Place de l’Etoile

A Sunday birthday party on the Place de l’Etoile in Beirut. Photo by David Lansing.

If you’re hanging around Beirut’s Place de l’Ètoile, what better place to have lunch than the Place de l’Ètoile Café? Actually, I’m being a bit facetious. There is little distinction to the Place de l’Ètoile Café except, perhaps, that it is the last place former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri dined before being blown up by a car bomb in February 2005. Other than that, the café could be anywhere—Paris, New York, Rome—with its odd international menu of hamburgers and pasta, Caesar salad and onion soup. Except they serve no alcohol. Which surprised my guide who had assured me we could get a beer here.

“Why don’t you serve beer?” he asked our rather-bored looking waiter.

We used to, the man said. But the café was recently purchased by a new owner, a decidedly Muslim owner who ordered alcohol to be taken off the menu. The waiter shrugged. “It’s a shame,” he said. “People like to have a glass of wine with their meal, but we cannot.”

The café, like the square, was mostly deserted. At one of the outside tables next to us a family was celebrating a young boy’s birthday. There were two Hello Kitty helium balloons tied to the chairs and the birthday boy was excitedly digging in to a plate of French fries while his father and an uncle puffed away on their nargilehs. Just a typical quiet Sunday afternoon in Beirut.

The eerily deserted Place de l’Etoile in Beirut on a Sunday afternoon. Photo by David Lansing.

Sunday afternoon I walked around Beirut’s reconstructed downtown district, the Solidere Area, and decided to have lunch at a stylish café across from the famous 1930s clock tower, in what is known as the Place de l’Ètoile or, to the locals, Nejmeh Square. The square, built in an Art Deco style by the French in the early 20^th century (and a big reason for why Beirut was often called the “Paris of the Middle East”) suffered major damage during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) but the government has done an amazing job restoring the neighborhood to its pre-war glitz in a relatively short time.

Except that there’s something vaguely off about Nejmeh Square. The four-sided clock is there. The buildings have, for the most part, been rebuilt (specifically to look almost exactly the way they did before the war). There are shops and cafes and businesses—all the things you would expect to find in the center of any capital city. Yet it stills feel eerily empty. Here it was on a cool but clear Sunday afternoon and other than a handful of children riding their bikes in circles while their parents nervously watched, there was almost no activity around the Place de l’ Ètoile. A few people eating lunch on the sidewalks outside the cafes; soldiers, clutching tight to their automatic weapons, standing guard on the street corners; a city worker picking up trash. That was about it. No hustle and bustle. No energy. No cheerful enjoyment of the environment; no exulation of spirit, no joie de vivre. Instead, the city center felt dead. And rather spooky.