From the time I started to become aware of world affairs as a teenager in the mid-1970s, Lebanon was racked by the civil war which lasted until 1990. Even since then, devastation has repeatedly returned to the country due to persistent conflicts with Israel. And Syrian forces occupied swathes of the country until 2005. As I was growing up, Beirut seemed to be a byword for wanton destruction and never-ending hopelessness. What I knew of Lebanon was based on television news footage of the destroyed city. Yet my father, who had spent a year in Lebanon after the Second World War, reminisced about Beirut as a beautiful place.
As a young army officer, he had studied Arabic at the British school at Shemlan, in the mountains close to Beirut. It became notorious as the so-called British ‘spy school’. There may have been something in this. He, like many others who studied there, had been an intelligence officer. But the description was probably over dramatic.
In earlier times, Beirut had flourished as one of the great cosmopolitan trading cities of the eastern Mediterranean, along with Alexandria, Smyrna and Istanbul. Like in those other cities, different religions rubbed shoulders, Orthodox and Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Druze and Jews. Unlike many other such mixed cities, Beirut had not, before the civil war, had defined quarters for different communities. In the city centre, the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque and the Maronite St George Cathedral stand next to each other. Philip Mansel, in his book about the great cities of the Levant, cites the enthusiastic reports of visitors to Beirut in the years before the civil war: “Paradise! Absolute paradise!” It was known as the Paris of the Middle East.
Beirut has largely been rebuilt since the civil war. In the downtown area, new apartment buildings have sprung up, many of them luxurious. The process of rebuilding has not been without controversy. Many accused the company set up by post-civil war Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was assassinated in 2005, to rebuild the city centre of profiting at the expense of the pre-war owners of the land. Much of the modern city that has risen from the ashes gives little impression of the elegant Beirut that earlier visitors had described. The downtown area, around the Place d’Etoile, with its clock tower, has been restored, a kind of declaration that Beirut is back. But it feels a little artificial and soulless. Not here the chaotic hustle and bustle one finds in the livelier districts of the city.
The dilemmas and controversies over Beirut’s post-war reconstruction are evident in the Souks district, not far from the Place d’Etoile. The area, once the commercial heart of the city, had been ravaged by the civil war. Except for a handful of buildings, it was decided to level the whole area and build a new Souks complex, as a shopping and leisure centre. Modern and smart, its architecture may have much merit. But to me it felt rather contrived, out of context, carefully designed, but very different from the bustling, vibrant city one finds away from the downtown area. It brought to my mind the shopping malls I had visited in Dubai a few years earlier.
At the entrance to the Souks stands a remnant of the pre-war city, a square archway, with a dome on top. A young woman in a nearby tourism office told me she thought it was the remains of a mosque. Many other religious buildings have fared better. In the redevelopment of the city, mosques and churches were more often preserved and renovated. Close by the Souks is the Al-Omari mosque. Built in the 12th century by the crusaders as the Church of St John the Baptist, it was converted into a mosque the following century by its Muslim, Mamluk rulers. The Romanesque architecture, with the apse at one end, clearly indicates its Christian origins. The Mihrab, which points the direction of prayer for Muslims, is situated halfway along the nave. Having been damaged during the war, its reconstruction was completed in 2004. On the other side of the Place d’Etoile is the Mohammed al-Amin Mosque, inaugurated ten years ago, built in the Ottoman style, with slender pointy minarets surrounding a central dome.
The Mohammed al-Amin Mosque looks onto the Martyrs’ Square, named to commemorate Lebanese Arab nationalists executed there in 1916 by the Ottoman authorities. At the square’s centre is the Martyrs’ monument. The square was on the frontline during the civil war. After the end of the war, the monument was restored, but the marks of the war damage, bullet holes in the metal figures, were deliberately retained. The square had once been a central focal point of the city, a transport hub and meeting place, with cafes and cinemas. Today it feels like an empty hole at the heart of the city. But it has also become the place for political protests, notably the massive demonstrations following the murder of Hariri, which led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country.
