs.

“Surfing is life,” Mostafa tells me, and in that moment it’s clear how much it means to him. In a damaged economy, with limited prospects for young people, a partially blind man has few options, yet here on the beach with his friends, he has everything he needs. The sea gives him energy, and surfing is another reason to celebrate life. “My life’s work is the sea,” he says. “If I didn’t swim in the sea every day, I wouldn’t be alive.”

Board rental at Surf Lebanon in Jiyeh is $20 per hour/ $50 per day. Visit facebook.com/surflebanon1 to check the surf forecast and book a session.

Visit the Surf Lebanon shop on Old Sea Road, on the corner of Mujama Mostafa’s turn-off, El Jiyé

To read the rest of the features from the March Origins Issue head here

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