Lebanon wasn't on our original itinerary, but after hearing so many good things about it from our clan of Damascus ex-pats we decided to squeeze in a three or four day side-trip to Beirut. Our friends said it offered an escape from the middle-eastern madness, that it was a nice oasis of European sanity. A place to buy clothes and eat Big Macs and send e-mail without having to look over your shoulder. This surprised me. I had thought Lebanon was a veritable poster child of anarchy, a welcome refuge for drug dealers and arms merchants and fanatical religious groups with long beards and a bad habit of blowing themselves up in cars.

I dug out my guidebook and read the historical summary of Lebanon. Then I read it again. I read it two more times and was still completely confused. The country is an absolute hodge-podge of cultures and ethnic groups. The divisions go back hundreds of years and have resulted in waves of warfare flowing back and forth across the centuries.

The unique feature in Lebanon is that is has four very strong religious communities. Whereas other countries in the area tend to have one dominant group that drowns out the others, Lebanon has four clamoring to be heard. There is a large Christian population centered in Beirut, and also three separate Muslim groups, Shi'ite, Sunni, and Druze. In America we tend to think of conflict in the middle east as Jewish versus Muslim, or Christian versus Arab, but the various Muslim factions also harbor deep differences and fierce rivalries.

When Lebanon gained independence earlier this century, its new constitution attempted to quell dissent by guaranteeing each group a specific seat of power. For example, the President is always Christian, the Prime Minister always Shi'ite, the Speaker of the House always Sunni (I actually can't remember which group gets each seat, but you get the idea. . .). Also, parliament seats are split along religous lines according to the percentage of Lebanese population subscribing to each belief. While this all sounds good on paper, it has the unfortunate side-effect of institutionalizing the religous divide, rather than moving the country toward national unity.

Nevertheless, the country held on to an uneasy peace for several decades. The years after World War II were golden for Lebanon, and for Beirut in particular. While Nassar pointed Egypt towards socialism and Syria strangled itself with military coups and dictatorships, Lebanon looked to the West. Beirut became a modern, almost European city. The citizens of the world came here to do their banking by day and partying by night. Many Lebanese took to calling themselves "Phoenician" rather than "Arab," manifesting their desire to be seen as separate from the rest of the Middle East.

All this came crashing down in the mid-70's with the start of their tortuous civil war. It was a war brought on to a large degree not by conflict within Lebanon by as a side-effect of the Palestinian/Israeli problems.

There is much confusion, I think, about the difference between "Lebanese" and "Palestinian." It's crucial to understand the difference. Lebanon is a country so "Lebanese" just means anyone living in the country, be they Christian, Muslim, or atheist. "Palestinians" are a specific (non-Lebanese) ethnic group that primarily lived in the land now occupied by Israel. Traditionally, there were very few Palestinians living in Lebanon, but with the foundation of Israel after World War II they were driven out of their homeland and pushed into neighboring countries. Jordan and Syria weren't too excited to receive this flood of refugees and they turned most of them away, but Beirut's weakened coalition government wasn't strong enough to keep them out, so by default large numbers of Palestinians settled in "temporary" camps in southern Lebanon. They have been there now for almost 50 years.

The coming of the Palestinians proved to be the final straw for Lebanon's fragile political system. Israel invaded Lebanon (with the goal of eradicating those pesky Palestinians guerrillas) but didn't stop at the camps in southern Lebanon; they drove all the way up to Beirut. In the chaos that ensued all the old religous groups armed competing militias, and they spent the next fifteen years killing each other and a lot of civilians. Syria jumped into the fray, supported various different groups, Israel supported others, the United Nations sent troops.

The ultimate futility of the civil became apparent at its end, when things went back to exactly the same state as before. The constitution stayed the same, all the old groups remained divided, Palestinians still lived in camps in the south, and Israel still occupied and/or harassed various Lebanese locales. The only difference between now and before the war is the occupational -- excuse me, "security" -- force that Syria has left behind.

So I apologize for turning this dispatch into a history lesson, but it's important. More than any other country we have traveled to, the history of Lebanon keeps kicking its way back into the present. It won't leave Lebanon alone.

Since the war's end a decade ago, the tired citizens of Lebanon have focused on rebuilding and on putting the past behind them. Sadly, that's not what's happening. Whenever things between the Israelis and the Palestinians heat up it is the Lebanese who pay the price. Just two years ago Israel bombed Beirut's recently rebuilt power station. They said it was retaliation against Muslim rebel groups head-quartered in the city, but it makes about as much sense to me as if Mexico bombed Washington DC because a Zapista bought a condo in Georgetown.

