The Citadel

Ten years ago, in a pastel-painted classroom behind heavy dark doors, half-interested sixteen-year-olds read verses aloud from creased Wordsworth Classics and waited for the lunch bell. They are there still, no doubt, in some form or other, though with different bands and shoe brands. It is surreal and slightly exasperating, perhaps, when that awkward A-level classroom and a fragment of something acquired in it surfaces again a decade later and a world away; has nothing more significant come to light in the years in between? But it is not literature's fault that I have not devoted more time to its wisdom since Dr Cornford's efforts to enthuse his lounging charges with the morbid delights of Thomas Hardy. No matter – the lines learned among strip lighting and plastic tables come back again, to a girl now wheeling a grey mare in circles between the sun and the clouds high above Beyrouth.

Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I
But mind-chains do not clank when one's next neighbour is the sky.

A new escape, up a mountain to Ain Saadé, as another week of coastal introversions draws to its thankful close. Down there overtime stretches out long when there aren't Arabic classes, books apparently written by illiterates weigh heavily on one's enthusiasm and self-respect, and most of the conversations in the office focus around the release of a new make-up catalogue. The circle of faces and places closes up easily, and apathy stalks the days. Even up here in the blue and the white, the instructor spends most of the hour on his mobile and I feel as inclined as ever to spend quality time with animals rather than people. But the wind is fresh with purpose and with play, clouting me about the ears and spurring the ringside trees to wave their branches towards the city spread out below, taking joy in the late-afternoon light that conjures up sparkles in the sea and sweetens Beyrouth in the distance into a cleanly pink-lit landscape of peaceful buildings.

I know only too well, though, that the streets so far below are cacophonous and either fetid or kept unnaturally clean by underpaid migrant workers. The old suqs were obliterated in the civil war, occupied by Hezbollah in 2007, and have now been reincarnated by assassinated former president Rafiq Hariri’s company Solidere as glistening international shopping malls. The day after the red carpet opening for the first branch of H&M in Lebanon I walked through the plate glass and slate-grey stone and felt enormous emptiness – absurd polished hummers thrummed by and disgorged six-inch-heeled, surgery-enhanced Beirutis who tottered down the red carpet that still lay in place, cavernous handbags poised to absorb more Prada and YSL. They were followed by a second wave of overall-wearing Pakistanis with brooms and dustpans, shuffling desperately to keep the temporary rug looking like new.

From these streets there eventually arose or was negotiated a new government of sorts, five months and innumerable concessions after the elections. Chez LDL, people who had never once expressed a political thought or shown any interest in their non-existent government since I arrived in July printed off the cabinet list and highlighted the Christians, simultaneously complaining that there weren't enough of them and making disparaging remarks about politicians in general. These are the fruits of 2005's independence intifada, of the promise of a new Lebanon; re-entrenched sectarianism and cynicism, the insidious influence of Syria and the rest, Hezbollah no closer to disarming. Political status quo and economic privatization combined with individual enrichment – they are not the only stories, but they are the ones that are everywhere talked about, and that are only too easy to see.

Back in Zouk and trying to gear up for clubbing, the escape doesn't seem like enough. From the mountain even Zouk looked beautiful at last, splayed out along the line of the coast. But each week you need to go further and higher to get a sense of something new, of something achieved, to believe that you came to Lebanon for reasons other than to work away your life by the light of your Macintosh.

***

So the next day, Arum and I sit in the late November sunshine on the Citadel above Trablous; the slanting gold of late afternoon at lunchtime, looking down on a very different city. Down there the suq is frenetic and mysterious and variegated and parrot-loud, the streets are about people and their every days, and Lebanon seems like a friend again. As we talk and look on, flaunting teams of brown and white pigeons swoop and dive to let the sunlight glance blindingly off their breasts as they turn together in inexplicable joy. Gunfire crackles between two high-rise apartment blocks – we can see the sparks of the bullets flying – and no one even turns their heads. Just last year the Lebanese army came out in force here to subdue an uprising in the Palestinian camp of Nahr al-Bared, just a few miles away. Parts of it razed to the ground, the Lebanese government are now refusing to re-build the refugees' temporary homes due to the discovery of Roman remains, which elsewhere in Lebanon are let to rot under rubbish or built over by entrepreneurs.

Mountain or Citadel, a pace removed from below lets you breathe deep and try to order things to your satisfaction. But down there, there is no such discipline to be found, and joy must be unearthed where you can.

***

And, as these things must be, the eventual re-reading of the poem shows how much you have forgotten, and how much you have learned. No simple call to an airy escape, but a heart as full of loss and diffident complexity as one could wish or recognise.

Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was,
And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause
Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,
Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.

I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the moon,
Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;
I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed
For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.