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Mar 17, 2010

Beirut a busy city of contrasts

The smell of the Mediterranean was the first thing to hit me when I landed in Beirut, and it remained a constant presence while I visited the still war-torn Lebanese capital.

The sea was often on the minds of people I met in the ancient port city, linked for centuries to the tides for food, trade and transport, and it remains the reason many returned after the 1975-90 civil war, or why they never left.

Ayman Zarakit, a Beirut native now working as a banker in Dubai, came back recently to visit his family in this metropolis of 2 million. He took me out one evening to show me the intense night life, a far cry from his adopted city.

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