Lebanon is a prisoner of its history, and we were reminded of this in dramatic fashion yesterday morning. We were sitting in Anna's apartment in Damascus, sipping coffee and packing our bags for our short bus trip from Damascus to Beirut. Someone flipped on the BBC. Just as we were heading out the door, we heard the announcer say that Israel had bombed a Syrian radar post (in Lebanon) along the main highway from Damscus to Beirut. Once again Lebanon was getting beat up in the feud of its neighbors. This time, we were there too.

We headed off to the bus station expecting service to be cancelled. To our surprise everything was running as normal, so we jumped aboard our bus and headed off, unsure whether things were going to escalate; maybe Syria would retaliate, maybe Israel would get a little trigger happy and knock off a few more Lebanese sites.

As it turned out it was an uneventful drive through gorgeous terrain. From Damascus we climbed steadily up into the mountains until we reached the Lebanese border. Then we dropped down into the fertile Bekaa Valley, an area made famous by its wine (before the war), its hashish (during the war), and its Hezbollah strongholds (after the war). Then we climbed up another mountain ridge near the peaks still capped by snow, and a long twisting descent brought us down to Beirut, on the coast. We passed gorgeous villas sitting high in the hills. The red tile roofs and tall windows looked thoroughly Mediterranean in a southern-France kind of way. Some were beautifully restored palaces of wealth while others were just bombed out shells of their former selves with collapsed roofs, walls sucking air through gaping artillery holes and choked by untended grape vines. We passed the Syrian radar post, or the remains of it at least. All we saw was a few soldiers combing through rubble on top of a small knoll that rose up next to the highway.

Viewed from afar, Beirut looked untouched by the war. It lay against the mountains, apartment buildings stretching in each direction. In places there were almost as many construction cranes as there were apartments, and within a few minutes we had passed several giant construction sites as well as a huge freeway being built through the outskirts. Once inside the city war damage was apparent on every building. Not one had escaped the pockmarks of small arms fire or worse damage from larger weaponry. Some had been re-plastered or repainted and put back into service. Others were crumbled heaps that looked like a halfway-completed wrecking job, but from the laundry blowing on lines stretched across bomb holes you could tell people still lived in the remains.

Central Beirut has the same odd juxtaposition of old and new, of bombed-out and rebuilt, but the new far outnumber the old. The Central Business District was so badly damaged that a government agency acquired all the land and rebuilt the entire area from the ground up. Sarah and I strolled through it one sunny afternoon and were amazed at what we saw. No visitor there could deny that Beirut has done an incredible job of reconstruction. The buildings have been tastefully recreated in traditional designs with gorgeous stonework and tall shuttered windows. Most are 3 or 4 stories tall and they are laid out along boulevards that meet in small landscaped traffic circles. They even uncovered extensive areas of Roman ruins while digging the foundations on some of the buildings, and the ruins have been incorporated as parks and public space.

All in all the central business district is an incredible accomplishment and a tribute to Beirut's desire to put the war behind them. The scope of what has been accomplished in 7 or 8 short years is amazing, more-so compared to Syria or Egypt, where single buildings flounder under construction for decades, caught up in red tape, ineptitude, and corruption. Still, the area here feels a bit eerie. It's empty. All the restored office space is still waiting for businesses to move back in, so for now the streets are quiet and still. We ambled slowly down the middle of a wide cobblestone boulevard, our footsteps echoing on the cold silent stone of the buildings, and felt as if we were on an elaborate Hollywood film back-lot in the hours after shooting had ended.

Our hotel is directly across the main gate from the American University Beirut (which, by the way, is an absolutely gorgeous campus overlooking the sea). This specific location gained international notoriety in the 80's when the professors here were favorite targets of the Muslim rebel groups. Today it is hard to imagine such brutal acts could have taken place. The street is lined with Tex-Mex restaurants, a Dunkin' Donuts, and nearby are two Hard Rock Cafes. Though Arabic is the official language in Lebanon, all the menus here are in English, the new language of the rich and worldly Beirutites. The tanks have given way to BMW's, the bunkers to Thai cafes.

I hope it stays that way, because these people have certainly paid their dues and deserve to move on. But unfortunately the storms keep blowing in the Middle East and all the reconstruction can't erase the fact the Israel and the PLO and Syria never settle into peace, they just fall into intermittent periods of quiet.