Luna Park

The Corniche in Beirut. Photo by David Lansing.

To walk along the Corniche, the wide and busy promenade along Beirut’s waterfront, is to see the city in all of its horror/grandeur. There are the glitzy new high-rise condo towers next to bombed-out shells of old houses and hotels destroyed in the war; brand-new SUVs jockeying for space with rusting, ancient Mercedes and Peugeots.

Miniskirted young women walk arm-on-arm behind others in full head-to-toe hijabs, both cautiously avoiding the hell-on-wheels skater dudes and spandex-wearing cyclists and elderly vendors selling sesame bread or fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice.

My head spins.

More than once a grizzled old man siddles up to me as I walk and starts a conversation. “Hello, how are you? Where are you from?” Some of them want to give me a shoeshine or direct me to a restaurant, but just as often they just seem to want to practice their English or tell me their stories. “I went to American University.” “I am an engineer.” “I used to be a doctor.” Now they sell CDs of Middle Eastern music or old postcards. One such entrepreneur has an old Polaroid box camera set up on a wooden easel and takes B&W portrait photos of lovers or children or whole families standing stiffly along the Corniche, the dark, gloomy sea at their back.

I meant to walk no further than Luna Park, a rickety seaside amusement park built in 1964 that has opened and closed dozens of times over the years, but I am drawn farther and farther into the city, lured by the sight of a group of men enveloped in a cloud of sweet-smelling nargileh smoke or a spectacular hotel, right on the beach, bombed out and vacant. Walking along the Corniche, it is impossible to turn back.