War-scarred buildings remain in many parts of the city. The 25-story Holiday Inn, a pock-marked skeleton of a building, remains as a monument to the conflict while its owners squabble over what to do with it. Some other buildings have been kept as they are deliberately, as monuments. Most notable is the Barakat building, built in the 1920s by the wealthy Barakat family. During the civil war it found itself on the frontline, a sniper post at a crossroads known as the ‘intersection of death’. Although badly damaged, the building remained standing. In 2003 it was taken over by the municipality and restored. The façade, disfigured by countless bullets, was left alone, shored up by metal supports. But behind it a new building was erected. Now known as the ‘Beit Beirut’, or House of Beirut, it houses exhibitions of photographs commemorating the life of the city, and especially how it was affected by the civil war.
Walking the streets to the south of the downtown area, one comes across fine old buildings, once the homes of wealthy commercial families, some of them war damaged, others apparently suffering more from neglect. The Ziade Palace, a 19th century mansion, looked a dark and gloomy place. A couple of ladies sitting outside an open door indicated that it was nevertheless inhabited. Occupied by different militias during the civil war, pillaged and damaged, it has been earmarked for restoration. Many such gems survive in Beirut. But surrounded by modern buildings, their context has often been lost.
Something of the former city survives and has been restored in Christian East Beirut. Tiny hole in-in-the wall cafes on the Rue Gouraud might not have changed much. But these are pockets. Nevertheless, modern Beirut has life and character. How much it has been changed by the war, I could not say. But it is a vibrant city, its streets bustling, its traffic chaotic. Areas such as the Hamra district in West Beirut, with their cafes, bars and restaurants, buzz with life. To have come through such trials and such destruction and come back with such verve is evidence of Beirut’s tremendous resilience.
Just north of Hamra, overlooking the seafront, is the American University in Beirut. A private institution founded in the 1860s, it is considered one of the finest universities in the Arab world. It boasts an impressive roll of alumni, including presidents, prime ministers and central bank governors. The university was not spared during the civil war, and in 1982 its president, Malcolm H. Kerr, a US citizen and native of Beirut, was murdered. Today, amid the noise and pollution of the city, the university campus, with its gardens and trees, is an oasis of peace and calm.
I arrived in Beirut without high expectations. I knew there was not much left of the great Levantine pre-civil war city. I was not expecting beauty. But the modern city does have much to be said for it. The divisions that once rent Beirut have been repaired to a remarkable degree. Politics may still be divided along sectarian lines, but the physical barriers that separated people during the civil war are at least no longer visible. Muslims relax in the cafes of Christian East Beirut, and Christians go out on the razzle in the lively bars of Hamra in the Muslim west. No doubt there are strains beneath the surface. Not everyone is happy. A minivan driver asked me whether Beirut was good? Yes, I asserted enthusiastically. No, he replied forcefully, Beirut is shit. Yet I found Beirut, for all its chaos and grubbiness, in many ways refreshing. Despite all the hardship and suffering of the civil war, this great, diverse, vibrant city has reasserted itself. Different from before, for sure, but a great and spirited city still.
The main divisions nowadays seem to be between wealthy and poor. There is a world of difference between the luxury apartment blocks in the downtown area, the smart streets of Verdun district, where I stayed, and the Palestinian refugee camps in the south of the city. I travelled along a main road through the Burj Barajneh camp, on the way to the airport. I couldn’t see much. Photographs show a dense jungle of makeshift concrete buildings, the narrow streets criss-crossed by tangles of wires providing jury-rigged power and telecommunications. The people there have the barest minimum of facilities. Forgotten by the world, their presence in Lebanon is accepted only grudgingly. There is wealth in Beirut. Restaurants and cafes are often startlingly expensive. But many are excluded.
Beirut’s biggest challenge remains the turbulent region it finds itself in, and cannot escape. There are still tensions in the city. The heavy presence of soldiers and armed police in the city centre, the barbed wire and roadblocks that shield the Grand Serail, the restored Ottoman-era palace that is now the government headquarters, demonstrate that. Beneath the veneer of calm and normality, fear still lurks. The implosion of Syria reminded everybody of that. Lebanese fighters have fought on different sides. The war threatened to spill over into Lebanon. Thankfully Lebanese had had enough of sectarian warfare not to go down that path again. And then there is Israel. With the battle-hardened Hezbollah militia better organised and equipped than ever, another war with Israel is an ever-present risk. Destruction can some to Beirut again. In the meantime, life goes on.
No comments:
Post a Comment