We landed in Beirut’s international airport at 11:30pm. It was raining. We needed two things: local currency and a taxi. Luckily, it appeared that there were upwards of thirty drivers who would have loved to take us to our hotel.
Unaccustomed to haggling, we accepted a steep fare from the most persistent driver. Off we went down the highway, listening to a stream of broken English about Beirut’s taxis and why they have no meter. We didn’t realize it at the time but shortly after leaving the airport we passed the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps, the site of a terrible massacre in September 1982.
On the morning of September 16, 1982, Loren Jenkins of the Washington Post, Karsten Tveit, a Norweigen television correspondent, and Robert Fisk of The Times were walking dazedly around the refugee camps. The bodies of the dead were everywhere, in the road, alleyways, on top of heaps of rubble, behind broken doors, and buried under a loose covering of dirt. The murderers had only just left. They had been sent in to look for terrorists; instead they killed civilians and refugees. One of those involved in the massacre later said “Pregnant women will give birth to terrorists; the children when they grow up will be terrorists.”
As the morning wore on, Fisk stared in amazement at groups of Israeli soldiers as they peered around corners, looking for “terrorists”. “There are terrorists in the camp and you will be killed,” one told Fisk. He didn’t understand: “Everyone there is dead. Can’t you smell them? Really, women and children have been murdered in there. There are dead babies.” They thought he was mad. It was surreal. The “terrorists” had left. The “terrorists” were the ones who had committed this atrocity. The badges on their uniforms said they belonged to Christian militias, either Phalangist or those under the command of Major Saad Haddad. They had raped and slaughtered their way through the camps, and they had hastily buried the evidence in large graves, or simply left bodies to bloat in the sun where they lay. How could such a thing have happened?
In the days that followed, details emerged about the massacre. On Thursday, September 16, armed men were seen leaving the same airport where I had just landed. They drove the short distance to the refugee camps in Humvees provided by the Israeli military; at the entrance of the camps, they passed Israeli checkpoints. The soldiers manning these checkpoints were later filmed turning back Palestinians who were trying to escape the camps. The killings began that Thursday morning. At night, the Israelis shot flares into the sky so that the camps were bathed in a terrifying, unearthly light. On Friday, an Israeli army battalion commander was told by his men that Palestinians were being massacred. He said, “We know, it’s not to our liking, and don’t interfere.” As many as 2,000 people were killed.
The entire story is still incomplete. Fisk and others have claimed that there is another large grave under the nearby Beirut golf course, covered by wide, luscious green lawns and the city’s well-off sportsmen. The owners of the golf club disagree and refuse to investigate. Who knows what lies beneath?
This of course is one episode among many in Lebanon’s violent recent past. Throughout the civil war and even today, alliances and rivalries are constantly changing, and every side has committed one atrocity or another. Take the infamous Black Saturday on December 6, 1975 as an example. In a terrible orgy of bloodletting, Christian Phalange militiamen, in retaliation for the murder of four Christians in east Beirut earlier that day, set up a roadblock at the eastern end of the Ring motorway and cut the throats of the first forty Muslims to drive past. Muslim militias followed the Christian example, setting up a roadblock of their own at the western end of the motorway. Perhaps 600 civilians of both faiths were calmly slaughtered that day.
Today, Beirut is peaceful, at least for now. But the scars of its past are not invisible. Through much of the city, bullet-ridden and bombed-out buildings lurk around corners. Monuments to a dark and disappearing past, they stand next to boring concrete high-rises, thrown up haphazardly into the air. The skyline is an uneven maze of buildings, many of which look almost exactly the same – reddish-brown concrete with dark windows, exposed and dangling wires, and satellite dishes. Their shadows hide a few old mansions that almost seem to cower, despite their size, behind tall fences, grassy courtyards, and security guards. And everywhere stand the cranes that build more hotels and more high-rises in an endless, anything-goes construction boom.
Downtown Beirut, which was effectively demolished during the civil war, is now a collection of high-end designer shops, art galleries, and luxury car dealerships. In Hamra, west Beirut, the sleepy campus of the American University sits on a hill overlooking the Corniche and the wide, blue-green calm of the Mediterranean. Over in Gemmayze and Achrafiye, east Beirut, are the clubs that made Beirut famous as the capital of the Middle Eastern party scene. On the streets, wonderful old Mercedes taxis belch black smoke through exhaust pipes and gray cigarette smoke from the driver’s window. The streets are a scene of controlled chaos – only some stoplights are actually on, lane divisions don’t exist, one-way street signs are ignored, and pedestrians weave their way through honking cars; it’s every man for himself. The old, the new, the quiet, the chaotic, and the glitzy. This is the Middle East.
Our first meal, at midnight the night we arrived, was in a 1950s-America style diner on Rue Hamra. It was a slightly surreal experience. The placemats and menus had large black-and-white photos of young Americans having a picnic at some indistinct, idyllic location. There was a dog and a small child, lots of smiles, and a full meal spread on a blanket on the ground. In the restaurant itself, the booths and stools was decorated with shiny metal and red pleather reminiscent of American diners. We ate burgers with French fries and ketchup. But the beer and the waiters were Lebanese, and people could smoke inside, so in the back of my head I knew I wasn’t in New Jersey. Nevertheless, when we paid the bill we asked the waiter where we could get some falafel. Falafel? he said. Just some classic Lebanese food? we suggested. Ah – down the road. He pointed. As we walked out I was confused. Isn’t falafel big over here? This is the Middle East?
