Cruising the Corniche

The taxi ride from the airport to my hotel gave me my first taste of what I was embarking on. We flew past the new national stadium, immaculate and empty and hurtled along the motorway into the city proper. In comparison to what I’d left a few hours before, everything looked on the point of collapse, covered in grime and dust, overwhelmed by waste and rubbish. The driving style of the taxi driver matched what I was seeing.

Night fell not long after I reached my hotel, a humble establishment a block behind the Corniche, Beirut’s famous esplanade, that curves its way along the Mediterranean coast on which the city perches. From my balcony I could hear the never-ending drone of traffic, overlaid by the muezzin’s call from a nearby mosque. Later on I heard church bells ringing. The tower of the American University not far away up the hill was floodlit against a clear blue-black sky. Firecrackers detonated repeatedly to celebrate the end of Ramadan, replacing the more sinister explosions that filled this city in the 80s and 90s. Arabic music blared from a lad’s car as he slowly cruised the Corniche, looking for action.

I made an early start the next morning and caught a “service” (i.e. shared) taxi to Cola Bus Station then an express bus south along the coast to the ancient Phoenician city of Sidon (Saida). I found the Crusader Sea-Castle after asking for directions from a kiosk owner. It wasn’t open at 8:30am, neither was the nearby citadel of Khan al-Franj. The gatekeeper was already there, however, and he and a loitering soldier wished to move an illegally parked car from directly in front of the entrance. “Monsieur?” they asked me hopefully. I helped them push it over to a legal area once the soldier had released the hand brake. In annoyance at this obvious breach of the law, he let down one of the car’s tyres. The gatekeeper, by way of thanks, let me into the castle early (at 9:05) and told me to buy a ticket on exit. At least, I assume that’s what he suggested, as I only understood the word “ticket”. I spent a couple of hours wandering around the ruins, joined only briefly by three local sightseers. The sun was hot, making the land hazy and blurring the sea’s horizon into the sky. The apprehension I had felt slowly began to ebb away as I acclimatised myself to the new barrage of sights, sounds and smells around me. But most of all, the encounters with people helped to relax me.

I climbed up onto the remaining part of the roof of the castle. 900 years ago, another European had stood there on that rampart, looking down on the small splashes of the waves on the seaweed covered rocks. And looked out to sea, into the west, towards the barbarous lands whence he had come. The scars from his sword still make this land bleed, weep. Ultimately though, all that most people here want, whatever their heritage or religious persuasion, is to be left alone to their mobile phones, their internet connections, their Hollywood blockbusters, to be fully-fledged members of a consumerist society.

So perhaps the crusades were a success after all …

After the castle I spent a couple of hours wandering around the old souqs. At one point I stumbled on a Greek Orthodox church, complete with congregation singing mass with their priest. The door was open onto the narrow alleyway so I sat and listened for a while. Later on I returned and wandered inside. There was a good collection of gold icons on sale in the foyer.

I caught a bus back to Beirut and got out at the Cola intersection. As I was trying to work out how to get into town, a man said something to me in German and even the standard greeting in Zurich dialect “Grüezi”. I ended up spending half the day with Ahmad, speaking German the whole time because he didn’t speak English or French. He’d lived in Oerlikon for a number of years (a northern suburb of Zurich) and had been married to a Swiss woman. He showed me a bullet wound in his hand and said he had been caught in the crossfire in a shootout whilst living in Switzerland. He’d been away from Lebanon for 20 years and had just returned. He didn’t have any scars to show me from Beirut. We drove around in his clean yellow Mercedes taxi. He took me through Sabra, the Palestinian part of town, then the Hizbollah controlled area complete with TV studios, army and a secure area for their leader Hassan to live in. I asked him what he thought about Hizbollah, what most Lebanese thought about them. He paused for a moment then said that Hizbollah is like a sleeping tiger – as long as you do not attack it, it remains beautiful and peaceful and will even allow itself to be stroked. But if you attack, it will defend itself.

He showed me a street in Sabra which he said had a street under it – the Israelis used it with help of certain Maronites when they invaded in the early 80s. Seeing these things first hand made the Israeli invasion real instead of just a theoretical television memory from 20 years ago. The inhabitants of Sabra are just normal people. Just like the normal people a few hundred kilometres from Beirut in Iraq. And just like the people of Baghdad today, they had to suffer whilst a war raged around them, stealing their loved ones from them, heaping untold misery and hardship upon them. And for what?

We continued on into the centre of town – in comparison to Sabra sterile, new and empty by day. The city centre of Beirut has been completely rebuilt since the cessation of hostilities and it really is very impressive – it has been done in a uniform style which is quite stately and monumental. Just on the edge of the city centre is a memorial which had been caught in the crossfire many times during the war but which has remained largely intact. A figure, pockmarked with bullet holes, is standing, straining, reaching his hand out towards the Christian hills behind the city, where there is a similar monument reaching down to the city. To one side of this monument, a small Orthodox church is being restored. And further down towards the harbour, a giant mosque is being built with foreign money for “all the people of the world”.

As we drove around Beirut, we saw two Hummers – Ahmad pointed and said “Saudis”. He made jokes and told stories about how rich they are. He also told stories about prostitutes working in Beirut, especially Russians, some who would always request him when they needed a taxi. Not once did he make a snide or degrading remark about them. He’s engaged again he said, to a local girl, a teacher. A good woman. His Swiss ex-wife had just wanted to go to Jamaica all the time for holidays.

We continued on to one of Beirut’s famous landmarks – Pigeon Rocks and had a coffee and a falafel. He dropped me in the Hamra district, from whence I walked back to my hotel near the Corniche. It seemed that half of Beirut was out on the Corniche that Sunday evening, still the day off in this once predominantly Christian country.