The natural history of destruction, Beirut, July 2010

When the second plane hit, I called Hannah. It was not so much the fact of the second plane that frightened me; it was that I had seen it and the news anchors hadn’t. They had not seen it plow into the building, which meant that I was, for the moment, ahead of the story they were telling. I called Hannah because I had no context for what was happening. She, on the other hand, had been in New York for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and would probably be able to gauge the severity of what was happening. This was probably the most logical thought I had all morning, because after I got Hannah out of bed to reassure me that everything was going to be fine, my next impulse was to rush downtown. I jumped in the shower, rushed to dress, and packed my bag. I checked the news one last time before heading out, just in time to see the first tower collapse. And then the phone began to ring.

Last night, I stood on the balcony looking south into the city, wondering somewhat absently what it would be like if the fireworks that appear regularly over the suburbs were not childish amusements but Israeli bombs. This is, to be sure, a morbid curiosity, but one that is, in some part, justified, if only for all the practical questions an air raid would inevitably raise. I may be emotionally and intellectually equipped to decipher airline schedules in five languages, but nothing in my life has prepared me for the not entirely remote possibility of life under a hail of artillery. I have read the accounts, I have heard the stories, and I have lived a significant portion of my life in proximity to the history of such violence, but narrative can take you only so far. Some things you must learn by doing, and, so far, I have been spared such grim lessons. In terms of experience, 9/11 is about as close as I can get and, terrible as that day might have been, somehow the carpet-bombing of an entire city seems far more horrifying.

This vision of indiscriminate destruction came after considering all the mundane ways in which Beirut has changed over the last year. The list grows longer every day: There are no longer swarms of mosquitoes at night. I’ve witnessed bartenders mix an indecent martini. Caribou Coffee has come to Hamra Street, as has H&M. People now address me in Arabic, and they switch only after it becomes apparent that my Arabic vocabulary is wretchedly thin. Walimat has moved around the corner. The brothel on Makdissi Street is remodeling. My manoushe place has closed. These small things are juxtaposed against the more spectacular developments: The forest of cranes that has sprung up downtown. The myriad high-rises that seek to command the sky. When I was here in January I learned that there are some six hundred new apartment buildings under construction in Beirut, none of which are advertising anything other than luxury suites. Affordable housing, whatever that means, is coming at more and more of a premium. At the moment, these developments seem to present a more immediate threat to the city than an Israeli attack.

Beirut is flux: the city has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. There is something in its present renaissance, however, that is foreboding, an intimation of some less remarkable misfortune.