Behold, Beirut: our capital and last — still-surviving, ever-besieged — Levantine city. Strolling through its streets and squares, I marvel at our vacant and vacated capital. To the left, I see two towering monstrosities: a church and a mosque, more cages of cliché we trap ourselves in, now just mausoleums for men who made or remade them. To the right, I see a so-called historic district that looks like the pop-fantasia of a drugged-up, first-year architecture student. Turning around, I walk through the rest of Beirut’s empty heart: el-bourj, al-balad, centreville, Solidere, downtown — the place’s place names revealing our cacophony, in what is a place of unity or at least convergence.
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