Empty seats in Hamra

byHabib Battah
Oct 19, 2012

Just back from Hamra street and it seems most people are staying home tonight.

Usually the street below is so packed, you’d have to spend half an hour awkwardly rubbing past droves of college students while carefully avoiding getting burned by their cigarettes.

But tonight the passage was wide open:

And they were practically giving away tables that one would usually have to wait hours to seize:

On the upside, it seems Hamra’s holiday lights are up:

Hopefully things will be back to life (and the Army actually out patrolling the streets) in time for Adha next week:

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.