In the days immediately following the toppling of President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali on 14 January, Tunis was a city exhilarated by the success of the revolution. Energized protestors kept up pressure on the newly formed interim government. A sit-in outside government offices in the Kasbah led to the ousting of the few remaining politicians associated with the old regime. Trade unions, now emboldened, organized strikes to demand better salaries and working conditions. On Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the Tunisian equivalent of the Champs-Elysées, strangers spontaneously gathered to discuss politics, economics and social issues. Under the tree-lined central promenade, near the sweet-smelling popcorn stalls or sitting at the Paris-style cafés, people from all walks of life were conversing. As I wandered around talking to them, it was clear that all were proud of their achievement and felt they had won back their dignity. They were thrilled to speak freely, and it was truly exciting to see everyone exercise freedom of speech as if it were a newly discovered skill that needed testing and practice. It was, put simply, democracy in action.

In this heady aftermath of the revolution, feminists – just like liberals, leftists, trade unionists, Islamists and other previously suppressed groups – were busy regrouping and organizing themselves to make sure they would play a role in the new democracy.

Women are very visible in Tunisian society. They mix freely with men, are highly educated and career-minded, and have enjoyed some of the most egalitarian legal rights in the Arab world, enshrined in the Personal Status Code (PSC) of 1957. The PSC was drawn up by Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first president, directly after independence from France and even before the national constitution was written. It improved women’s rights, particularly in family law, by removing some of the more patriarchal aspects of shari’a: polygamy was abolished, the consent of both parties was now required for marriage and judicial procedures for divorce were established. Bourguiba was ousted in 1987 by Ben Ali, who extended the pro-women policies. One of the most interesting aspects of the Tunisian Revolution from a feminist perspective is that many of the women who participated in the protests that brought down Ben Ali are now campaigning to defend the rights they’ve already been enjoying for some time, fearing that the post-revolutionary period might bring a surge in popularity for the Islamist party, Al Nahda (‘the Renaissance’), and a swing towards traditionalist ideas about women.

On 29 January, two independent women’s associations, together with the women’s commission of the national trade unions and the Tunisian League for Human Rights, planned a major demonstration. I went along to talk to some of them.

The demonstration began smoothly, as the women and their male supporters proceeded slowly down Habib Bourguiba Avenue, holding placards and chanting phrases in support both of the revolution and of the safeguarding of women’s rights. But this didn’t last. Quite suddenly, a rowdy group of young men appeared out of nowhere, headed directly at the procession of feminists. It looked like a counter-demonstration. Shouting and creating noisy confusion, the youths marched at the demonstrators head-on, in effect dispersing them. Jostled and almost toppling over, I lost track of the feminist group as they dissolved into the crowd. It was unclear who the invaders were and what they wanted, since they weren’t shouting coherent slogans.

Later, several well-placed sources told me that these were probably unemployed youths hired by members of the old ruling party in order to sabotage the revolution. Later, several well-placed sources told me that these were probably unemployed youths hired by members of the old ruling party in order to sabotage the revolution. But women had more than this to contend with – as I was about to find out. Behind me, angry voices were raised: a man was arguing with one of the women who had been demonstrating. He was criticizing feminists and associating them with Ben Ali’s hated wife Leila. She had been head of the Arab Women’s Organization, but like her husband, she was extremely corrupt, amassing a huge fortune and enjoying a lavish lifestyle while Tunisians suffered unemployment, low salaries and brutal political repression.

Feminism in Tunisia only began to gain widespread grassroots support in the late 1980s, partly as a result of improved education for women. Tunisia’s famously egalitarian gender policy in fact has had more to do with each government’s power struggles than with any real commitment to feminism. Following independence from France in the mid-1950s, Bourguiba prioritized women’s rights as a pragmatic policy designed to undermine his religious and traditionalist rivals. However, when he faced a threat from the left during the seventies and eighties, Bourguiba did not hesitate to make a strategic rapprochement with Islamists. When Ben Ali came to power, he aligned himself with the new, growing feminism and women’s rights advocates – and against an increasingly popular Islamic fundamentalism.

The man criticizing feminists on Habib Bourguiba Avenue was not spared. Two young women were incensed by his complaints and began to lecture him and anyone who would listen. ‘I’m sick of hearing that – you don’t know what you’re talking about!’ one said. The other argued, ‘We’ve got nothing to do with Leila and we’re as against the old regime as you. But women have rights and we’re not going to lose them now.’

At Tunis Airport the very next day, several thousand supporters turned up to welcome Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the Islamist party Al Nahda as he returned from twenty-two years in exile. Members of the party had been persecuted during Ben Ali’s regime, particularly after winning fifteen per cent of votes in the 1989 elections. Only now, in the period following the revolution, could they return to Tunisia.

A small group of anti-Islamist protestors had also gathered at the airport. Both sides were were calm and serious. There wasn’t much loud cheering – just a show of support in numbers. Manachou Marwan, an attractive and assertive young chemistry student, approached me, eager to have her say. She made a persuasive case for the inclusion of Al Nahda in the new democracy. ‘Culturally and religiously, this is an Arab country and people have Islam in their hearts,’ she said. ‘It’s true that the vast majority aren’t practising Muslims, but it’s still an important part of the culture.’ Manachou liked Ghannouchi’s notion of liberty: ‘I choose not to wear the hijab’, Manachou liked Ghannouchi’s notion of liberty: ‘I choose not to wear the hijab.’ she explained, ‘but I believe in my aunt’s or my friend’s right to wear it if they want to.’ Under Ben Ali, women who wore headscarves were actively discriminated against or even banned from schools and certain jobs.

Tunisians on the whole are intolerant of religious extremism, and Al Nahda is a moderate and scholarly Islamist party. In an interview with Reuters soon after his arrival, Ghannouchi stated that he would not run for office, but that Al Nahda would participate in Tunisia’s first free elections and help work towards the democratization of the country. He might have been expressing a moderate message in order to survive in the new era, but it was clear to all those who supported democracy in Tunisia that Al Nahda had to be included in any kind of new democratic system, so that it could be held up to scrutiny and healthily opposed within it.

Feminists are working tirelessly to ensure that women will be represented in the forthcoming elections. Two of the key independent feminist organizations operating in Tunisia over the last twenty years, the Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche sur le Développement and the Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocratiques, are working to this end. But they face many difficulties today because they are unknown to a new generation of women, thanks to the fact that they were suppressed by the Ben Ali regime, which outlawed or harassed all organizations not linked to his party.

Radhia Belhaj Zekri, the president of the Association des Femmes Tunisiennes, is now in her sixties but has the energy of a twenty-year-old. She explained to me how, after 1989, she and her fellow activists suffered the same monitoring and repression as other independent organizations, and had to function discreetly, running their women’s rights awareness and education programmes almost in secret. ‘The number of times we organized events and international conferences, only to be told at the last minute that they were cancelled . . .’ she reminisced. Government officials would simply pay a visit to the conference venues or hotels and tell them not to host the feminists. It’s not surprising that people, like the angry man on Habib Bourguiba Avenue, still confuse the independent women’s organizations with the state-sponsored feminism of the Ben Alis who were effective in hijacking the movement for their own ends.

