By Yahia Lababidi

Beirut nightlife: photo courtesy of habeeb.comMy first proper trip to Beirut, just before the last war, was charmed from the start, when the plane touched down by a stretch of glittering sea. My last visit, over a decade ago, didn’t count as I was wanted for the army, and spent my time ducking at checkpoints. After this amazingly graceful landing, the next few days in the city left me musing on how sea creatures are different—those who live by the sea, not in it—say, the way Alexandrians differ from Cairenes.

I began to think that living by the sea—with its rhythms and vastness—spawned more unruly, free spirits. That it fostered an amorality, a sensuality even, beyond good and evil. In fact, the more I observed these remarkable creatures the more I found myself thinking of another sea-loving, sun-worshipping people: the ancient Greeks. Here’s philosopher Nietzsche in rhapsody:

Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance…Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity!

As far as I am concerned, he may as well have been describing the Lebanese. Ravaged by a long civil war, it is not as though Lebanon has not had it’s fair share of death or suffering, or that they’ve not had occasion to think about it. They have, and it is their life response that distinguishes them. In accordance with the words of another existentialist, Beckett, they seem to have found the prospect of death vivifying. Through it all, they asserted their indomitable will by living, festively.

On weekends, and weekdays, these incorrigible hedonists dance till the small hours of the morning, on the tabletops. In one notable club, they dance on tables made from the coffins of martyr—a symbolic gesture, if ever there was one. While I was there a days-long classical music festival took place. The event was dedicated a Dionysus, after that ancient Greek god of drink, song and dance whose spirit (it can be argued) animates the national temperament.

Portraits of slain Prime Minister Rafik Hariri were ubiquitous: photo by Claudia Fortoul-LanderFollowing the assassination of beloved Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, it looked like the controversially renovated downtown area, Solidaire, was not going to outlive its murdered founder. Until his sister spoke out. “My brother did not live and die,” she reportedly said, “so that his dream could be buried with him.” This rousing speech was shortly followed by a several-days shopping/dining festival, simply titled Celebrate Life—something that comes instinctively to these natural-born bon vivants.

Next to downtown, Martyr’s square was transformed into a makeshift campsite in honor of Hariri’s passing. Unprecedented numbers, surpassing 1.5 million, made their way to the square to demonstrate against his assassination. It seemed that, in dying, Hariri had achieved what he could not in life—namely, unite bickering Lebanese factions (Maronites, Druze, Sunnis, etc.) under one flag, for Lebanon, for The Truth. “We shall not rest till we know the Truth” they declared in unison at this peaceful demonstration. The previous evening, thousands had gathered for a night-long vigil and, with burning candles, spelling out “The Truth” in Arabic and English.

Old women and toddlers participated in these impressive civil marches, some making the pilgrimage to Martyr square from miles away to register their passive resistance. As police cordoned off the Square, children marched up to them fearlessly, armed with roses. It was a page torn out of Romantic literature. An army of cherubs, emboldened by Beauty, waving their roses like magic wands, at a barricade of soldiers.

Meanwhile, the adjacent Mohamed Amin mosque had metamorphosed into a living shrine to the felled national hero. An iconic, larger-than-life photograph of Hariri was mounted atop a monument of flowers in the shape of an automobile—a nod to the car bomb that claimed his life. Passing between bodyguards, and under an electronic board advertising the number of days since his death, a steady stream of mourners walked in off the street, and pulled up in swanky cars to pay their respects. An atypical installation in a mosque, to say the least: the birth of the secular saint.