It was mid-afternoon and already the crowd had given itself over to wild abandon. Standing on picnic tables, skinny girls in hot pants and crop-tops gyrated to thumping beats, upending bottles of vodka into the mouths of the bare-chested men dancing beside them.
Having worked out obsessively – though even in the gym they keep their make-up immaculate, their nails painted, and their hair perfectly straightened – the ladies revelled in showing off their figures, in the unlikely setting of a hen party in the Lebanese mountains.
And what they hadn’t perfected with exercise, they had fixed with plastic surgery. In the upper echelons of Lebanese society, the most important thing is to see and be seen. Consumption is the ultimate good. An open-top car, Christian Louboutin shoes and a full-time, live-in maid to look after one’s children are all must-have accessories.