It’s hardly surprising Beirutis want to be left alone. The evidence of foreign interference still scars every street of this city. We drive down the former Green Line, Rue de Damas, where Christian and Muslim militias pounded each other for more than a decade. The old Ottoman mansions are mere husks supported by skeletal columns; architectural ghosts seeking to remind the living of a fateful past. Adorned with weeds and bougainvillea, they are perversely beautiful, like ancient tombs.
Later that day I swim in the Phoenicia’s fabulous spa, only to find myself enjoying a massage shower while staring into someone’s shattered home. The contrast of pristine new glass and marble alongside the crumbling destruction is acute. Personally, I think some of these bombed-out buildings should be preserved, as memorials to their former inhabitants.
But who can blame Beirutis for wanting to forget? The National Museum represents the way forward. Once occupied by militia snipers, situated at Beirut’s bloodiest wartime intersection, it has now been rebuilt as one of the world’s most stylish museums, with display cases to render a Gucci store jealous. It’s all the more impressive with the knowledge that many exhibits were hurriedly encased in concrete at the beginning of the war, and only recently exhumed.
Over the two floors, I trace Lebanese history from Phoenician, Persian, Roman, to Arab, marvelling at the influences that have laced this country together. My favourite exhibit is a case of chubby marble babies, sculpted in the 5th century BC to thank the gods for delivering them from illness. As I leave, I am serenaded by the joyful singing of two young museum guards as they nonchalantly clack their worry beads.
Music and song are everywhere in Beirut. The journalist Robert Fisk talks of a Lebanese “belief in happiness”, a belief that is most evident after dark. Beirut nightlife was famed in the 1960s (it was “the Paris of the Middle East”, if you believe the travel agents), attracting stars such as David Niven and Brigitte Bardot. From what I see, it’s getting its groove back. The food is fabulous. I have three meals that beat anything I’ve tasted recently in London — a sumptuous Lebanese banquet in the walled courtyard of Al Mijana; more intimate meze at Al Balad, downtown; and, most memorably, exquisite sashimi and steak at uber-chic Asia, the sleekest rooftop restaurant in the Middle East, if not the Mediterranean.
And the drinking is Manhattanesque. I get half-drunk in Liquid, a red-clad Solidere mojito-hole, where girls are dancing around the bar; three-quarters drunk at the funky District (it looks like a Calder sculpture, good luck finding the door), where girls are dancing around the barman; and wholly and majestically drunk at Crystal, a madcap club on madcap Rue Monot, where girls are dancing on the bar (and possibly the barman, for all I can see in the scrum). Champagne bottles topped with showering sparklers zip between tables and everyone shrieks to whatever God they please.
The next day I leave Beirut to clear my hangover. Lebanon is so small, you can see much in a couple of day trips. Forty-five minutes up the coast is Byblos, one of the oldest towns in the world (7,000 years of continuous settlement), where I admire the crusader castle and casually dangling bright-red pomegranates. I shelter in the ancient coolness of the 12th-century church, before enjoying a fish lunch at Bal el Mina, on the harbour where Marlon Brando once caroused.
Down the coast, I am seduced by a dip at La Voile Bleue, a consummately glitzy beach club of sculpted torsos and bosoms that their owners weren’t necessarily born with. I recall something Hassan said: “We only have rich and poor. Before, we had the in-betweens, but they left.”
On my last day, I meander east through stone-clad hilltop villages that resemble Provence (no wonder the French felt at home in Lebanon) and into El Chouf, a hilly region of cedar and pine forests, and the 19th-century palace of Beiteddine, built by Italian architects for a Druze prince in the 1780s. It has been restored into a place of almost Buddhist tranquillity, with silent cloisters and trickling fountains. In stables that once housed 500 horsemen, exquisite Byzantine mosaics are displayed, depicting native animals and the geometric ponderings of early Christianity. Outside, where Israeli paratroopers once battled Druze militia, couples hold hands and gaze down to the golden Mediterranean.
My “road to Damascus” moment comes, appropriately enough, on the road to Damascus. Heading out on one of the world’s more exotic Sunday drives, towards the spectacular Roman temples at Baalbek, near the Syrian border, through the fertile Bekaa Valley and its biblical landscapes (punctuated by the occasional Dunkin’ Donuts outlet), past Bedouin encampments, Syrian checkpoints, Hezbollah banners and markets selling monkeys, I realise that I feel safer in Lebanon than in Leamington Spa. It’s a strangely reassuring sensation. Maybe there’s hope for the world after all.
Jim Keeble travelled as a guest of Kuoni
Travel brief
Tour operators: Kuoni (01306 747008, www.kuoni.co.uk) has five nights, room-only, at the InterContinental Phoenicia Hotel in Beirut from £739pp, including flights with British Airways from Heathrow and transfers. UK regional add-ons are free from many airports.
Or try Cox & Kings (020 7873 5000, www.coxandkings.co.uk), Original Travel (020 7978 7333, www.originaltravel.co.uk), or Explore Worldwide (0870 333 4001, www.exploreworldwide.com).
Getting there: British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com) and MEA (Middle East Airlines) fly nonstop from Heathrow from £328. Or Travelselect (0871 222 3213, www.travelselect.co.uk) has fares from Heathrow, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow from £280, with Lufthansa via Frankfurt. Or try Travelocity (0870 111 7061, www.travelocity.co.uk) or Flight Centre (0870 499 0040, www.flightcentre.co.uk). In Ireland, Ebookers (01 488 3507, www.ebookers.ie) has fares from Dublin from £423, with Alitalia via Milan.
Where to stay: the InterContinental Phoenicia (00 961 1- 369100, www.ichotelsgroup.com) is the glitziest hotel in town and overlooks the Corniche; doubles from £109. More modest is the Mayflower (340680, www.mayflower.com.lb), which also has a pool, with doubles from £42.
Where to eat: the Al Mijana (Rue Abel Wahab el-Inglizi; 328082) occupies a period Ottoman house with an outside area, and serves Lebanese cuisine at its best. Mains from £5. Al Balad (Rue Ahdab; 985375) has great Lebanese meze in the heart of downtown, from about £2.
Best guidebook: Syria & Lebanon (Lonely Planet £13.99).
When to go: autumn is a great time to visit Beirut, as temperatures are in the 20s until December. Otherwise, wait till March, as it often rains on the coast in winter. Summers are hot.
Further information: www.destinationlebanon.com or www.rediscoverlebanon.com, or, for what’s on, www.whatsuplebanon.com.
