Lebanon 24/7

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our guest. Force your priority at a crossroad? Sure, if your car is bigger than the others, that’s your right. Indeed nobody follows the actual rules, neither in traffic nor in anything else for that matter. My driver was very talkative. He spoke elementary French and sometimes used a few English words. He couldn’t get over the fact that I had chosen Lebanon as my holiday destination. ‘Pourquoi Liban? Pourquoi?’ he kept repeating. Ordinary Lebanese workers like him can’t imagine foreigners visiting their country by choice. From the airport the road led us through the Hezbollah ‘controlled’ district of Dahieh, to the heart of the city. When I spotted the famous mosque with the blue domes which was beautifully depicted on the cover of my travel guide, I knew we had reached the centre and that my hotel wouldn’t be far now. The final leg however, took longer than the drive from airport to the city. At a snail’s pace the car crept through a street bursting with bars, restaurants and nightclubs that all looked very inviting. Double-parked vehicles and a constant flow of cars trying to enter or leave a parking space, meant that we came to a halt every few metres. The air was filled with the noise of impatient tooting from the line of cars. I didn’t see the red convertible with the jet set youngsters, but what I did see was everything I had dreamed Beirut to be: energetic, alive, a city that never sleeps. The taxi driver pointed out a few nightclubs that had an entrance fee of about a hundred dollars (I found out later that he wasn’t exaggerating). He didn’t drop me off in front of my hotel. That was complicated, he said. Little did I know then that a lot of things were complicated in this country. I meekly accepted his directions and starting walking, to find out that my driver had not been lying to me – on the contrary. When I arrived at my hotel, I realised the one-way traffic would have forced the taxi to take a huge detour that, in this traffic, would easily have lost him an hour. 24 Lebanon 24/7
On top of that, the entrance turned out to be in a small, pedestrian side street of the charming Rue Pasteur. A sign instructed visitors to go down the stone steps for the ‘Saifi Urban Gardens’. On the steps I heard lively Arabic music. A band was performing in Em Nazih, the vibrant café next door. A young crowd was dancing; everywhere you could smell the shisha, the water pipe. Almost none of the women wore a hijab, while most men sported a fa - shionable barber-trimmed beard. Now I really felt I was in Lebanon. The man in the hotel lobby handed me the key to my room, which turned out to be exactly thirty steps from the café’s dance floor. Yet I fell asleep quickly, exhausted from my trip, the Arabic music rocking me as I drifted off. I felt euphoric – overwhelmed by how surreal it was. At the same time things couldn’t get any more real than this. I was in Beirut, at last. I In Beirut 25
Page 1 and 2: Lebanon 24/7 adventure stories & tr
Page 3: Jbeil (Byblos) Beirut Bourj Hammoud
Page 6 and 7: Introduction When I first set foot
Page 8 and 9: War and their offspring are still a
Page 10 and 11: lation these days, but far from a u
Page 12 and 13: Their number increased with the Ara
Page 14 and 15: Who are the Druze? You can find thi
Page 16 and 17: The Lebanese also differentiate the
Page 18 and 19: term ‘Paris of the Middle East’
Page 20 and 21: Facts about Lebanon POPULATION Leba
Page 22 and 23: I In Beirut On 15 December 2012 I t

Lebanon 24/7

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