Walking around Hamra the first morning, it soon became clear that Beirut is not what it used to be. What it used to be wasn’t clear, however. Old Beirut is not easy to find. Many landmarks of the old days are gone forever. Wimpy’s, a legendary café and sandwich joint, was the nerve center of west Beirut’s intelligentsia culture before and during the civil war, where academics, journalists, and others would sit with a cigar and coffee. It was also the site of an infamous event in 1982. Khalid Alwan shot and killed two Israeli soldiers as they drank coffee at Wimpy’s. Alwan was a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, and they still commemorate this event. Wimpy’s is a Costa now.
Today’s Beirut is a city of contradictions and confusion. It is a city of terrifying recent violence, a disappearing past, and an uncertain present. Layer upon layer of rich history lies hidden underneath the modern cityscape. It is hidden because Beirut is not just strolling casually into the modern world – it is attacking with gusto. Sadly though, there is little regard for history. In the crazy construction explosion, no one cares for archaeological or architectural treasures.
I wonder if it is a deliberate but subconscious decision to bury the past. Perhaps it is a quest to reinvent the city, to shed the suffocating cloak of civil war and violence and embrace modern technology, architecture, culture, and materialism. In 2000, Robert Kaplan wrote, “Rather than reform or soul-searching, Lebanon has sunk into collective amnesia and rampant consumerism.”
Beirutis seem hell-bent on achieving something – a new identity or role in the region and the world, whether it be a position as a financial hub of the Middle East, a haven for artists, the party capital of the eastern Mediterranean, or simply a safe and interesting tourist destination.
Several of these it is well on its way to achieving. A small artist community has sprung up in recent years. The galleries in Gemmayze, downtown, and in the neighborhood of Mar Mikhael are hip enough to fit in New York or London. Indeed, an article in the Wall Street Journal Magazine in December 2010 devoted much attention to Beirut’s burgeoning art scene. World-renowned architects have helped transform downtown Beirut into a home for designers and artists. Together they are creating a vibrant scene and modern culture not found in any other capital city in the Middle East.
“Where art flourishes, commerce follows,” says the WSJ article. The author is not wrong. Take a drive through downtown Beirut and you’ll pass an Armani, Louis Vitton, Hermes, Jimmy Choo, Yves Saint Laurent, and many others. Just check out this enormous list of stores in the new Beirut Souks. The Souks, rebuilt by the real estate company Solidere (Société Libanaise pour le Développement et la Reconstruction de Beyrouth), “crystallize Solidere’s vision of Beirut city center as a complete, synergetic district,” according to the website.
Solidere has been at the center of the reconstruction and development of downtown Beirut, and has enjoyed more than its share of controversy in the process. Founded and run by the late former prime minister Rafiq Hariri (and then his son, also a former prime minister, Sa’ad Hariri), Solidere became the face of Beirut’s redevelopment. The Hariris made it a personal quest to rebuild and clean up the city. But they were accused of illegally expropriating land belonging to low-income Beirutis, paying them a fraction of what their land was worth, and parceling out the properties to international developers. And they were prime ministers. Conflict of interest? Solidere won the government contract to rebuild the old souk, which was centuries old but damaged by the civil war. Hariri the older disregarded conservationists and government construction regulations, and tore the whole thing down. In its place he built Beirut Souks, now home to the city’s high-end designers and auto dealers.
Ironically, one of the most visible monuments in downtown Beirut today is the skeleton of the old Saint-Georges Hotel, the side of which is decorated by an enormous “STOP SOLIDERE” sign. It seems that Solidere wants the hotel, for one reason or another. To knock it down and build something else, or to repair and sell it, perhaps. But the owner of the Saint-Georges, Fady El-Khoury, has waged a lengthy and public struggle to keep Solidere away from his beloved hotel, a Beirut landmark. Just take a look back at the April 1958 issue of National Geographic, where the Saint-Georges is the backdrop to photos of yachts, surfers, and water-skiers on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. The situation today has apparently reached a stalemate – the hotel stands empty and lifeless, a monument to a dark past and a conflicted present.
Many have hailed Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East,” and the New York Times listed it as the number one place to visit in 2009. Lonely Planet called it one of the top ten liveliest places in the world. This is a far cry from the dark days of the civil war and the recent conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. It also creates an incomplete picture.
To me, Beirut is a wounded city, where the wounds are covered up by modern construction or hidden away from the usual haunts of tourists. The destruction wrought by the civil war is rapidly vanishing, and the city is on a full-blown mission to reinvent itself, to forget the violence, and to bury the past. But it is not totally gone, even now. Nevertheless, Beirutis deserve a little credit – they’ve created a city-center devoted to luxury shops, developed an attractive and exciting art scene, and the clubs and parties are unrivalled in the region.
But this cover-up is also a tragedy. Not only are archaeological treasures disappearing under characterless modern construction but the leftovers from a violent past are being glossed over and forgotten. Like the green swathes of the golf course in Beirut, underneath a newfound fascination with luxury and materialism lies a dark, sad, and angry history.
The murder of Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 did nothing to assuage this damage. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is expected to accuse Hezbollah of organizing the assassination; in anticipation of this, Hezbollah’s cabinet ministers and allies in the Lebanese parliament abandoned their posts, shutting down the government. In January, Hezbollah’s choice for prime minister was nominated to succeed Sa’ad Hariri, who refused to reject the accusations of the Tribunal. So despite (thus far) escaping the protests that have swept many countries in the Middle East, Lebanon cannot escape it’s own brand of political instability. It doesn’t help that Iran and Syria continue to help Hezbollah prepare for a new war with Israel.
What was it F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote at the end of The Great Gadsby? “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Lebanon is haunted by its past, by violence, and by conflict. But perhaps because of this, modern Lebanese will not tolerate a return to the violence of their fathers and grandfathers. They are certainly moving at a frenzied pace to forget the past and move on. Here’s to hoping they succeed.