Nadia Hakimi, the executive director of the Association des Femmes Démocratiques, told me that a general swing back to conservatism is likely, and she believes that Islamists deserve to express themselves after their terrible persecution. But her greatest concerns were more immediate: the many cases of sexism in the workplace and at home, and continued violence against women. A group of volunteers had just returned from Kasserine and other rural regions, where they had been documenting injuries inflicted on men, women and children during the revolution. These areas suffered the most violent crackdowns by security forces.

It was the ‘crazy contradictions of this country’ that caused Nadia to shake her head in frustration. ‘Whole families were terrorized under Ben Ali,’ she said. ‘Yet it was his party, and not the leftists, who defended women’s rights.’ The Arab Spring has opened up the region to the unknown, and no one can predict exactly how events will unfold or how popular the Islamist parties ultimately will be. In Tunisia, women have campaigned alongside men for political emancipation, yet they are paradoxically also in a defensive position. Many feel the need to defend the rights they enjoyed before the revolution while simultaneously building on them and pushing for greater overall political participation. It is a challenging position to be in, but the proliferation of newly created political parties since the revolution reveals that at least the options are no longer hopelessly polarized between dictatorship and Islamism. ■

All photographs ©Lana Asfour

Also on The F Word Online:

The F-word in Pictures: The Artistic Director talks about art in the F-Word.

The latest podcast featuring a conversation between Rachel Cusk, Sigrid Rausing and Taiye Selasi.

Hannah Gersen, Rachel Genn and Tess Lynch on their personal feminist bibles.

The hills along the coastal road south from Beirut are blemished by ugly highrises and concrete blocks abandoned mid-construction, so as I negotiate the lawlessness of the highway, I prefer to glance at the banana plantations and the blindingly blue sea to my right. On this particular morning, the heat and humidity filled the car despite the air conditioning, and my dress was already creased. As soon as I turned off the coastal road at Damour, I began the climb into the Chouf mountains.

The heat became increasingly dry and the air cleaner as I circled green mountains and pine valleys. Most of the villages along the way are modest but others are clearly prosperous. Deir el Qamar, for example, the seat of local governors from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, is beautifully restored. It was Prince Fakhreddine II of Mount Lebanon who first moved his capital here and grew so powerful that the Ottoman sultan eventually had him killed. Although now in the heartland of the Druze community, historically it had a mixed population of Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Deir el Qamar could stand as a microcosm of the country, with its eighteen different religious sects, many of which have coexisted for centuries. The Chouf has traditionally been inhabited by Druze and Christians, who retreated into this mountainous region for self-protection long ago. The Druze are perhaps the most intriguing of the religious minorities in Lebanon, both because of their closely-guarded spiritual beliefs, which are accessible only to the initiated, and thanks to their long-standing reputation of being close-knit and fierce fighters. Walid Jumblatt, the current Druze leader and head of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), consolidated his power in the Chouf during the 1975-90 civil war and has made his main home here. One of the most politically canny and charismatic politicians in Lebanon today, he represents a fascinating form of feudalism that persists in a modern, democratic country. I was on my way to see him after his recent controversial announcement that he had withdrawn from the pro-West ‘March 14’ governmental alliance.

Rounding the head of the Chouf’s main valley, I passed Beiteddine, Lebanon’s most magnificent palace built by local Prince Bashir II, and a little further up the mountain, I came at last to Moukhtara, the home of Lebanon’s Druze leader. I couldn’t see much from the road, but the entrance to my destination was recognizable by the crowds of cars and people. After parking the car, a muscular guard holding a Kalashnikov let me by with an unexpectedly friendly greeting. Ushered through the gates and security check, I continued up the incline until I found myself at the foot of a towering nineteenth-century palace.

Climbing the old stone stairs to one of the main gates, I became increasingly aware of the palace’s architectural beauty and the stunning mountain views it offered. Parked at the bottom of an elegant double stairway leading to another entrance, probably the residential quarter, was a silver and black Harley Davidson: a sleek, modern machine gleaming brightly in this historical and mountainous haven.

In the main courtyard of the faultlessly restored chateau, locals, visitors and semi-official men stood about. Entering through the first doorway, I emerged into an informal majlis or sitting room, where, surrounded by men and visiting supplicants, I found my host. Tall and skinny, with his extraordinary trademark hairstyle, and wearing jeans and navy blazer, he looked and carried himself more like a Sorbonne professor than a warlord.

At Moukhtara, Walid Jumblatt regularly holds court, opening the doors of his palace to members of his community who come to discuss problems and ask for favours. Jumblatt has been called many things: Lebanon’s political weather vane whose manoeuvering reveals the current state of local, regional or international politics; a well-read figure whose quasi-philosophical political statements inspire flurries of media speculation; a cunning practitioner of realpolitik whose shifting allegiances ensured his survival and the protection of the minority Druze community throughout the Lebanese civil war and since. He is probably all these. But for me, his role as a modern feudal lord explains a lot about his politics.

With his sharp eye, he quickly spotted me and interrupted his consultations to greet and lead me into an anteroom before his private study. Here, pre-colonial maps of the Middle East hang on the walls, alongside a large, framed photograph of his father Kamal Jumblatt, one of the defining figures of twentieth-century Middle Eastern politics. An intellectual politician who studied extensively in Beirut and at the Sorbonne, Jumblatt Senior founded the PSP in 1949, led a major uprising in 1958, united the leftist parties with a secularist, pan-Arab ideology, and supported the Palestinian nationalist movement. In 1977 he was assassinated – like his own father before him.

Only two days after I had first spoken to Walid Jumblatt on the telephone, he had declared his withdrawal from the March 14 bloc, a sudden move that arguably spelled its demise, and had spent the previous several days fielding criticism for this move. The March 14 bloc is a Sunni, Christian and Druze alliance that arose after the assassination of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was responsible for most of Lebanon’s reconstruction since the 1975-91 civil war. The assassination led nearly a quarter of the Lebanese population into the streets on March 14 2005, in the largest peaceful demonstration the country had ever seen. The people demanded an investigation into Hariri’s death and the departure of Syria’s military presence from Lebanon. Washington neo-cons seized on this genuinely hope-filled ‘Cedar Revolution’, and Damascus was pressured into withdrawing its troops, which had been present in Lebanon since 1976. Jumblatt was at the forefront of the movement.

Hezbollah, which represents the majority of the Shi’a population and is supported by Syria and Iran, together with its Christian allies led by Michel Aoun, became the official Opposition to the pro-West March 14 government bloc. The neo-cons, unsurprisingly, proved themselves to be treacherous allies when they gave Israel the green light to bomb Lebanon in July 2006, hoping to get rid of Hezbollah once and for all. But the near-continuous bombing that lasted 34 days led to the destruction of the country’s infrastructure (airport, roads, bridges, power station), environmental disasters and over a thousand civilian deaths. Hezbollah, meanwhile, only gained more supporters, mostly from among the Shi’a population who were most affected by the bombing.

