“The city is like a woman” would write – repeatedly – Ed McBain, I wonder
what kind of woman Beirut would therefore be. Maybe she would be what
Ghassan Kanafani wrote for Ghada Samman, then the siren of the literary
circles of Beirut, and him the married Palestinian rebel: “They say these days
in Beirut, and maybe in other places, that our relationship is a one way street,
and that I am doomed in disappointment. It has been said in the “Horseshoe”
that one day I shall get tired of licking your faraway boot. It is said that you
do not care about me, and that you are trying to get rid of me…” But Ghas-
san kanafani was assassinated by the Israeli secret service on the 8th of July
1972, and so he is no more. And Ghadda Samman is somewhere in Europe,
and she is no more. And the Horseshoe in Hamra Street is now a franchise of
“Costa Coffee”, and it is no more . And the Modca, the other famous café, is
now Jack Jones – a clothing store, and the Wimpy is now under renovation to
be changed for you, and the Café de Paris yoyos between opening and clos-
ing, and all the major cinemas in Hamra Street have closed down for good.
Our landmarks are there no more, and relocating them is now as useful as the
fog horns in San Francisco – since the ships all have Global Positioning Sys-
tems – but the fog horns are there just for the charm and the remembrance.
When a new women’s magazine was launched some year back in Beirut, it
used the selling line “Ni tout a fait une autre, ni tout a fait la meme” (Never
quite the same one, never quite another). Could this be the Beirut that I have
been looking for? It changes while remaining the same, but we also never
bather twice in the same Manara (Lighthouse) beach, and we never walk
twice on the same corniche, and we never twice drink from Uncle Deek, and
we never twice explore the newest place in town, and we never twice feel
the same about Beirut, and we never are the same when we feel her, and she
is not the same once she is felt, and – yet – sometimes there are moments
suspended in time: Much like the man who, intending to propose to his
fiancée, asked the manager of the Ferris wheel to stop the motion once they
are on top. Which the man promptly executed. But fate had it that the shell-
ing started without prior notice causing the man to flee, leaving the lovers
hanging in their cabin on top of the wheel for the night. Suspended in time, in
space, neither on earth nor in heaven, much like that feeling once get as the
pilot says “We are beginning our descent to the Beirut International Airport,
please fasten your seatbelts. Cabin crew to landing position.” Yes, that same
feeling, but never quite the same one, never quite another.