A visit to Lebanon
Lebanon has had a traumatic history to say the least - longstanding civil war, regional war, economic crisis, widespread political instability - and the current unfolding horror there adds to this tragic narrative for such an amazingly resilient people.
I visited Lebanon in September 2019, soon after the Foreign Office relaxed its travel advisory restrictions on going to Hezbollah-controlled areas of the country at that time. However, even when deemed safe to travel, visiting such areas as the Bekaa Valley, with its Hezbollah command centres, active drug trade and history of kidnappings and detainments, should be done with caution.
Since my visit, Lebanon has experienced the worst economic crisis it has ever seen, with the Lebanese pound losing most of its value, and inflation in 2021 reaching an all-time high of nearly 160%, meaning that the cost of basic items like water and food nearly quadrupled.
A World Bank report released in May revealed that poverty in Lebanon more than tripled over the last decade, reaching 44% of the total population. Currently, UNHCR estimates that more than half of the Lebanese population is living below the poverty line.
Clearly, even without the current airstrikes, the Lebanese have been suffering overwhelmingly, and thousands upon thousands of children have been growing up knowing nothing but poverty and conflict.
My first real awareness of Lebanon came during the hostage crisis between 1982 and 1992, when 104 foreigners including Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Terry Anderson were kidnapped and held hostage when the Lebanese Civil War, which extended from 1975 to 1990, was at its height.
When Terry Waite was released in November 1991 after 1,763 days in captivity - four of those in solitary confinement, and having been subjected to mock executions - the news was all over the world’s media.
A few days after he was released I was walking in Blackheath Village in south London - I lived nearby and Waite lived in a house near the Crown pub in the centre of the village - and saw him get out of a car. I instinctively acknowledged him and smiled at him, and he smiled back. I suppose I’d seen and read so much about him in the preceding years that I thought I was greeting an old friend. From they way he reacted I got the idea that such an encounter had become commonplace for him following his release.
Thinking of his plight, and that of the others kidnapped and the ongoing news of the dramas the population endured in ensuing years, meant that checking into the Commodore Hotel in central Beirut many years later was rather more stirring than at most hotels I’ve entered.
I’d just arrived from Beirut’s Rafic Hariri airport and had been struck by the huge number of people waiting in the arrivals hall for friends and family who had just flown in. I have never seen such a large crowd in an arrivals hall. It was an indication that the Lebanese form especially close communities and strong family bonds.
The Commodore was one of Lebanon’s first luxury hotels, and it was the location of Waite’s kidnap. It was a haven for the press during the civil war. Now refurbished, little trace remains of the drama it saw during those turbulent years.
My small party of journalists shared a beer with the French and Armenian manager of the hotel, Jean-Marc Panossian, at what was called ‘the little news bar’, where the journalists and spies would exchange information during those difficult times, as the hotel had a telex machine, a rarity in the city then.
“Beirut then had barricades all around, snipers everywhere,” said Panossian.
We then went on an evening stroll in the nearby streets, and a car crammed with boisterous young men playing loud music suddenly pulled up right beside us, the tyres screeching as the driver slammed on the brakes. I must admit that for a moment, having only been in the country about three hours, I feared what was going to happen next.
The men then shouted out: “Welcome to Lebanon!” and sped off into the night. I can’t think of whenever else I have received such a hearty welcome in a country.
All these years on, numerous reminders of the civil war remain in Beirut, such as buildings that are empty, still with gaping holes from shells and bullets. Perhaps the most graphic monument to the war is the Holiday Inn, a ghostly, abandoned, ruined and gutted tower in the centre, in stark contrast to the surrounding glistening new buildings. I can’t imagine how much more damage has been done in recent days.
As I explored the city, there were numerous further indications of unease: I was told of neighbourhoods to avoid, there were power cuts aplenty (although most businesses have back-up generators so you’d hardly be aware) and Syrian and Kurdish beggars were quite a common sight.
The latter observation is unsurprising, considering that currently, according to the UNHCR, Lebanon hosts the largest number of refugees per capita and per square kilometre in the world, with the Government’s estimation of the country having 1.5 million Syrian refugees and some 11,238 refugees of other nationalities.
However, despite the empty, war-damaged buildings, widespread begging and power cuts, in numerous ways the Beirut I visited was like any international city. For example, my party visited T-Marbouta, a buzzing restaurant with a lovely garden atrium, tucked down a side street with no sign. It could have almost been a hipster joint in Shoreditch, with its youthful crowd chattering enthusiastically, swigging beers from the bottle and sampling colourful little side plates of tasty modern takes on the local cuisine.
“Visitors to Lebanon love the warm, welcoming spirit, the food, the nightlife - it’s always very lively,” said our extremely knowledgeable guide, Daniel Abou Khalil. “Even in the difficult times, people were enjoying themselves. It’s a tolerant, flexible, open-minded country, and with the weather, the climate, the landscapes - it’s paradise.”
Daniel was four when the civil war started.
“There were lots of queues at the shops and the militia would usually take the bread from the bakery so that when we’d go there was none left for us,” he remembered. “During the war my aunt sent us clothes and other things to survive. I lived in a southern suburb of Beirut, near the Green Line, [a line of demarcation separating the mainly Muslim factions in predominantly Muslim West Beirut from the predominantly Christian East Beirut controlled by the Lebanese Front] 200 metres from the bus massacre that sparked the war, when a Christian militia murdered everyone on the bus.
“Our apartment had two rockets hit it during that time. We’d go in the basement when there was conflict nearby, and once we stayed there for 10 hours. There were 10 families living in the building, and all of us would cram into that basement. The fifth floor was hit one night - and we were sleeping on the third floor. Another time, when I was four, a bullet missed me by about half a metre when I was playing outside. Another time my friends and I moved from a place and five minutes later it was bombed. We had some narrow escapes.