Many admit that the March 14 government was disappointing. The Hezbollah-Israel war revealed its weakness. At the end of 2006, after a Shi’a cabinet walk-out over the Hariri tribunal, it was unable to appoint a president for eighteen months. The government’s limitations were again exposed when it tried to dismantle the Oppositions’ telecommunications network, triggering an attempted coup. Syria’s withdrawal had little impact on the everyday workings of Lebanese politics, however, which remained riddled by sectarian antagonisms, corruption and partisan allegiances to outside powers.

Despite differences of opinion on a number of issues within the March 14 bloc, Jumblatt’s announcement was nevertheless a shock. At Moukhtara, I suggested to him that he had dealt the alliance a fatal blow. His answer was succinct: ‘The demands of 14 March are accomplished. We have the mandate for the withdrawal of the Syrians and the Syrians got out. We’ve asked for a tribunal, we’ve got a tribunal. What else? Independence, liberty, freedom… And then what?’

I pressed him on the timing of his withdrawal – only two months after March 14 won the election. He cited the need for the protection by a greater Arab community, speaking of ‘good relations with Syria’ and ‘our cousins and relatives in Syria’, and emphasizing an Arab identity: ‘I feel much more secure when I stick to my Arabness. I am Druze but without Arabism there is no protection.’

This was a 180-degree turn from the man who had spoken out so daringly against Syria, and who had publically stated his fear that he might be assassinated – an understandable fear given his father’s fate and the contemporary wave of assassinations of prominent figures who had criticized Syria.

Of course, in earlier years and during much of the civil war, Jumblatt was Syria’s ally. And now, the Bush administration has gone and a thaw is taking place between Syria and the US. Jumblatt is at heart a pragmatist and seems to be responding to wider international changes as well as to local shifts. But he affirmed only that his main concern was how to solve ‘the biggest problem and injustice in the twentieth and twenty-first century, which is Palestine’. He reiterated his pro-Palestinian position and reclaimed his Arab identity, brushing off his previous stance as a mistake: ‘At one time I committed the error of going to the neo-conservatives […] Now I’m back to my origins, hamdulilah (thank God).’

It’s hard to trust the sincerity of this return to his leftist roots or, for that matter, of his earlier flirtation with the neo-cons. I put it to him that during his time as a March 14 leader, he had let down the Druze of Syria, who, as a vulnerable minority, may have been endangered by his provocative statements against Syria. He did not attempt to justify himself and, with a sigh, simply admitted that he had.

Perhaps sincerity is irrelevant for any Lebanese politician, let alone one as slippery as Jumblatt, since history so often seems to repeat itself in Lebanon: Israeli invasions, Syrian interventions, regional and international attempts to influence local actors, and a confessional political system that sees sons succeed fathers as leaders of the same, slightly updated political parties. Time curiously stands still in the midst of apparently dramatic changes, and it is perhaps Jumblatt’s philosophical bent, combined with the unflinching loyalty he receives from his community that make him a continued and potent actor on the political scene. In reality, many Druze were quietly horrified at his withdrawal from March 14, but the fact that they continued to support him ensured his lasting power and, in turn, their own protection.

Jumblatt certainly enjoys an idiosyncratically strong loyalty from his community. He is known as Walid ‘Beyk’, a title (originally military) conferred on the Jumblatts centuries ago. Among the people surrounding Jumblatt in Moukhtara during my visit, there was a woman with a baby in her arms, a foreign woman and her Lebanese husband, and several men waiting patiently to gain the leader’s ear. The supplicants come to ask for help with legal issues or land conflicts with neighbours, or to make requests on behalf of their children, who may need a scholarship or help in becoming officers in the army.

They sit or stand informally, but respectfully, in the reception room, where cushion-covered seating runs along all four walls, and in the outer courtyard, where they can lean against a traditional well or under an ancient Byzantine mosaic on the wall. The semi-official men who seemed to hang about aimlessly, talking in low tones, are modern ‘courtiers’ in charge of the various Druze educational and social institutions, so that particular requests may be followed up immediately. Most were wearing casual suits and shirts without ties, but a few had on the traditional Druze sherwal (baggy black trousers) and white skullcap.

Not all those who make the trip to Moukhtara are Druze, since there are many Christians and some Sunni and Shi’a Muslims who live among Druze communities and whose interests are also partly represented by Jumblatt. Full of nervous energy, the Beyk doesn’t sit still for very long and is given to checking his mobile phone while people whisper their requests. He makes impatient noises or raises his voice when someone comes along with a banal problem, such as a collapsed garden wall. A white hunting dog dozes by his side throughout these consultations and then follows him from room to room.

This cosy feudalism initially seems at odds with Jumblatt’s pragmatic politics, but it is even more strange when one considers his modern, cosmopolitan outlook. For instance, he founded the annual international Beiteddine music festival during the civil war, and his wife Noura is a keen patron of the arts. A wine enthusiast, he is the majority shareholder in Chateau Kefraya, Lebanon’s second largest winery, and he adores Harley Davidsons. He is also said to enjoy a party. Most significantly, as president of the Chouf Cedar Reserve committee, Jumblatt has helped save the Lebanese cedar tree and countless endangered animal and plant species, and has created the largest nature reserve in the country. His concern for the environment has spread throughout the area: on my drive up to Moukhtara, I was struck by the spotlessness of the landscape. There is no litter here as there is all along the coastal road, and the detritus of building developments that seem to be ubiquitous in the country are a distant memory.

And yet, the feudalism is not really so odd. It is a logical extension of the Lebanese confessional system that distributes political positions according to sect and therefore permits the persistence of a traditional feudalism in the modern form of political clientelism. The Prime Minister must be Sunni, the President a Maronite Christian, the Speaker of the House a Shi’a Muslim, and so on, more or less, among the eighteen official sects.

Druzism is a philosophical offshoot of Shi’a Islam (Ismailism, to be precise) and is influenced by Sufism. Its esoteric nature kept it secret from all but the initiated, partly for the protection of the community. I asked Sami Makarem, professor of Arabic Literature, Islamic Thought and Sufism at the American University of Beirut, to explain the strong feudal allegiance the Druze continue to offer their leader. For Makarem, the Druze are historically a military people: they descend from the Tanukhids, who came from the Aleppo region to Lebanon in 1017 because the Abbasid authority wanted them to defend the Lebanese coast from the Byzantines. The Tanukhids embraced Ismaili Shi’ism and then Druzism, and continued to defend the Lebanese coast and Beqaa valley for the following five centuries under the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties. Their military past explains the way in which their leader became both a military and a political figure. The importance of land accompanies this type of military loyalty, particularly as the Druze were granted feudal fiefdoms by the caliphates and local empires they defended. Interestingly, the Druze are today the only Arabs allowed to join the Israeli army, part of Israel’s ‘divide and rule’ policy over the Palestinian population. But in most of the region, the Druze have been strongly associated with anti-colonialism and nationalism.

