The Lebanon is a loose cannon of a country and, as its capital, Beirut is fittingly fast-paced, colourful and raw. It is a window on the innumerable faces of the original phoenix which spouts folklore and capitalism in the same breath, where the rousing song of the minaret competes with the clamour of church bells, where faith meets hedonism, and where first world meets third world.
The history of Beirut is not relegated to museums and dusty libraries like a venerated but useless grandpa stowed out the way on a comfy chair in the back room. Its past is chronicled on the walls of the capital, from the Roman baths to the damage of the civil war in the eighties. It neither worships nor denies its past, perhaps because it is never over. The business of making history thrives in the Middle East, though the storyline loops and the actors merely change masks.
Even after the civil war ended in 1990, this esteemed undertaking has punctuated life for the Lebanese with almost monotonous regularity and repeatedly punctured the bubble of hope that swells each spring as Beirut’s businesses look gingerly forward to that elusive thing – a tourist season. Year after year, a new boil burst from an old infection, scuppering any likelihood of a return to the heady summers of the early seventies when the city was awash with visitors.
But in 2009, at long last, there was no war, and revenue from tourism soared 80% while the number of tourists jumped 39% to an all-time record of 1.85mn, beating the previous record of 1.4mn set in 1974, the year before civil war broke out. The term “tourists” requires some clarification: the vast majority of incoming visitors in 2009 were first or second generation Lebanese expatriates returning to their homeland or visitors from the Gulf, preferring the hospitality of Lebanon to the increasingly equivocal reception of another old favourite, the US. A full year without major conflict, and the accolades and recommendations came raining down, shunting Beirut out of nowhere to the top of travel guide to-do lists.
The Lebanese, for their part, remain wary of the future and weary of the past. Above all Beirut lives its golden age in the present.
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