Shots fired: part I

We set out for a stroll one pleasant Friday morning to give Tall Will the lay of the land. Meandering the motley of Roman ruins, army checkpoints, crassly upscale but empty retail outlets and stark new high-rises that are conspiring for the heart of Beirut, we finally emerged upon Zaitounay Bay, a posh new marina sequestered between the St. Georges Hotel to the west and a lovely new boardwalk being laid over a landfill to the east. 

The view from the seaside, both manmade and not, is a jarring but beautiful jumble of layers. In the foreground, several dozen yachts are flanked by hundreds of smaller speedboats, none of which ever stir from their winter’s slumber. Immediately behind them, an untamed brigade of glass and steel shoot into the air. The towers closest to the marina are or will be finished; several of those a block or two further inland have been abandoned ever since the civil war – most notably the infamous Holliday Inn – site of the “Battle of the Hotels” in the autumn of 1975. Looking north, a sleepy coast speckled with thousands of little white dwellings floats as gently toward Syria as a lamb to the slaughter. Just behind this first layer of densely inhabited hills that roll up from the sea is a dramatic range of snow-capped peaks. On a clear day, it is offensively beautiful.

Plastered across the St. Georges Hotel is a giant 100-foot banner reading “Stop Solidere,” the namesake of the development company that owns and manages virtually all of downtown Beirut. One of few property owners with sufficient funds at the end of the civil war, the owner of the St. Georges narrowly avoided expropriation at the hands of the autocratic development group, Solidere, that seized virtually all of downtown Beirut for “redevelopment” in the 1990s. At the risk of boring the reader, I will leave the story of this corporate fiefdom’s historic takeover of an entire city center to a more articulate writer than myself. 

Once the foremost playground for the global leisure class that flocked to Beirut in the 1950s and 1960s, the St. Georges has been inoperative as a recreational facility since the beginning of the civil war (1975) (though it did house Syrian troops until 1996). Built under the French mandate in 1932, it originally served, in its current owners’ words, as a meeting ground for “French officers and local society.” Only in Lebanon do many still take extreme pride in having been colonized – by the French, of all people. During its heyday in the 1960s, its website boasts, its pool “flaunted the best displays of bikinis and brown limbs in the Middle East” – a byline a little harder to promote in today’s regional political climate. Tragically – or according to some, ironically – the founder of Solidere, billionaire and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the man who for years prevented the re-opening of the hotel, was blown to bits in a car bomb as his motorcade careened past the St. Georges exactly a decade ago. Across the street and directly facing the unmistakable “Stop Solidere” sign is a larger than life-size monument of the late Prime Minister, a jarring reminder of the unfinished war he waged against the older patrons of the city.  

Once past Zaitounay Bay, we arrive at the Corniche, the city’s finest seafront promenade and the pride of West Beirut. Contrary to downtown, the Corniche has something for everyone and all walks of life: tri-generational family strolls; little old men with nothing but time and tobacco on their hands, casting their metal rods into the sea; emaciated middle-aged divers coming up to examine their findings; young couples and ancient companions; new lovers and old quarrelers; weight-conscious, kale-munching expats darting past in spandex; southeast Asian house-slaves walking their masters’ mutts; bristly, underemployed creepsters no longer pretending not to stare. Though noticeably more Muslim than other prosperous parts of Beirut, the Corniche is the only part of the city where everyone is truly welcome, regardless of class, creed or religious confession (the latter not to be confused).

Several blocks down, the American University of Beirut springs from the earth as if a stairway to Heliopolis. The gates of its seaside entrance are virtually on the sea, and if you can make it past security without a student ID (read: white skin and/or a conspicuous sense of entitlement), you’ve no more need to don the robe, sprout the prepubescent beard, go to confessional, tithe or take up arms for or against the Islamic State. Entering AUB’s campus, you’ve arrived at the end of the line, paradise on earth, the city upon the hill built of cocaine and gooey-butter cake. It is the campus to end all campuses, a beacon of light, learning and very studious leisure: the crown jewel of American missionary undertakings. In the annals of Protestant achievements, the conversion of 9 million Koreans to Presbyterianism pales in comparison.