Jumblatt’s current political about-turns may be viewed cynically, but they are effective because of his community’s support, and the return to his leftist roots is not so much ideological as simply a question of security and self-protection. ‘I feel safer as part of a bigger group’, he says. He believes that there used to be ‘a more effective left’ in the Middle East during his father’s era, but that now, in the age of globalization, there is no alternative but to be pragmatic.

So what is Jumblatt confronting now? His own explanation that March 14 achieved what it had set out to do is certainly true. The alliance did not, as was hoped, lead to a more profound unification of the nation. There remained differences in opinion among the allies, and the division between March 14 and the opposition was further cemented. This was apparent even after March 14’s election victory when it took months to form a cabinet. Jumblatt has local concerns, to be sure, including jockeying for important cabinet seats and achieving neutrality in any potential Sunni-Shi’a rift within Lebanon. But his manoeuvering is also a response to the wider regional and international situation, which he was the first to understand. With the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the stated intention to prevent further Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, the Obama administration at least appears to have a different approach towards the Middle East. It is also bringing Syria into the international fold, loosening her strategic alliance with Iran. Recent meetings between Saudi king Abdullah and Syrian president Assad signal a healing of their rift and a possible regional configuration that sees a Saudi-Syria understanding to counterbalance Iran. Jumblatt, in response, is reconfiguring his own position in order to ensure his survival in the new world order.

For Jumblatt, ‘there is no Lebanese nation’: for as long as the ‘old-fashioned, outdated’ sectarian system remains in place, he believes, people will function in a sectarian and feudal fashion. So, for the time being, he can only be pragmatic, remain at the head of his community, and attend to situations as they arise. It is a grim worldview, but one that is at least more plausible than either the overblown rhetoric of the religious parties or the wishful idea that Lebanon can rely on the West to sort things out. Intelligent, unpredictable, occasionally ruthless, Jumblatt shows that he is still very much in the game.

He also continues to maintain a balancing act. While contending to be a player in national politics, he must simultaneously represent the Druze community effectively enough to preserve his position as their leader, and also respond to the politics of external powers who are always nearby and ready to meddle in a small, weak Lebanon. Although many condemned his abandonment of March 14, many others, certain at least of his survival instinct, wondered what he knew or foresaw that they didn’t.

I landed in Beirut on May 21, the day of the agreement in Doha. Eighteen months of stalemate between the pro-Western government (the ‘March 14’ coalition of Sunni, Druze and Christian parties) and the opposition (the Shi’a Hezbollah and its unlikely Christian ally, Michel Aoun), during which the parliamentary vote for the President of the Republic was postponed countless times, had culminated in Hezbollah’s march into west Beirut and the Chouf mountains for two tense weeks in May.

Hamra, Beirut’s Oxford Street, had been abandoned as Hezbollah gunmen occupied the area. People hid in their houses, away from the windows, while bullets flew past in clashes between the gunmen and the March 14 militias. The country was brought closer to civil war than at any time since 1990.

I was determined that this latest crisis wouldn’t keep me out of the country of my birth. Having grown up in London because of the 1975-1990 civil war, I have spent much of my adult life making up for the absence. The Rafik Hariri airport – Lebanon’s only international airport – had been closed for a few days but reopened when Hezbollah handed its positions to the Lebanese army. As my plane took off from Heathrow, I didn’t know whether the airport would close again. But during my flight, Qatar performed its new role as regional peacemaker, and the meeting it hosted in Doha came to an unexpectedly successful conclusion. When I landed there was clearly a sense of relief. After days stuck indoors, fearing the worst, people were emerging into the streets, returning to bars and restaurants, happy but wary, disorientated by the suddenness of the agreement, trying to adjust to the idea that it was going to be a calm summer after all.

The abruptness of both the crisis and its resolution proved not only that ordinary people had little control over their destinies, but also that they were distanced from the political classes and the greater regional and international powers. Internal conflict and external interests could still undermine Lebanon as a nation state, as had been made apparent during the devastating July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

With each crisis, a wave of immigration depletes the country of its population and businesses. I spent a day working at my friend Mira’s office when the wifi connection in my building wasn’t working. Mira is an investment banker who gave up a job at Lazard in London to move back to Beirut in 2002, and now works for a Lebanese corporate finance and advisory firm. The latest events had emptied her office: her colleagues were either at the Dubai branch, where the company increasingly had more work than in Lebanon, or had resigned and left the country. I had the pick of empty desks and the two of us worked alone in the downtown prime real estate office, occasionally wandering over to the window to look at the view over Martyr’s square.

Since December 2006, opposition demonstrators had been occupying Martyr’s Square, Beirut’s symbolic heart and the centre of the late Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s massive post-civil war reconstruction project. Doha gave Hezbollah and its allies a third of the cabinet seats (which they had wanted since Hezbollah’s ‘victory’ against Israel in 2006), a proportion that would allow them to veto any policies they don’t like (including the UN tribunal investigating Hariri’s assassination, for which Syria was blamed). In its typically organized and disciplined way, Hezbollah removed the tents in Martyr’s Square as soon as the agreement was reached in Doha, cleaned up the streets and even planted some trees. Literally overnight, downtown was opened up again, as if nothing had ever happened. The roads are now reopened to traffic and the abandoned shops and restaurants are restored to life. Mira can park near her office and have lunch meetings nearby, and families are once again taking evening strolls and eating ice cream in the area. In the weeks following the Doha peace, there have been free, celebratory open-air pop concerts in Martyr’s Square. Haifa Wehbe (sporting the new President’s face on her tight T-shirt), Nancy Ajram and Magida el Rumi, among others, delight mixed audiences, introducing their songs with warm effusions about Lebanese unity.

Having arrived to find an atmosphere of combined celebration and wariness, I felt that an understanding of the latest crisis required a trip to Hezbollah heartland to gage how the Shi’a, who were hardest hit by the 2006 war, were adjusting to their latest, successful show of force and consequent larger participation in Lebanese politics. The 2006 war had created the biggest division yet between the government and Hezbollah, whom it blamed for provoking Israel and bringing destruction to the whole country. If that war had led to political stalemate, then this recent crisis clearly continues to polarize the nation at all levels of society, as sectarian tensions once again rise to the surface. March 14 supporters fear that Hezbollah threatens a liberal way of life and may bring the Iranian ideology of Wilayat al Faqih to Lebanon – though many Lebanese Shi’a see no role for the Iranian model in Lebanon . Opposition supporters, on the other hand, complain about the government’s corruption, weakness and traditional exclusion of the Shi’a underclasses.

The road south is long and smooth. Bomb craters and destroyed bridges no longer block the way, forcing convoluted detours. At regular intervals, interspersed with the occasional oversized poster of a young martyr’s smiling face, signs from the Iranian government declare its contribution to the reconstruction: ‘We rebuilt the bridges’, ‘we planted the gardens’, ‘we fixed the roads’, ‘we rebuilt the schools’, ‘we rebuilt the churches and mosques’.