“Sometimes when things were particularly bad my family would rent a house elsewhere or stay with relatives and wait until things got quieter again. My mother, like all women, had a sixth sense, getting us to move away when she felt things were becoming too dangerous. But it wasn’t always bad. During this time there was a period of calm for two or three years.”
The next day we visited Beirut’s National Museum. At the entrance the bullet holes in the walls had been patched up with cement. The museum was heavily damaged in the war and there had also been widespread flooding in the basement, where many treasures had been hidden during the war. A false wall had been built at that time, so that snipers would not realise the treasures were there. After a long period of restoration the basement at last opened again in 2016, having been closed for more than 40 years.
The restoration allowed the display of a wonderful archaeological collection spanning prehistory and the Bronze Age to the Mamluk period. Highlights include a beautifully preserved Roman mosaic of the Seven Wise Men and the Phoenician sarcophagus of King Ahiram, the 10th-century King of Byblos. The Phoenicians initiated the start of all languages and on this treasure is one of the earliest inscriptions in Phoenician, and therefore it represents one of the very first pieces of writing in human history.
At the unfussy Le Chef restaurant I tried a tasty traditional dish, mulukhiyah, consisting of rice, chicken and the tenderest beef, which came with a bowl of watery green Jew’s Mallow spinach-like leaves that are poured on top with a dash of vinegared chopped onions, followed by a sprinkling of flatbread pieces. Serving myself the dish was a whole ceremony in itself.
During another stroll of the city I visited a mosque, the imposing, recently-built Mohammad Al-Amin or ‘Blue’ mosque, and then next door saw a Christian church. It looked immaculate despite having been greatly damaged in the civil war.
I then stumbled across some Roman ruins graced with four majestic pillars before visiting a synagogue and entering a Greek Orthodox church displaying many icons. As I was there the call to prayer began.
This really brought home how Beirut is such a multi-layered city.
In the space of under an hour and within about 500 yards I had been to a mosque, a Christian church, a synagogue, a Greek Orthodox church and Roman ruins, against a backdrop of the call to prayer.
You need to take care walking around the city, simply because driving standards are erratic and red lights routinely ignored. The sound of tooting horns seldom stops, even when the traffic is proceeding calmly and there are no jams.
Adding to the chaos, in the last couple of years cars without number-plates have increasingly been appearing on the streets, due to the vehicle registration centres across Lebanon beginning to close from 2022, following a mass arrest of employees on corruption charges.
Another common sight in Beirut (and other Lebanese cities) is a mass of power cables, often entangled, running from buildings to nearby electricity poles. It is a mixture of bad planning, with the electricity company drawing a new wire each time a new connection is requested, and due to residents self-connecting to the power grid, even though this is at great personal risk of electrocution.
Last year Human Rights Watch published a report about the dire state of Lebanon’s electricity sector. For almost 30 years, Lebanese authorities have failed to properly manage the state-run electricity company, resulting in widespread blackouts and alleged corruption, eventually leaving the country without power through most of the day.
Leaving Beirut, my party then visited the historic city of Byblos, which was rather more tranquil and familiar. It has the feel of a European Mediterranean resort, with a pretty old town and picture-postcard port, beaches, restaurants (some in lovely courtyard settings), a souk and a few lively bars.
With a history stretching back 7000 years, Byblos is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. My group had the 12th century Crusader castle, overlooking the glistening blue sea, almost to ourselves. It is surrounded by an archaeological site that includes traces of the Phoenician town and remains of a Roman theatre.
A landslide in 1922 revealed a necropolis here and when you climb into it is like being within a mini-budget version of Raiders of the Lost Ark - it’s quite thrilling when you clap eyes upon a sarcophagus still in situ.
We then headed for the Chouf mountains, going towards the Bekaa Valley and the city of Baalbek, on the Syrian border. As we drove higher and higher up the twisting roads with hairpin bends we were enveloped in a thick mist. Having reached the highest point of the road we plunged down into the Bekaa Valley, passing through military checkpoints.
We lunched at an outstanding rural restaurant, Tawlet Ammiq, overlooking many vines, with mulberry juice, rosewater, snails, meatballs in cherry sauce, tabuleh, pies, fish - a seemingly endless choice of local dishes. It was a rare enterprise, a restaurant run for the benefit of the local community, and the food was provided by local women, who all stood by their dishes, serving them. It was a delicious crash course in Lebanese cuisine, a feast of seafood, meats and local vegetables.
The Bekaa is known for its wines. Fifteen years ago there were hardly any wineries in the valley, and now there are more than 70. We visited one of the oldest, the Château St Thomas wine estate. Established in 1888, the family’s fifth generation are now running it. Every year there are four or five months without rain, which is quite a challenge for the winery.
Moving further on towards Baalbek we passed a big blue poster by the roadside featuring a coiffured woman brandishing a pistol, then a village with piles and piles of rubbish strewn along the roadside. This was a reminder of Lebanon’s catastrophic government services, which cease to operate at all adequately in many areas.
As we headed into Hezbollah country there was a growing tension in the air, as armed roadblocks and large posters of religious and political leaders lined the streets.
My visit to Hezbollah country and Baalbek is covered in an earlier Substack post - In The Hezbollah Heartlands.
To donate to Medecins Sans Frontieres, which is working in Lebanon providing medical care and essential supplies, go to msf.org.uk
To donate to Unicef, which is providing essential items to displaced people at emergency shelters around Lebanon, go to unicef.org.uk
The British Lebanese Association website britishlebanese.org lists numerous Lebanon-related charities