Since this was before I’d whiskeyed my way into a job, I was there to put up flyers for private history lessons. Scrills having long since left my pocket, it was time to swallow my pride and start looking for work, however desperate the approach. I printed out twenty flyers advertising my credentials and half-heartedly began posting them to light-posts and telephone booths at the entrance to campus. Furtively, I applied the tape to each flyer from the confines of the telephone booth before dashing out to post them as quickly as possible, terrified I’d bump into someone I knew (Didn’t you tell me you were a journalist? Coordinating the Committee to End All War? A documentary filmmaker? Cultural attaché at the Welsh embassy?)

Nevertheless, I had to press on. “Weary of playing fifa with your stupid pimply friends? Passionate about unlocking the mysteries of the past? Eager to understand how Hitler escaped to Argentina? Top-notch lessons with Anglish-speaking native of eastern Missouri.” (If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that most everyone outside of Europe and North America is stark raving mad about the Fuhrer. The evidence is overwhelming, not just in Lebanon). I even upped the Garamond to font size 18, which, of course, not a soul can make out from more than 7ft away. Alas, there have been no inquiries: such was our brief foray into the Levantine hustle.

Next we set off in search of the Pink House. A beautiful crumbling ruin overlooking the sea, it is the last of its kind in West Beirut, a monument to a bygone swagger that, until Joe and I make our fortune selling Vietnamese egg-white coffees on the northside, may never again hold sway. Its foundations built sometime in the 18^th century, the second and third floors of this imploding palace were added in 1888. In the 20^th century it became a cultural hub of sorts, rented out to one artistic clan alone from in the early 1960s until last year.

Sometime last summer, an affably blond English painter and longtime resident of Lebanon was strolling along the sea when the lonely old mansion caught his eye. With a good-faithed confidence that only foreigners seem to enjoy in this country, he went up to the door and knocked. Fayza El Khazen, the last of a storied clan to inhabit the pink ruin, opened the door and immediately took a liking to him. Little did the Englishman know, the developer who’d recently purchased the house had just served Fayza an eviction notice: the end of an era, albeit a long-since neglected one, was nigh. He asked if he could come do several portraits of the house as she moved out, and Fayza gladly acceded. Shortly thereafter he moved in. If his current exhibition generates enough publicity, the developer may find himself forced to rehabilitate the house rather than demolish it.

The main floor was sadly majestic, but I was geeking to get upstairs.  Tall Will was out in the yard taking pictures when I meandered the imploding staircase wrought with broken glass and miscellaneous trash toward the top of the old palace. Oddly, you could only access the second and third floors from an outside staircase – as if some feat of engineering had been concocted to accommodate a vicious divorce or a familiar falling out. Alas, the second floor was bolted shut, but the staircase continued. By the time I got to the roof, a series of dark, impending clouds had begun to form in the west. The sky turned a deep dark pinkish-grey, the hue that hung over Hanoi on the eve of Rolling Thunder.

Pap! Pap! Pap! Were these firecrackers on a Friday afternoon? Pap! Pap! Pap! Pap! Pap! To virgin ears, it was impossible to tell. Whatever their source, it wasn’t that far away. For all its infamy, it’s a compact city. The Palestinian camps are barely a ten-minute drive; the hinterland of Hizbollah-controlled Dahiye scarcely any more. Single shots rang out first, followed by spurts of automatic gunfire. After a minute or so, they slowed and then stopped. Apart from the hum of traffic, a perfect quiet resumed. I was alone on the roof and could see at least ten blocks south, yet there were no were outward signs of unrest. Had I imagined it? There were no horns, no sirens, no ambulances. No shrieking mothers. No flailing arms. Why was everything so perfectly calm? Hadn’t they heard? Red light, green light: trucks, cars, vans and cabs came and went as though nothing had happened. Joggers – those careless fucking joggers – were still shuffling up and down the seafront sidewalk as though nothing was amiss.

Tall Will came up to the roof a moment later, we exchanged a nervous hello. For whatever reason, we didn’t address the elephant choking on formaldehyde in the corner of the room. After a minute or so, Pap! Pap! Pap! This time even longer, closer, louder and more immediate. “Did you hear it earlier?” Of course he had. On the roof of this battered pink palace, the wind began to stir. “Should we get over there and see what’s cracking?” I asked rhetorically, giddy but secretly terrified at the thought. Only hours earlier, along the Corniche, we’d been musing about becoming war correspondents in the next life… The rubble! The beards! The stolen crates of vodka! Grozny, I love you, but you’re bringing me down. Only after hearing the gunfire, so violently close yet so terribly far, did we begin to disabuse ourselves of any such notion. “Come on buddy, this could be our chance!” I mused in bad faith. “We’ve both got our cameras.”