Money from Iran and Qatar has gone directly into the reconstruction of roads, bridges and villages, bypassing the Lebanese government, who would have made the reconstruction process a lot slower, and probably also wasted or ‘lost’ some of the funds. Hezbollah, of course, was first on the scene, giving US$10,000 to each family or person whose home was damaged within a month of the war’s end. With this amount, they could rent temporary accommodation while their home was rebuilt.

The view along the road from Tibnin over the valley and mountains towards Bint Jbeil, Aitaaroun, Maroun al Ras and Yaroun is unexpectedly beautiful and serene. The green and ochre fields are neatly ploughed and the terraced mountainsides timelessly ordered. Less than two years on, the reconstruction of the border villages that were devastated by Israeli bombs is not only in full swing but also far advanced. Having seen the shocking destruction in some areas two months after the war, I found the remarkable progress to be a welcome sight. Qatar took on the reconstruction of four of the villages that were hardest hit – Bint Jbeil, Ainata, Aita el Chaab and Khiam – while Iran financially supported Hezbollah and also directly hired Lebanese engineering companies to do the work.

It was business as usual in Bint Jbeil, with the busy weekly market attracting farmers and shoppers from the wider area. This is the town where Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah gave his famous victory speech in May 2000, when Israel withdrew from its twenty-two-year occupation of the south. In the 2006 war, Hezbollah fighters prevented the Israeli tanks and infantry from entering the town centre and held them off at its edges, but relentless bombing destroyed everything anyway. Many civilians were trapped in basements for up to twenty days before there was a forty-eight hour break in the onslaught. I talked to an elderly lady, Mrs Beydoun, whose late husband had built the Imam al Ali mosque. She still looks after it and lives in an apartment upstairs. For fifteen days and nights of continual bombing, 150 residents of Bint Jbeil, all women, children and old people, lived in the cellar under the mosque. Unlike others who were sheltering in basements, they managed to get some food when a nearby grocery store was bombed: a few individuals snuck out to bring back what they could. Eventually they risked the frightening journey north under the bombs. Mrs Beydoun’s flat upstairs and much of the mosque were destroyed, but the Qataris had it all fixed up within nine months. ‘What would you do if it happened again?’ I asked. ‘God willing it won’t. Something like that can’t be taken more than once in a lifetime’.

In the neighbouring village of Ainata , we dropped by to see Samira Khanafer. She is the cousin of my driver, Mohamed, and we had coffee and fig rolls while her teenage daughters watched a lurid Turkish soap dubbed into Arabic on TV. I asked about her family’s experience. They heard the bombs in nearby Aita el Chaab first, and then small bombs fell on Ainata for five days. They turned into large bombs on the sixth day, so on the eighth she left with her husband, four children and parents. The planes were above them on their journey north, a car full of civilians in front of them was hit, but they continued, making a large detour around the bombed UN station in Tyre . They ended up in Bhamdoun in the mountains, where the extended family met up and rented a flat at $2000 a month for the remainder of the war.

Samira and her family had left everything and everything was turned to rubble but, like most people, they returned as soon as the war ended. The Lebanese Army, the Qataris and the UN swept some of the region for unexploded munitions and cluster bombs, but an estimated million remain unfound, and Israel still refuses to tell the UN where they were dropped. About 100 million dollars of farm crops have been lost because of these, forty people have been killed and over 250 injured. Samira’s aunt bent down to pick up what she thought was a lettuce leaf in her garden but a cluster bomb removed her fingers and exploded in her face and chest. She died a month later.

I asked Samira whether, having gone through the war, she could rebuild again if there were another. ‘Of course’, she said. ‘We’re used to it.’ Mohamed joins in at this point: ‘ Israel has been coming here for forty years, we’re used to rebuilding. We’re from here, this is our home. Of course we’ll rebuild.’

‘And what about the dead? Over a thousand, mostly civilians?’ I asked.

‘Life goes on. We’re born here, we live here, we return here,’ Mohamed continued.

Mohamed, who is not affiliated with Hezbollah at all, had nevertheless explained to me on the journey down that Hezbollah is the people, and the south is the home of the people. The occupation had already emptied much of the area of its residents: men and teenage boys left to avoid being recruited by the Israelis into the South Lebanese Army. Since the end of the occupation, men have been leaving their villages to find work, but they often return. Many families who travel to America and Africa , the most common destinations for the Shi’a of the south, return to their villages to build large villas with the money they made abroad and make sure their children remain Lebanese.

On the way out of Ainata, we pass one of these enormous villas. The owner, Mohamed’s distant relative, had made his fortune in America and brought back with him a piece of his adopted country. Mohamed waved a twenty-dollar bill in my face: ‘See, it’s this house’. It was indeed the White House itself, rebuilt in the southern Lebanese village that had been bombed by Israel with American support.

The journey continued along a far bumpier road. We made a detour to the mixed Christian and Muslim village of Yaroun , and returned to pass through the Christian village of Ain Ibel , along the lush tobacco fields around Rmeich, and on to Aita el Chaab, the village closest to the southern border. The reconstruction is not far advanced here, and the road is still damaged by potholes caused by bombs. We drove slowly to avoid destroying the creaking car. Jolting and zigzagging along, we were also more or less following the length of the Israeli border, and at some point a surreal dirt road emerged, apparently from nowhere, heading in our direction. It was the road the Israelis built straight through the border to drive their tanks into Lebanon .

We passed a group of men in blue uniforms, UN guys from Fiji , resting under the makeshift shelter of a half-destroyed house. We acknowledged them with a wave and soon realized we had missed the turning to Aita el Chaab. We returned along the uncomfortable road, nodding at the Fijians again, and finally arrived, to be greeted by a poster of Amal leader Nabih Berri with local martyr Mohamed Srour. We stopped at the first grocery store and I ran in to buy some Coke. I asked the young man behind the counter to point out which parts of the village were most destroyed during the war, then asked him whether he was happy with the reconstruction.

He was. His family has had two instalments of money from Qatar , at intervals of three or six months. The third and final instalment will be handed over shortly, after they show the photographs of the progress on their house. Hezbollah gave them the standard $10,000 dollars and a further $6,000 gift for the grocery shop.

I asked him where he went during the bombing.

‘I stayed here’.

‘Here?’

‘Yes,’ he said, with a gesture that meant ‘that’s all I have to say’.

‘You mean you were a fighter?’

Ali lowered his eyes modestly and I looked at him carefully. He was tall, good-looking, clean-cut, and exuded a quiet confidence: south Lebanon’s finest. I pressed him to tell me what happened.

The women, children and older residents fled to one of the nearby Christian towns and he remained to defend the village with several other fighters, locals backed by Hezbollah. The bombing only let up during three serious attempts to take over the whole village. I had already heard that the month-long resistance in Aita al Chaab had become a local legend. In one of the skirmishes, Ali explained, they ambushed an Israeli armoured tank entering the village to flatten houses and chase out the fighters.

‘The tank remained in Lebanon ’, he concluded, as if it were a prize. It may well have ended up in Hezbollah’s ‘House of the Spider’ exhibition, which commemorated the first anniversary of the war last year and displayed captured IDF weapons and personal objects, such as a soldier’s iPod.

