This book contains personal travel notes, thoughts, memories, and digressions as Michael Kleeberg begins his Lebanese travel diary. He spent four weeks as a guest in Beirut in early 2003. Through Abbas Beydoun, one of the most important Lebanese writers, he gains insights into the everyday, as well as the cultural and political life in this "white city" - everything here is a play of light and shadow. He engages in conversations about Islam, the West, literature, and film. He opens our eyes to the other, to a different rhythm of life, one that waits without boredom, simply standing still. The valley of Adonis unfolds before us in his narrative, and we develop an appetite for food, fragrant with a thousand spices from cumin to cardamom. However, Kleeberg also writes humorously about himself, his daughter, and his father, who sees the world.