Beirut

IT’S SUNDAY, day after what was so far the fiercest day of shelling, and everyone is exhausted for lack of sleep. I’d spent the night in the mountains, sure that it would be quieter than West Beirut, but since my refuge in the Metn overlooks the Beirut suburbs in the valley down on the water, every bomb rippled up the side of the mountain–through the floor of the apartment complex and through the mattress, finally ending about 10 seconds after rattling through my bones. It seems they believe they have found General Secretary Nasrallah and keep pounding away at his headquarters, a 9-story structure.

My host Fawaz and I met about a month before former Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri was assassinated. I was drawn by the country’s political and intellectual ferment, obvious long before the Cedar revolution that brought the Lebanese people to the streets to demand, “freedom, sovereignty and independence” – a motto that some tired of not long after it resonated through the streets of Beirut.