Would you stay and fight again?’ I asked Ali.

‘Yes. And again and again. If it happens again no one will leave. We’re stronger now’.

‘Was it worth it? With over a thousand killed, mostly civilians?’

‘This is my home. We’ll stay. My brother too – ’ he said, gesturing to a teenage boy entering the shop, ‘he’ll stay’. His brother smiled shyly, but proudly.

On the road back through Naqoura and northwards along the banana fields, I think about Mohamed’s words. Hezbollah is the people, and the south is their home.

In Beirut , the question of Hezbollah’s status as a resistance group continues to be questioned and debated. Hezbollah is now entering a more political phase, but it is not handing over its weapons and is in fact building up its own independent communication network. And if the west does not allow the Lebanese Army to become a strong and viable defence force, one argument goes, someone has to defend the country in case of another attack.

Until such issues are settled, Lebanon remains in a precarious situation. There is a president at last, but the country still hasn’t managed to put together a cabinet. The different parties wrangle over the more interesting seats, hoping to be in a stronger position when the 2009 elections come around. If the cabinet is not formed, the head of the Lebanese Army cannot be appointed, and the internal security situation also remains unstable. The Army plays a sensitive role and does not like to interfere in sectarian fighting, since its recruits come from all sects; the recent Sunni-Shi’a clashes in Tripoli and the Beqaa valley therefore continue mostly uncontrolled. Without a cabinet, necessary economic, social and political reforms cannot be implemented, the day to day running of the country is on hold, and there remains little investor confidence.

The recent visits of Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleeza Rice indicate a return to some sort of normality for now, but they passed by with little comment or fanfare. I did notice, though, that for the short duration of each of the state visits, certain billboards along the highway from the airport into Beirut were removed and replaced by Lebanese and French flags. These depicted Hezbollah leaders, and one poster, referring to the bombing of Qana, showed Condi baring her fangs, sucking the blood of a baby. American foreign policy is perceived as murderous by Hezbollah and the people of the south who were most affected by it. In fact, all Lebanese see the west’s support for or reluctance to stop the bombing in 2006 as unjust and inhuman. However, the war further polarized the country between government and opposition, increasing support for Hezbollah among those who were hardest hit by the bombing. With the May clashes, Hezbollah flexed its muscles, and the Doha agreement marks its substantial entry into mainstream politics. The question of whether Hezbollah can continue to call itself a ‘resistance’ has become even more pressing.

Every two weeks we will be showcasing original fiction from an emerging writer, as part of our New Voices feature. The third in our series is ‘Reconstruction’. Its author, Lana Asfour, speaks to Roy Robins.

RR: Where are you from?

LA: I was born in Beirut and grew up in London.

When did you start writing? And why?

I started writing early on, and I’m sure that my early experience of cultural difference was defining and motivating.

‘Reconstruction’ is about Maya, a young Lebanese-born architect who, in the months before 9/11, returns to Beirut, and her complicated relationship with her British boyfriend, Alex. What makes ‘Reconstruction’ remarkable is how Maya’s story is used to explore a broader, more ambitious narrative: the story of a city, forever changing, of identity and uncertainty and the ways in which cultures converge. What was the germ of ‘Reconstruction’?

Loss, memory and reconstruction have been present in my thoughts ever since I can remember. These took shape in the particular setting of ‘Reconstruction’ when I was working as a journalist in Lebanon during the post-civil-war reconstruction period. I spent a lot of time walking around, looking at buildings and talking to architects who were doing very exciting work. Lebanon’s beauty and grace seemed to me to lie in its rebirth – in the constant change and renewal that was occurring everywhere around me – precisely because I was also looking at the vestiges of past civilisations and at the horrific signs of violence, destruction and neglect in the cities and landscape, which I didn’t think should be forgotten in the reconstruction process.

More than anything, the story seems to be about how politics (both domestic and global) intrudes upon everyday life. For instance, the building upon which Maya works can be seen as a metaphor for Beirut. Was it a conscious decision on your part to make Maya's story mirror these larger issues?

Yes. In many parts of the world everyday life and relationships are inseparable from the wider political situation – in Iraq and Palestine, for example. In Lebanon, people can ignore politics to a certain degree in order to live normally, but at some level their lives remain fluid, uncertain and adaptable to the situation at hand. People have seen far too much conflict in recent history not to be wary even in times of peace. The stability of the reconstruction years of the 1990s may have encouraged many to believe that things could only progress, despite inherent faults in the system, but the Israeli war of 2006 shattered this idea. ‘Reconstruction’ does also look beyond contemporary politics. The eastern Mediterranean is the meeting point of so many ancient and modern cultures and civilisations, and because of this there is a deeply ingrained cosmopolitanism which survives conflict and the vacillations of particular political regimes (though these can unfortunately also erode it). People of different religions and ethnicities have lived side by side for millennia in the Middle East, sometimes at war but more often peacefully, and this kind of historical experience – in which tolerance overwhelmingly has been the standard – can and should stand up to those who hold simplistic assumptions about the Arab world, and to those who wish cynically to control or conquer it.

You write especially well about landscape.

I like to evoke a sense of place – it’s also important if architecture is a theme. I’m currently working on a novel in which a sense of place is central, though I’m restricting descriptions of landscape to what’s significant for the action of the novel as a whole.

You are an academic and also a journalist. Do either of these disciplines aid the discipline of writing fiction?

Academia has certainly encouraged me to be disciplined and exacting, and my work on the eighteenth-century novel must have had some impact on my ideas about representation. Journalism opened up the wider world and gave me the opportunity to write more accessibly. Fictional writing benefits from these other forms, and each type of writing provides a welcome change that helps the others, keeping them fresh and relevant. I do find in fiction the greatest freedom and therefore the greatest potential meaning.

Every two weeks we will be showcasing original fiction from an emerging writer, as part of our New Voices feature. The next in our series – ‘Reconstruction’. Read an interview with Lana Asfour here.

There’s nothing like watching the summer sunset with a glass of jellab.

Maya squints as the sun descends to eye level but it’s gentle and it warms her cheeks, and with a spoon she chases the floating pine nuts in the sweet raisin and date concentrate. For seven minutes the balcony is under a shadow while the sun hides behind the Dream Tower to the left – only two-thirds built and already eighteen floors high. Eighteen floors of concrete and pink stone, misplaced windows and stunted balconies. The sun reappears, lower and redder, and the view is best when she focuses on the patch of sea that isn’t blocked by one of these highrises. The traffic is heavy along the Corniche, car horns compete with the generators and drills of the construction site, and the few joggers who have ventured out before dark sweat in the heat. To the right, the shabby beauty of an Ottoman house stands out against the sea with its crumbling stone walls, tall windows, spacious balconies and arched colonnades, dignified beside its newer neighbours.

Alex follows her around a corner in the eerily empty downtown area. Perfect Ottoman buildings rise in clusters in flattened sections of land. The whirr and clamour of construction surrounds them. They stop in front of a building, an office block that retains the façade of a mandate-period embassy.

‘This is it,’ Maya says.

