During the golden days before the wars Beirutis could ski down a mountain in the morning, swim in the Mediterranean in the afternoon and meet friends at favourite cafes in the evening.
Today tangled traffic makes the trek between snow and sea more time-consuming, while a confusion of cafes makes it difficult to choose where to go. Cafe society is returning with a vengeance to this bomb-blasted but unbowed capital.
In the still largely deserted commercial centre, devastated during the 15-year civil conflict, smart cafes have opened in otherwise untenanted but beautifully restored French colonial buildings near parliament. A quartet of architects, employed on nearby construction sites cluster round a table beneath a two-storey arch at Mi-Chaud.
A few doors down, a couple sitting at the bar in the Theatre Cafe are reflected in an art deco mirror on the wall opposite. Around the corner businessmen in shirtsleeves bask in the sun at tables outside Oscar and Gambini's over looking the vast ruin of the Roman forum. Here, in the still hollow heart of the city, Christians from the eastern sector meet colleagues and clients from the mainly Muslim western sector.
My companion, an archaeological draughtswoman, sketches the five solid granite pillars opposite our table while I eat raspberry ice-cream and watch traffic swirl round the base of the hill dominated by the gracious Grand Serail, an Ottoman barracks converted into ministerial offices.
On Rue Clemenceau, a lone journalist reads the morning papers and sips coffee at the well-appointed News Cafe. Here correspondents can consult agency wires or the Internet on a clutch of computers or e-mail copy to their editors in distant capitals. Solitary men slouch at tables on the pavement outside Moca on Hamra street. At the City Cafe retired politicians bemoan the deep recession Lebanon is experiencing and gleefully examine the gripping details of the latest political scandal.
A few days ago, Elissar on Rue Bliss, across from the American University of Beirut, staged a grand reopening, 25 years after closing its doors. "Tout Beirut" came. Elderly and middle-aged ministers and musicians, professors, painters and potters, businessmen and bankers on a memory trip, looking slyly round to see who they might recognise. Wondering who would recognise them. The proprietor, George Zeeny, his hair now white, shook hands with hundreds of guests from both sides of the formerly divided city.
Once a modest restaurant frequented by students and professors, Elissar has been transformed into a Thirties-era cafΘ-cum-gallery, its walls covered with old photographs, framed banknotes, paintings, posters and prints. Shelves are filled with leather-bound volumes and antique pots. Before the wars, George's customers came from all of Lebanon's 18 religious sects. "All political persuasions met here in a civil way," he says, expecting them to do so again, reconciling over coffee, tea, a drink and a snack.
