Lebanon Autumn 2018

Lebanon was a trip I had some reservations about. The country had recently become more accessible & only the Hezbollah-held areas were now off-limits, but still, think Lebanon & the mind's eye plays images of civil war & car bomb assassinations. Personally, I always thought of the Human League. I was an eighties child.

Beirut typified the Middle East mash of cultures, with mosques & churches side by side among bullet-dotted concrete wrecks. Religion & history were in your face or under your feet. Below ground lay exposed Roman ruins, blasted into view by civil-war bombing & on the surface, the traffic roared through the streets. I was constantly on the verge of being run-over or falling into an amphitheater.

Architecturally, the city was playing catch up. The evolution of labyrinth souks into Zaha Hadid designed malls epitomised the new order. The civil war put everything on hold for a generation & only recently had much of the antebellum Beirut been razed to the ground.

 

In Gemmayzeh & Achrafieh, you could buy fresh falafal & decent expressos. Everywhere there was music; hip hop blasting from open windows or folk melodies being picked from acoustic guitars on roof terraces. In the evening, graffiti-decorated bars served Almaza beer & wine from the Bekaa Valley. It was young & loud & covered in classy graffiti. How cities ought to be.

 

But of course, this is just a superficial skim & clearly beneath the surface the economy was on a knife-edge despite the new faces in government. Corruption was ingrained. Two years on, in a world thrown upside down by Covid-19, Lebanon is falling apart. Rapid inflation has made basic goods unattainable & savings worthless. The police are firing rubber bullets into crowds of protestors & unbelievably, an explosion at the port killed over 200 people. Those bars & cafes I loved in Gemmayzeh faced the blast & lie glass-shattered & empty. 

 

Before I left Lebanon, I took a bus to Byblos, as pretty a town as any I’ve seen. Steep streets twisted down to the bay & the heat was less of a force than Beirut.  From a pebbly beach, I swam in the Autumn sea. I stayed at the Fishing Club in a colourful cabin hacked into the rock face. After the chaos of Beirut, Byblos was gentler & quieter at night. The very stones felt ancient. I bought fossils that were 100 million years old from a time when Lebanon itself was beneath the waves. Byblos was a magical place & framed against current media footage of riots & destruction, almost feels like a dream.