Rising from the rubble
Lebanon is reborn after its civil war
WHY would you want to go to Beirut? It’s a question I was inevitably asked but if this had been the Sixties I might have been considered one of the Jet Set.
In the 1950s and 60s Beirut had a reputation as a playground for the rich and glamorous. Brigitte Bardot and Marlon Brando hung out here, while David Niven shot the sub-Bond spy caper based on Kim Philby’s life here in Where the Spies Are.
And yet, understandably really, people have come to associate Beirut with hostage-taking and particularly the kidnappings of Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan during the 15-year Civil War between 1975 and 1990 that claimed 150,000 lives and blew the city to rubble.
I admit it was on my mind too as I settled into my aisle seat on my flight from Heathrow. Surely the man with his head bowed preparing to take the middle seat right behind me was not the same Mr McCarthy.
If it was, he is still dashing, even 25 years after his release, pre-occupied and affluently dishevelled, but dashing. I thought to myself: well if he’s still going...
In the 30 years since his release, Lebanon has experienced very significant economic growth, though tourism numbers have been severely impacted by the Syrian conflict and frankly OTT government travel warnings. Cranes stride the cityscape and the hum of drilling plays on a loop.
Among the myriad protagonists in the Syrian quagmire, it remains, according to many, still a nest of spies and on permanent watch that the conflict, just a couple of hours east of Beirut, does not spill over. Despite this, day-to-day life is remarkably normal, if loud, loose and angsty. Cars honk randomly and the call to prayer wafts soulfully through the windows of hotels, nightclubs and cafes, until the relative silence of night-time, only to restart like clockwork at 6am.
A sliver of land a seventh the size of Ireland, it is one of the smallest sovereign states in the world. But there is a sense of vastness and majesty and day-to-day normality.
BY the coast, dogged remnants of once glamorous beach clubs still enchant, as locals drape themselves across the rocks of the Beirut Riviera.
According to the Bradt guide (Paul Doyle, 2012) you can take buses, but there aren’t really street buses, while the recommended Cola Bus station wasn’t really a bus station. Inevitably, we only spied the Charles Helou depot which ferries workers across and back over the border to Damascus and Aleppo, on our final day.
This meant taxis, which if you want to get to any of the key attractions, most of which were a 45km plus distance, added $100 to a day’s budget.
Beirut, or at least our Beirut, was expensive, much more so than we expected. Coffees are four dollars, just a little less than the cost of a glass of wine! And just OK sandwiches cost seven or eight dollars.
The epicentre of old Beirut, the Hamra district, where we stayed, not far from Philby’s old digs, underwent a facelift in the 90s during the leadership of assassinated prime minister Rafik Hariri, whose image adorns giant matt billboards across the city. Plain white skyscrapers are being built all over town. And yet there were many homeless people too; refugees from the Syrian war and others just down on their luck.
At a conservative estimate, Lebanon, which hosts more refugees per capita than any other country in the world, has taken in 1.8 million people.
Some live in makeshift tent cities or are shoehorned into the historical Palestinian camps. Others work on the land in the fertile Bekaa Valley close to the Syrian border.
A ten-minute drive away is the ‘souks’ area, where you enter a Trumped-up utopia.
Wide streets of Fendi, Hermes and Louis Vuitton stretch skywards into pale pink and yellow-ochre Parisian buildings on all sides. Gold-leaf fittings drip from the interiors of glamorous restaurants as Kim Kardashian lookalikes sip espressos and tend to their kids. Outside, machine-gun toting soldiers guard the mosques and banks – when not heroically rescuing sunglasses dropped on quiet roads.
Three days in, we figured we had the measure of the place and taxied out to the Phoenician port city of Sidon about 45 km south to view the Crusader Sea Castle built in 1227 atop an ancient Phoenician site, and rebuilt by the French – only to find we had missed its opening hours. Our disappointment was short-lived however, as we stumbled on the glamorous Rest House palazzo restaurant perched alongside the sparkling Med.
Enchanted by my friend Fiona (already being pursued online by an enthusiastic Israeli soldier she met on the flight over), Mohammed, the dashing floor manager, offered to accompany us to Tyre, a further 45 km south and the birthplace of purple dye... and a beautiful fishing village.
Sardines sizzled on grills by the roadside, boats bobbed, fishing nets hunched beneath rugs while young lads smoked sheeshas. The centrepiece of the village at the end of a small jetty was a statue of Our Lady Marianne, illuminated in fluorescent blue.
AFTER a quick introduction to the barman, we perched ourselves on stools drinking coffee and lemonade. If we swivelled on our chairs, 40s Naples gave way to French colonial Louisiana, fans whirring silently from the ceilings of white buildings. In the darkness on our return were visible the remnants of Roman colonnades.
Back at base, unaccountably safe, after a terror-soaked drive, the next day we headed for the Jeita Grotto, a karstic limestone cave 11km north of Beirut. On arrival, you take a cable car to the grotto entrance, from where the guide advises you to shut your eyes to feel the full force. Stalagmites, 12 millennia old, like melted bones, dangled from the roof while lights cast the majesty into relief, and rock formations like Star Wars monsters lined the walkway.
For our final day, we headed to the ancient fishing village Byblos, where a guided tour of a mosque no bigger than your kitchen and the gift of a sparkling Koran each, were easily the highlights.