Confessions

The hedonism of Beirut was matched only by the unease. Bullet riddled and burnt out buildings, still cheek by jowl with slick new steel and glass towers. Tanks, barbed wire and pill boxes on the roads up to the hills and mountains.

Lebanon’s traumatic past just didn’t feel that past. A sense of borrowed time persisted, punctuated periodically by the alarm of an explosion, a silent murder, border incursion or rocket attack. How many crimes had gone unclaimed, unsolved, or even unnoticed? Who was going to own up to what, when? How long could an imposed, suspended reality continue to forestall mounting disbelief?

Somehow Lebanon struggled on. Even when Hizbollah assassinated Hariri on Valentine’s day, a mushroom cloud engulfing the harbour while we lunched on the Albergo roof terrace. Even when Israeli fighter jets bombed Tyre and blew up Lebanon’s key bridges. Even during the clashes with Sunni militants in Tyre and Tripoli. Even when Beirut’s port itself was blown to pieces by a warehouse full of ammonium nitrate. Even as the economy fully crashed from five years of Syrian sanctions, the Covid pandemic and almost complete government paralysis. Somehow Lebanon struggles on. I confess I don’t know how.