After being home for several days following the last car bombing and looming US Tomahawk strikes, I thought it was time to get out.
And what better place than the rocky shores of Monsef:
And what better company than the waves, who could care less about Obama, Assad and the lot.
Seems I wasn’t alone. The streets of Beirut have been very quiet for the last few days, but not tonight. Traffic heading back to the capital was gridlocked, even as late as 9PM–as a Lebanese summer Sunday night should be:
Including the odd wedding motorcade (right) and set of black tinted suburbans with no license plates, #shady:
Yet if America does strike, these highways may just as easily empty again and the idyllic shores– for the thousandth time in Lebanese history– will become a theatre of war.
In the meantime, people will carry on, many as if nothing is happening. Fireworks are heard every night of the week, even the night after the Tripoli massacre. Some call this resilience, but as I told The National this week, I think there’s also a lot of denial, discrimination and PTSD mixed into that ambivalence.
After all, when was the last time a generation of Lebanese grew up in a time of peace?