The external structure is close to completion, apart from the top two floors and the stairs.

‘We wanted to include the memory of the civil war within the renovation,’ she explains, ‘so we cleaned the stones but didn’t repair or replace them. See how craggy they are? Those are bullet marks.’

Alex nods. Indeed, he finds that the overall effect is ghostly and provides a strange but not unattractive contrast to the sharper outlines of the neighbouring reconstructed buildings.

‘It bears its own history, but also looks forward. It’s solid enough to carry a modern penthouse.’ A sleek top floor made of glass and steel will crown the spectral edifice, complete with a light-sensitive shutter mechanism. It will be used as the firm’s office as it expands and takes on new projects.

She leads him into the building site, but moves off to discuss the next stages, the completion of the stairs and top floors, with the site manager, Walid, who is eager to show her what they’ve done since yesterday. She’s annoyed that the fourth floor still has no floor and the steel reinforcements haven’t arrived, but Walid seems to assure her it will all be done on time.

It’s the first time Alex has visited her in Beirut. She only moved here a few months ago and it’s striking how much authority she commands. The Syrian workmen look up at him for a moment. He carefully steps through the loose chippings and climbs the staircase until it stops suddenly on the fourth floor. Downtown spreads out before him through a large gap in the wall. Yellow cranes slowly rotate over half-buildings, scaffolding covers damaged sections of mosques and churches, and the excavated centre of Martyrs’ Square exposes Roman ruins. The synagogue stands surprisingly untouched, and he can just make out the site of the Phoenician wall.

Next to him, a workman hangs precariously out of a window hole to measure something, and another blowtorches a strip of metal without wearing a visor.

‘Be careful,’ Maya says as she appears on the stairs and follows Alex’s gaze to the view. ‘Many of the badly damaged façades have been entirely rebuilt. Perfect replicas. Some buildings are just fantasies: as long as it has three arches and a red roof, the Saudi engineers think it looks like an old Lebanese house. All around the city the real ones are knocked down by highrise developers. Campaigners only manage to save a few.’

Walking back, Alex is quick to dismiss the airbrushed renovations. It’s like Disneyland. And not all the firms are like Maya’s – the workers are rarely insured. They’re paid cash, good sums for them back home, but they’re hardly going to go to court if they’re injured. Anyway, he’s more interested in the scars of war on the city he discovers on long walks while she is at work: chaotic bullet hole patterns on walls and trees, bomb-collapsed roofs, paneless windows, buildings without façades revealing hanging washing and displaced families squatting in rubble, skeletal structures along the wartime green line and at east-west crossing points.

Maya teaches him some Arabic phrases to use on his excursions, and in the evenings takes him to the bars and restaurants of Monot. There’s a buzz, an excitement, and plenty of late-night discussion. Everyone’s talking about the reconstruction, everyone is reconstructing – architects, entrepreneurs, journalists, lawyers, UN, NGOs, plastic surgeons. It’s the generation that came of age with the Taif peace. Some have been here all through, but many are returning after the exile of the war years, throwing themselves into a new life with a voracious energy inspired by a hopeful city.

He asks almost everyone he meets about the civil war and each discussion helps to fill out the picture, and complicates it, with all the players and endless twists and turns. When they can explain no further, he entertains them with the story of how he got lost: an hour’s joyride with a manic taxi driver who ignored his choice of destination and offered him girls and drugs with wild gestures. Uninteresting, he was dropped suddenly in a suburb along the old airport road – Ouzai, he learns – where above the uncollected rubbish rotting in the sun, the yellow and green flags are still flying high for the first anniversary of the liberation of the south.

‘I don’t think we have a future together,’ Maya says flatly after a night out.

Alex wonders what she’s playing at. She looks serious. Sounds serious. But she can’t be. He storms out to the balcony, betting with himself she’ll follow, and has the foresight to grab the cigarettes and bottle of gin he bought at Heathrow. She doesn’t follow, but busies herself tidying the apartment, washing the dishes, probably going through her notes on the building site. So conscientious.

He throws himself down in a white plastic chair, which bends to his movements. He picks up a forgotten jellab-stained glass, fills it with gin, gropes for cigarette and lighter. He stares at the black sea and the Dream Tower.

She’ll follow, he thinks, if he waits long enough…

Maybe an hour later, she comes out, experimentally. There’s a hint of anxiety in her dark eyes. He soon drives it away: ‘Come back to London and marry me.’

‘Let’s just enjoy your visit,’ she answers, closing the balcony door against mosquitoes. ‘I live here now.’

Yes, why did she move? Okay, she was born here. And designing hospital wings, shopping malls and underground carparks for the firm in London was beginning to grind her down. But wasn’t meeting him enough?

‘How long are you going to stay here?’

‘I don’t know.’

She’s serious. There must be someone else. An enthusiastic architect, no doubt. Or a sharp banker. He fills another glass. This needs a clear mind. And some strategy.

‘Listen,’ he ventures, ‘I haven’t cheated on you. Well, only once and I regretted it.’

She leans against the railing and looks out. Not quite the response he wanted. He can see that she doesn’t care. Or there’s someone else and she’s not telling. Either way, it’s not good. She stays like that, so he rambles about his feelings, whatever they are – he’s not really sure as another hour passes and he fills a third glass.

Finally she turns to go in and for a half-second meets his eye. She’s tired, pale. There’s sadness perhaps, and bewilderment, but mainly absence. She wants to move on. He’s causing a scene, he knows it, but he makes his decision. He won’t be swept under. She’s not better than him.

If he waits long enough…

Maya wakes early, disorientated and unrested. The memory of the night before brings nausea with consciousness. Why can’t he go away? Why did he confess? She was right to have had her own fling, after all, inconsequential though it had been. But there he is, still on the balcony, with pale, contorted face: a statue of a satyr at a fête galante. She pads to the kitchen, nibbles bread, zaatar and olive oil. She needs the strength.

She thinks he doesn’t get it, this place. He takes things for granted – employment rights, zoning laws. But the country has hardly been born. These things have to be fought for and created. And here there’s more potential for change than anywhere she’s ever been. Downtown just needs more time. The stones will age, the paint will peel, people will fill the streets. It will encourage reconstruction in other areas, and social services will follow. It’s a new millennium: the south has been liberated, the younger Assad might loosen Syria’s grip, good things are possible.

She steps outside. He’s still in the plastic chair, black circles under eyes that are heavy with exaggerated reproach. She looks away. On the fifth floor of the adjacent block, a similar 1950s building, yellow shutters are pushed open. A rotund woman moves about the kitchen. A man in a suit appears, they exchange a few words, a kiss, he disappears again. A minute later, carrying a briefcase, he steps into the street, footsteps on the broken pavement, the echo of the heavy glass door slamming in the coolness of the morning. For a moment, revulsion throbs in her throat and behind her eyes. She agreed to Alex’s visit, but she won’t be stuck with him.

Behind her, he moves in the chair. “I’m going to leave,” he announces, slowly unfolding himself and standing up.

Humility at last? Before she decides, he shows her his wounded eyes.

