New brown signs have appeared here and there on the roadside saying, in French, something like "A district of traditional culture." It's a step; at least someone recognizes that the traditional face of the city of Beirut, the architecture that survived the civil war, deserves attention, care, and preservation.
Two
years ago we were impressed by the energy of the new construction in this city.
Grand, enormous luxury hotels going up by the waterfront. We also heard a lot of
worries then about the number of old buildings, the city’s architectural heritage, being torn
down and replaced with modern, more expensive housing. That worry is still
there. Some of the hotels are finished, some buildings have been saved, the noise
of new construction still greets us every day, and the major change we’ve
noticed is that a dense, busy, often noisy city is now more of all those things
because more people are living here than ever. 
Anne and I walk the
streets of the city, taking pictures of the now mostly isolated buildings in
the old Arab or Ottoman style, hoping they can be maintained, saved, preserved
from the next development scheme. More typically in the central city – the areas
people want to visit; they places where they want to live -- they are being
replaced by larger modern buildings, and the city loses its character as a
result. (See pic at left)
We revisit some favorite
spots. The remains of the Roman baths (second photo, left), abutting the government
building known as the Serail, survived the rebuilding of the downtown
after the destruction of the Lebanese Civil War. An old building like the “Quo
Vadis,” (third photo) restaurant or hotel once frequented by foreigners, survives in splendid
desolation. Maybe it will escape destruction by redevelopment.
More security conscious
from the spillover of the Syrian war, some residents are locking doors that
weren’t locked before. We see more uniforms on the street; some recognizably
Lebanese army, some in the gray camo fatigues adopted by the new city security
force whose job, I suspect, is to make sure people in Beirut feel secure in the
fact of the bombings in other parts of the country by factions supporting one
side or the other in the Syrian war and the other spillover of that horrifying
disaster, a million refugees.
Many of these inevitably end up in Beirut, where
half of the country’s population already lives; housing has grown scarce, rents
are up, and jobs scarce. As visitors, we encounter some refugees living a hand to
mouth existence. Black head scarves covering all their hair, gowned mostly in
black as well, some women sit on the sidewalk with their back to a wall waiting
for people like us to pass by. Generally accompanied by a small child, they
hold out one hand and emit a sing-song plea for alms in Arabic. If the children
are old enough to run around by themselves they do a more aggressive begging,
approaching with similar chanted pleas and then running alongside their target,
foreigners for sure, as we try to walk away. The Lebanese are used to them,
speak their language, and decide on their own terms whether to tolerate them or
not.
People make their own decisions on how to respond to
a phenomenon the city has not experienced in the past. Some store owners chase
them away. The same people who chase the children away in public may be giving
to them privately through organized charities.
Anne has made a practice of changing
larger bills to gather some small denomination 1,000 Lebanese Lira notes (less
than a dollar). Keep them separately in a pocket, Sonya urged; that way you don’t
have to open your wallet, exposing the rest of your liquid wealth. Anne hands the bills to the women or children who solicit us. A very small gesture in a very big world.
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