THE BEAUTY OF BEIRUT
By Fergal Keane

Daily Mail (London)
April 1, 2006 Saturday

Lebanon may not be your first choice for a family trip, but the BBC’s
Special Correspondent is spellbound.

LET’S get the negative stuff out of the way first. My mother-in-law’s
question spoke for nearly everyone we knew. In her inimitably
down-to-earth, west of Ireland manner, she asked: ‘What, in the
name of God, are you going to that place for?’ For a moment, I was
stumped. I tried talking about the Beirut I knew and loved but I
could hear my credibility as a son-in-law draining away with every
word. Mrs Flaherty spoke for many.

Most of our friends consider the Middle East as a place to be avoided
and regard the word ‘Beirut’ with varying degrees of dread.

For them, it is still the city where Terry Waite, John McCarthy and
Brian Keenan were kidnapped by Islamic extremists and held for years.

And yet more civilians have been killed by terrorists in London in
the last year than in Beirut, a statistic the Lebanese would be far
too polite to point out, but it’s worth remembering nonetheless.

I realise that a veteran war reporter’s concept of ‘safe’ may be
different from that of the ordinary citizen. After my experiences in
Rwanda and Iraq, you might think I have a twisted sense of proportion
when it comes to risk assessment.

But as far as the safety of my family goes I am an absolutist. I
refuse to take chances. And so if I think Beirut is a safe place to
take my wife Anne and our children Daniel, ten, and Holly Mei, two,
that’s because it is.

Beirut is quite simply the most exciting, exotic, culturally
stimulating place within four hours’ flying time of London.

For a start there are 300 days of sun a year in a place that basks
by the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Add to that the glistening
peaks of the mountains beyond the city and you have the tantalising
possibility of mornings on the beach and afternoons in the fresh
mountain air, or vice-versa.

And over the past decade the city has undergone a stunning facelift.

The architectural wreckage of the civil war has been largely cleared
away, though there are still a few shell-pocked buildings to add a
frisson to an otherwise serene vista.

The downtown district of Solidere, which saw some of the worst of
the fighting, has had many of its Ottoman era buildings restored and
is now a pedestrianised zone full of restaurants, cafes and haute
couture boutiques.

We were welcomed warmly wherever we went. Actually that’s an
understatement.

I don’t think words could do justice to the hospitality we encountered.

It began with a welcome dinner at the home of Armenian friends of
mine in the hills above the city.

We entered the small flat to find a table crowded with Middle Eastern
delicacies. There was tender lamb on a bed of scented rice and pine
nuts, marinated raw minced meat (I passed), wonderfully juicy stuffed
vine leaves, and at least 20 other meat and vegetable dishes.

THE FEAST was followed by an Arabic dance in which our children
excelled. To raucous cheers from the assembled group Holly Mei copied
the belly dancing of the daughters of the house while Daniel performed
his own hip-hop adaptation.

At midnight we attempted to make our excuses and leave. Our host was
horrified. ‘This is Beirut!’ he said. ‘ Parties only start to get
going at midnight.

We will be here until breakfast.’ And so we were dragged back to the
table. More lamb. More fish.

More belly dancing. At 3am, we staggered out to our taxi with Holly
still dancing.

This is a city that loves children. They get attention without
seeking it.

On the streets, Lebanese of all persuasions stopped to admire our
fairhaired son Daniel and his adopted baby sister Holly Mei.

Miss Hurricane Holly, as she is known by her exhausted parents, was
a sensation on the streets of Beirut. I imagine that they have seen
very few Chinese babies. Everywhere we went she was fawned over,
cuddled, offered sweets.

All of this attention she accepted with grace, though towards the end
of the week I noticed a certain imperiousness creeping into her manner.

When she threw a rare tantrum (over having to sit in her buggy while we
climbed a steep hill) a man emerged from a small bread shop to harangue
me in Arabic. I think the gist of it was that I was a wholly unsuitable
father if all I could do was let my child scream her lungs out.

Beirut traffic can be grim, but the city is compact. Even in the worst
of gridlock it shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to get from east
to west. We just walked a great deal.

