There are certain things you give up to be an American diplomat, and for a long time, one of those things was the right to visit Lebanon for any personal reason. Not such a big issue for people like Severin and I, but for Lebanese-American diplomats it has been a major bummer. Of course, the reasons were well-founded– in 1983, terrorists blew up our Embassy and killed 63 people. Later that year, 241 U.S. and 58 French soldiers were killed in an attack on USMC barracks in Beirut. The following year, an Embassy annex in Beirut was attacked, and 24 people were killed. Throughout the 1980s, terrorists kidnapped 104 foreigners. As recently as 2006, there was a large-scale evacuation of Americans from Beirut to Cyprus after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.
…So you can see why we were a bit incredulous at being in Beirut. Who would have thought in 2017 we could go to Beirut while Istanbul was off-limits?
Even with the restriction lifted, why would we go to Lebanon? Well, first of all, it is a 25 minute flight from Cyprus (literally– cruising altitude was 14,000 feet). The past few years have also reminded me that we can’t take for granted that antiquities that have stood for hundreds or thousands of years will survive even for decades more– watching the news on the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in Syria is the only evidence you need. We will probably never have the opportunity to go back to Lebanon (or maybe we will, who knows what will happen 30 years from now!), I didn’t want to miss the opportunity.
It was a holiday weekend in Cyprus (Kathara Deftera, or “Clean Monday”), and our outbound flight was so packed only business class tickets were available. Unlike most short-haul flights where business is barely discernible from coach, we had so much leg room I could barely touch the seat in front of me. We also got to watch Middle East Airlines’ epic safety video (included below for your amusement), which was actually amusing and punctuated with lots of unnecessary dancing.
We landed in Beirut at about 11 pm and went through immigration. I was a little worried about being hassled, as we wanted to avoid identifying our U.S. government affiliation if we could, and since we exited Cyprus on our diplomatic passports we wouldn’t have a stamp in our personal passports to show where we’d come from. The immigration officer looked at every single stamp in our passports, which made me nervous– it was only after the fact that I remembered it was illegal to enter Lebanon if you had traveled to Israel. The officer checked Severin’s first, and then mine, and put it up on the counter. Uncharacteristically, Severin snapped my passport up. Severin is smarter than I am– the back of my personal passport had a yellow barcode sticker put on it by…Israeli security! (Subsequently, I found a notepad from our hotel in Tel Aviv in my backpack…not the most discreet.)
I withdrew 300,000 Lebanese pounds from the ATM, which ended up being a whopping $199. The U.S. dollar is accepted everywhere in Lebanon, but I like to expand my “numismatic collection” whenever I can. We jumped in a cab and headed to the Phoenicia Hotel, where we put our luggage through an x-ray machine and walked through metal detectors right at the front door– that was a first for me. Apart from that though, you could have picked up our hotel and dropped it in Las Vegas and no one would find it out of place. There was a grand staircase which Severin insisted on using every time we went everywhere, a large fountain in the lobby, and a “Rodeo Drive” of luxury shops under construction.
