RIGHT Place des Martyrs, the city’s main square, under reconstruction in 2013 DESIGN / FEATURE The city too has learned. She knows how to shed some bricks without breaking. We Who Have Decided to Live in Autumn, Zeina Hashem Beck, 2013 beirut is a remarkable city with a layered history dating back at least 5,000 years. It was destroyed and rebuilt by the Greeks; conquered by the Romans, the Muslims, the Ottomans; and then ruled by the French, before gaining independence only to tear itself apart in a sectarian civil war from 1975 to 1990. Today, less than 30 years after a conflict that destroyed swaths of the Lebanese capital, Beirut’s reconstructed downtown glows from the warmth of its rebuilt limestone buildings. / A L A M Y / FAY 2 0 1 8 / PA U L D OY L E I A N E Y E F Z L LC A R A B : In a city bordered by the Mediterranean, the disconnect between the sea’s holidaybrochure beauty and its current status as a site of migration and death is impossible to avoid. But Beirut has a reputation as a city which has sheltered displaced people for centuries. One-hundred years ago, Armenians fleeing genocide in Turkey came by boat; waves of Palestinian refugees arrived following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. More recently, displaced Syrians have migrated to Lebanon in such high numbers that the country’s famous tolerance towards those seeking refuge is under increasing strain. Today, an estimated one-third of Greater Beirut’s approximately 2 million population is comprised of migrants and refugees. And yet, in other ways, Beirut is remarkable for all the wrong reasons. Public transportation is effectively nonexistent — the wealthy drive or take taxis, and the poor use an informal bus network. Electricity is subject to daily three-hour outages, with more severe shortages across the country. These gaps are eagerly filled by private companies (many, I’m told, with connections to politicians) via generators at inflated rates. Over pumping from Beirut’s water wells has contributed to the infiltration of seawater into aquifers and many buildings rely on private water tankers or costly desalination IMAG E S September 2018 31 LEFT The project is part of a range of activities led by the American University of Beirut to improve civic engagement BELOW Watermelon Circus, part of the Jeanne d’Arc Street project to improve the public realm in Ras Beirut