>>From one neighbourhood to the next, the sense of where you are can
alter profoundly. ‘I never knew it would feel so amazingly French,
like France in times gone by,’ my wife remarked as we strolled through
the quaint narrow streets of Christian Ashrafiya.

The women of these Beirut streets are haughty and handsome, and
they know that no man would be foolish enough to wolf-whistle. As a
Lebanese friend of mine put it: ‘They take no nonsense. They would
eat the men alive if they did anything like that.’ Food is one of
the big attractions. In a week of many memorable meals one of the
best was at Abdel Wahab on Rue Abdel Wahab al Inglezi.

This is an Ottoman-era gem with high roofs and a cool interior. The
variety of meze – cold and hot starters – can be bewildering.

We ordered far too much and by the time the ritual grilled chicken
and lamb arrived we were glutted and wordless. A pot of fresh mint
tea helped sort that out and we were eating again in no time.

But the city offers a great deal more than fantastic Middle Eastern
cuisine.

There are also excellent French, Italian and Asian restaurants. Some
of the top-end Continental restaurants can be pricey and tend towards
the pretentious. My advice is to investigate the huge variety of
Lebanese food.

WITHIN a few minutes of eating in Ashrafiya or shopping in the
upmarket ABC Mall with its Seattle Coffee shop and Virgin Megastore
you can be driving through the southern suburbs near the airport,
the strongholds of the Shia, traditionally the poorest and most
downtrodden of Lebanon’s groups.

Here, stern mullahs hold sway and many of the women wear headscarves
or veils.

But this too is a place of change. You simply would not have gone
near these suburbs in the 1980s and early Nineties. It was where
Waite and McCarthy spent the years of their confinement.

Now the kidnap gangs have gone. There is an easygoing tolerance
of visitors.

It is a good place to drink the strong bitter Arabic coffee and smoke
a narghile, the water pipes whose fruity aroma fills the cafes.

One of my favourite spots is the Armenian district of Bourj Hammoud.

This is a warren of small streets crowded with shops selling spices and
jewellery with excellent value in gold rings, necklaces and bracelets.

And of course on a cultural level, Lebanon is fabulously rich.

It boasts the finest Roman ruins in the region at the UNESCO world
heritage site of Baalbek, which the Romans knew as Heliopolis.

Then there is the heritage of its Phoenician seafarer origins and
the remnants of every invading power to have marched through, from
the armies of Alexander the Great through to the Crusaders, Turks,
French, Israelis and Syrians.

In the city centre the churches of the Christians (they make up 40 per
cent of the population) stand beside the mosques of the Sunni and the
Shia, the sound of church bells blends with the call of the muezzin.

The assassination of the country’s prime minister last year was a
serious blow to tourism.

The attack was blamed on Syria. Suddenly Lebanon was bad news again.

However, (as I told my motherinlaw) these brutal attacks were targeted
specifically against Syria’s local enemies.

Tourists were and are not a target. Nor was there any hint of a return
to the fratricidal days of the civil war – Lebanon saw some of the
biggest peaceful protests in the history of the Middle East. This
country has had enough of war.

One of our loveliest afternoons was spent in the ancient city of
Byblos. The Bible took its name from the papyrus reed paper produced
here and it is said to be the world’s oldest continuously inhabited
city. Daniel and I climbed the ruins of ancient temples and a Crusader
citadel while Anne and Holly wandered through the souks.

Afterwards we went to the restaurant of Pepe Abed overlooking the
Phoenician harbour and dined on fresh seafood while the ancient owner
observed us from a corner. He was here when General De Gaulle came
during World War II and welcomed film stars like Brigitte Bardot and
David Niven when Beirut was the playground of the Med.

The celebrities and playboys were driven away by the war but I suspect
they will be back.

Lebanon is too much fun to stay ignored for too long.

COX & Kings (020 7873 5000; coxandkings.co.uk) offers five nights’
bed and breakfast at the Movenpick, including British Airways flights
and transfers, from Pounds 865 per person. The company’s programme
of family holidays, Family Explorer, will be launched this spring.