‘Stay.’

On Saturday they rent a car and head north from Daoura roundabout, along the stretch of highway to Jounieh, where the motorcycle boys race each other. She’s seen them ride two together, bare-headed, weaving between cars at high speed. They rev their engines and raise their front wheels and scream, exhilarated, against the wind.

Alex drives nervously through the anarchy of the highway, through Jbeil and Batroun and finally to Tripoli. They enter the city on a main road lined by towering palm trees and bulky concrete blocks built at an angle from the street like quills of an arrow and dominating the suburban and commercial districts outside the centre. Unlike downtown Beirut, the heart of Tripoli’s old city wasn’t destroyed by the war. The winding alleys of the souqs smell of baking bread, spices, raw meat and fish. Rows of yellow-gold jewellery gleam in the windows of the Souq el Dahab, whose old stone walls were recently renovated by the municipality. In the Khan el Saboun, first built as an Ottoman barracks, soap is made in the traditional way and scented with almond oil, amber or flower essences. Shafts of light fall through the arches of the fourteenth-century Souq el Khayateen, illuminating the cobblestones and stacked rolls of coloured cotton, wool, silk and polyester. And in the Souq el Haraj, a Mameluk bazaar with Byzantine granite columns, a team of German restorers work on the dilapidated vaulted ceiling.

Outside the city, they find the Niemeyer International Fair, which had not quite been completed when the war started. The stark concrete forms, with metal reinforcements still protruding, sit neglected in a well-tended garden. They climb to the flat top of a trumpet-shaped structure and look out over the colonnaded pavilion, the slender arch, pyramid and dome, at the messy rows of the city highrises and beyond them to the mountains.

They have a late lunch in one of the run-down seafront restaurants of Al Mina. It’s on the first floor, above an ice-cream parlour, and has a faded, pre-war elegance. The discoloured fleur-de-lys wallpaper, mirrored stairway and heavy European tapestry chairs sit comfortably with the Mediterranean functionality of the slim tables, the oriental glass lanterns, ornate ceiling, and large open windows looking down to the sea. The waiter, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, offers them the half-empty restaurant with a graceful gesture. He gives Maya the menu in Arabic and Alex the French version as they choose a table by one of the open windows. A sea breeze lifts Alex’s fine brown hair, his face serene.

He was in the year below her at the Bartlett, but they didn’t know each other because he left the Architecture programme after the first term. They only met last year at a conference on the development of the East End. He had become a lecturer in Urban History. In his presentation he argued for modernization with local awareness and, catching her eye, pointed out that Covent Garden would have been demolished during the seventies if it hadn’t been for local campaigners. Of course, she loitered afterwards to ask questions. For the next six months they walked all over London, talked about every building and debated with his students at the college bar.

There’s an office lunch behind them, men in tired suits with gelled hair, maybe local politicians. Their voices are carried across the restaurant on the warm, damp air, deep and indistinct. A drop of lemon juice trickles down Maya’s wrist as she licks her fingers, savouring the pure flavours of grilled shrimp and Sultan Ibrahim. Alex laughs, his blue eyes teasing. She looks around the room, through the window, but finally returns the gaze, laughing at the insolence, and reaches out to pinch his soft suntanned arm.

On the last day of his visit, Maya takes the morning off and waits while he endures the interview she’s arranged for him at the American University. She walks down to Bliss Street and breakfasts on a manousheh from Faisal’s. Then a stroll through the campus, with its vista down over the grounds all the way to the sea, the tall pines and clusters of oleander along the winding paths, the sports oval at the bottom. She follows the pathways and stone stairways, circling the old green-shuttered villas, the dean’s house and newer dormitory blocks. The odours of the hibiscus and jasmine, the pine trees and warm red earth are still faint and fresh. Students sit on benches in the shade of carob trees, reading or flirting, and stray cats gather at a safe distance around those who fumble with sandwich wrappers.

Would he start over?

Inside the Urban Planning department, Dr Kamal delicately scratches his ear with a long-nailed pinky finger while examining Alex’s CV. It’s impressive. The young man across his desk waits with an unnerving stare. Kamal decides not to look up before finding the right words. At least this one isn’t Lebanese, he thinks. A foreigner is worth more – gets paid more – even if he’s from an obscure state college in the Midwest. There’s no competition. But a Lebanese who returns from abroad is harder to deal with. Like Kamal’s new colleague Rania. With her winning smile and PhD from Columbia, she’s well versed in the latest theoretical discourse. They come back, with their confidence and bad Arabic, and change all the standards. And Kamal has been here all along, lived the devastation, hidden in the mountains, returned to the broken city, packed up the children and stayed in Cyprus for months at a time because the visas for France never arrived quickly enough.

But this one is English. There’s no need to give him too hard a time. He’ll want tenure. But he can start part-time for a semester or two.

‘Are you watching?’ Alex shouts as soon as she picks up the phone.

‘Of course I’m watching. We all are.’

The whole firm is gathered around the TV in the penthouse office downtown. Alex is watching in Stoke Newington. The pictures of the second plane silently penetrating the tower play over and over. Debris swirls over the city while panicked newsreaders comment. The experts are beginning to turn up, with speculations.

There’s not much talking in the office though. They’re still staring at the screen. But Maya senses that the shock contains something more, some undercurrent. It’s fear, she thinks. For the reconstruction. She slips out into the corridor. Walid is pacing at the other end with his mobile phone, still unable to get through to his brother in New York, a banking intern on one of the upper floors.

‘I’m worried,’ she whispers urgently into the phone, watching Walid’s tireless dialling. ‘It will lead to something else, somewhere.’

The air is cooler, more autumnal, and the days are getting shorter. It’s usually dark by the time Maya gets home from work, but she can still sit out on the balcony with a shawl. Alex has been calling a lot lately, after the pub.

‘When are you coming home?’ he finally asks.

He didn’t take the job Kamal offered. He couldn’t go from a tenured position to part-time, just because the campus was idyllic.

The city moves on without him. Downtown is bustling with businessmen, Gulf tourists and high-heeled ladies. Every day a new office, shop or café opens. But the Council for the South is stalling on Maya’s proposal to rebuild a cluster of villages near the border. The plans are ready but there are hold-ups. In the meantime, they hire more bureaucrats in Beirut instead of investing where it’s needed.

‘I’m not sure,’ she replies. ‘When the project is approved.’

She hears him breathing tensely and waits for a negative remark.

‘You’ll never build those villages.’

Above the highrises, along the coastline, an Israeli drone – another airspace violation.

‘Yes we will.’

The Dream Tower is finished, but she only ever sees lights on in three or four apartments. Next to it, a parking lot has been dug up and the foundations laid for a new block. Before the parking lot, there was a plot of dust and rubbish, and before that, she remembers, an old family house. A red tiled roof, stone walls and wooden shutters, very similar in structure to the house in Jerusalem, which stands framed in silver on her grandparents’ bookshelves. A date tree with cascading branches rises as high as the rooftop, and in its shade, in a wicker chair, a dark-eyed girl sits sipping lemonade.