On the five-year anniversary of the 2020 Beirut Explosion, a traveller inspired by art and poetry explores the city’s streets, where she uncovers evidence that Lebanon is a country defined by a mix of tenderness and resilience.
Author’s note: This piece was written and accepted in the winter of 2025 before the ongoing destruction of Beirut. It preserves my voice as a visitor during a time of relative peace—and expresses my hope for this resilient city to rebuild.
Speeding through Hezbollah-controlled neighborhoods in the back of a taxi, I wasn’t thinking of tenderness when I arrived in Lebanon this summer. Yet on the last night of my three-day trip in Beirut, standing on my hostel’s rooftop under swaying clotheslines and a gentle moon, I thought: Lubnaan rhymes with Hanaan.
I was thinking of Nizar Qabbani’s poem “Beirut, and Love, and Rain”. Lebanon wasn’t in its rainy season when I travelled there, but the humidity was thick enough to swim in. Honey-dense moisture was the first thing I felt when I landed after a short flight from the desert climate of Jordan.
The US Department of State advised against all travel to Lebanon, but the UK Foreign Office was more helpful with its color-coded map. As a solo woman exploring on foot, I decided to stick to the green areas of northern Beirut and avoid the red Hezbollah strongholds to the south. The airport, however, was surrounded by red-coded areas, so I ordered an Uber after landing at night.
Some would gasp when they hear about this journey, but in reality, nothing on the streets screamed “terrorism”. What would that even look like, anyway? Chatting with the taxi driver, I barely noticed when I’d arrived.
The fee had a mind-boggling number of zeroes–because each 100,000 Lebanese Pound bill was worth about $1. Chuckling at my struggles with mental math, the taxi driver helped me out: “Ten of those papers, please.”
A big wallet–or better–a toiletries bag, was necessary for carrying money in Lebanon. When I exchanged $100 at the airport, the stack I got was as thick as a brick, and I had to ask for an envelope.
Nestled in a residential area, Hostel Beirut was simple and cozy. Over a plate of iced watermelon I’d cut up, I met my fellow residents: an old Swedish woman teaching in the city, a Lebanese man in between homes, a teenage Egyptian traveler, and Mo, the wild-haired receptionist who moonlights as a fire-acrobatics dancer. In videos he showed me, he twirled between flames and kissed danger with a passion.
It took about two hours to walk the length of Beirut from East to West, which I did twice. On the coastal route, the Mediterranean was startlingly blue even through my tinted sunglasses. Seabirds circled above fishermen.
Known as the Arab poet of love, Qabbani had written to Beirut as if she were a woman. “I surrender to the sea swans in your eyes/ coming from the end of time,” he wrote as he asked her to choose a café for their date, “When it rains in Beirut/ I need some tenderness.”
Mediterranean blue, I thought, must have been the color of her eyes.
Qabbani lost his wife, Balqis, to a bombing in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. Old scars of the conflict remained in museums and preserved historic sites, but most of the destruction I saw was left by the 2020 Port Explosion. It shattered every window in the city and shook the Levant like a small earthquake.
I visited on the explosion’s five-year anniversary. A journalist told me how the day after the blast, she returned to the office where, surrounded by debris and her colleague’s blood, she kept the newspaper printing.
No sign of destruction could be seen in the city center’s shiny mall, with high-end brands frequented by Lebanese youths of the French and English-speaking social class. A shawarma there costs as much as a sit-down lunch in a Western metropolis. As inflation plagued the local currency, the patrons’ pockets were never empty of US dollars. In other parts of the city, however, signs of dilapidation were clearly visible in abandoned buildings.
But strolling under mismatched balcony curtains and crisscrossed electrical lines, I felt a special charm in the city’s ever-continuing progress. The “I [heart] Beirut” sign was half-dismantled, half-scaffolded, full of hope.
On a charred bridge facing the explosion site, someone had painted a mural of a woman. She sat on a swing made of vines and cradled a pitcher to water flowers. Lively greenery grew at the foot of the bridge, as if revived by her tender labor.
With its constructions and reconstructions, Beirut was a city of resilience.
I’ve always loved murals and street art, so I went looking for a famous mural of Fairuz, the Lebanese singer known as the voice of Arabs. I never managed to find it. Rather, it was the countless murals I saw by chance, like the woman watering flowers, that stayed in my memory.
A phoenix composed of Arabic letters, a geometrical depiction of the nursery rhyme jamal wara’ jabal, a handshake with a Red Cross medic… Beirut’s walls bore both the scars of destruction and artists’ love for their city. Dotted with posters advertising music nights and gallery exhibits, the walls were alive.
My favorite was found in the Armenian neighborhood I was staying in. Against a faded red background, refugees held hands and leaned on each other’s shoulders. A jaded man, palms open in a prayer to God, said: “My existence is an act of resistance”. The Armenians were driven to Beirut years ago by genocide.
I wouldn’t have seen these murals if I had specific destinations in mind. But on a whimsically planned trip, my itinerary simply consisted of meandering. I thought of Qabbani’s date with Beirut, the metaphorical woman, and how he asked her to take him to any place she wanted. He wrote:
“Buy me today’s paper and lead pencil/ and wine and cigarettes,
“These are all the keys/ So you lead the way,
“Go in the direction of the winds of coincidence/ go in unnamed alleyways,
“Love me a little/ and break the laws of traffic a little.”
To love Beirut is to be a rule-breaker. During my visit, the US government had announced a plan to disarm Hezbollah, and the Lebanese government’s acceptance of it elicited mass protests in the southern neighborhoods. In the locals’ euphemistic way of expression, there was a mushkil fi al-janub—a problem in the south. The next morning, armored vehicles swarmed the streets and soldiers patrolled with sleek AK-47s. They were guarding a major avenue that bisected the city so the north could be free of trouble. I felt wary nevertheless.
I was meant to meet up with a friend who was staying on the outskirts of the city, but her family wouldn’t let her near the center during those days. Her uncle had shrapnel in his face from some long-ago confrontation and feared Hezbollah ever since.
Traversing Beirut meant seeing the destruction and militarization. But it also meant busy farmers’ markets, quiet libraries, and defiant murals with bold brushstrokes. Qabbani was right that, to love Beirut, one must surrender to her and let her lead the way down unnamed paths. One must embrace her flaws and her liveliness. When locals spoke to me about Lebanon’s beauty, they spoke with a tenderness that forgave and nurtured.
The word for “tenderness”, Hanaan, also meant compassion and mercy. It was the love for something deeply scarred and a little unruly. A love-in-progress.
