Wow... Had a blast and a half this weekend -- Beirut might be one of my new favorite places on earth. My friend Nader made for a great guide, too. It might just be because I've been in Abu Dhabi for the last month but there's just so much character, so much life, so much happening. People are in the streets 24/7, bustling by cafes, nightclubs, restaurants, ruins, mosques, churches and, of course, Lebanese army tanks and military checkpoints. It's a city with a perpetual war-time mentality and a palpable joie de vivre. When you're visiting and it's calm you get the sense that you're there not during peacetime, but simply a respite in between conflicts. It very clearly makes them more appreciative of what they have -- and consequently party even harder.

Apart from being a religiously mixed city (evidenced quite visually by the largest mosque and church in downtown Beirut, which face each other in an architectural standoff at a mere 100 paces), it's pretty clear that they've brought in the best of the world's ideas and are using what suits them -- much like a resistance army would. Whereas the UAE has done so at the expense of any seemingly localized flavor, the Lebanese have struck a nice balance. I suspect much of it has to do with the nature of the economy -- when I asked my new friend Hamed what exports the Lebanese economy was based on, he struggled for a second before landing on "nothing". Most Lebanese live outside of Lebanon and send money home. "That's why you see the BMW's and Mercedes in front of us... otherwise there's really not much Lebanese economy aside from banking and tourism." There's roughly 3.5 million Lebanese living in Lebanon -- and roughly 14 million outside its borders. And the more Lebanese I talk to, the more the mission is clear -- as Hamed put it: "Send money home. We don't care how you do it -- legally, illegally -- just send it home."

Hamed is a guy I met who was willing to take me through Hizbollah-controlled southern Beirut and even further south towards the border, where I found out about a Hizbollah/Mujahideen resistance base and tunnels that they recently decided to allow tourists to access. As we were checking out the site of the flare-up on Tuesday that ended in a Hizbollah commander being shot dead along with 3 others, I'm getting a feel for where this guy is from and why he speaks such good English. Turns out he had lived in the US for a long time, illegally, after being denied a green card and subsequently swimming across the Rio Grande. He paid a guy $5000 to get him across but, as he puts it, "The guy was an idiot – we got caught." He spent a month or so in US custody while he made his case that he was fleeing from Hizbollah, to finally stand in front of a court and be denied status as a political refugee and entry into the US. He was then ordered to leave the US, but apparently not escorted out, so he just stayed... for 9 years.

He lived in Michigan, Massachusetts, and Ohio... but his favorite place? New Orleans, where he worked for years. He was a carpeting contractor and was making good money doing it – he even spoke a little Spanish due to the fact that he had some Mexicans working for him. "They never wanted or bothered to learn any English. All they could say was 'take it easyyyy'." I can’t help but see him as the perfect example of what he was describing… the Lebanese work ethic and drive to succeed from scratch. Working in this way he reached a point where he was making roughly 5 grand a month (tax-free, of course), but since he couldn't leave the US and expect to be let back in, he got really lonely hearing about his sisters getting married and worrying about his mother's health and finally decided to leave. He's been in Beirut since.

As he's telling me this we're passing by evidence of Tuesday's fire-fight. "Those cars and motorcycles are like that from being hit by a... how do you say in English... RPG?"

You can't even tell how many motorcycles used to be parked there... they're just a tangle of charred metal. I raise my camera. "Pssst! No no be careful if you take pictures here we'll get stopped and asked a LOT of questions." So I snapped a couple out the car window as I lowered it. There is yellow tape and army tanks everywhere, with stern looking soldiers sitting behind rotating cannons on top of them. There needs to be a better word for 'overkill' -- we're in tight little streets barely 2 Peugots-wide, that wind around in a completely unplanned urban yarnball of a neighborhood. We're in Bourj Abi Haydar in southern Beirut, completely Hizbollah-controlled territory. The yellow flags make it quite clear. On the way in he says "South of this points it's 100% Shia and 100% Hizbollah." I look around expecting to see guys toting AKs and wearing headscarves like Arabian bank-robbers. Not much changes. Hizbollah is not what many think it is – it's an extremely organized political party which happens to be militarized -- and extremely well-armed, at that. It outnumbers the army by a large margin. When shit hits the fan, most Lebanese know that they will have to look to Hizbollah for protection, not the military. The reason I don't see any weapons is that Hizbollah doesn't want you to know who is an actively in the militarized arm of their organization and so they are forbidden from openly carrying around weapons. But when anything happens, they come out of nowhere. After Tuesday's shoot-out, the area was locked-down within minutes by Hizbollah, with "young men carrying AKs in civilian clothing 'politely' denying the Lebanese army from entering the area". That's the influence they have. Once they had sorted out the argument and gotten the parties to agree to some sort of truce, they let the military in.

We pass a flurry of green flags and I ask him if that’s also Hizbollah. “No that’s Amal, which is much less organized. Lots of orphans and street kids end up there, and it was originally established to help them. But it’s just turned into drugs and crime and bosses…” I ask him if he’s familiar with the mafia in the US. “Yes! That’s exactly what it’s like – it’s like a mafia.” Unlike Hizbollah, Amal members might act without instruction; do things individually. They’re unpredictable for that reason. However, it looks like they’ve also got some strength – we continued passing green Amal flags for the next 20 minutes. “My good friend is Amal leader in his neighborhood, right over there. Every neighborhood here has one, he took the role as like a community leader. Some of them really want to help.” Makes sense; Amal means “hope” in Arabic.

On the way out of the neighborhood I took the risk and jumped out to take a picture of a poster with the new Hizbollah leader, Nazralla, and a cadre of supporters pointing RPGs on the bottom of it. The previous leader, al-Musawi, was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack on his motorcade in 1992. I got some dirty looks from locals. As I walked back into the car, I also took a picture straight up, to capture the telephone pole. Why? Because there’s about 600 wires coming out of it, all illegal taps into the power grid from homes and stores. Almost everyone steals electricity in Lebanon.

After that we kept going south (which they call ‘up’) towards the Israeli border. I stopped and ate Arabic barbeque at a sea-side restaurant while Hamed watched (he was fasting). I felt bad but shit, I was starving! I had been out at Sky Bar the night before and needed something to soak up the destruction. More on that later. The food was amazing, and I had some Lebanese raw meat, which Hamed ordered for me because they didn’t usually serve it to tourists. It was great, plus the whole meal was like $15. Awesome.

We continued and started heading up the mountains. We got pretty far up when I turned around and could still see the Mediterranean, which was incredible from that vantage point. He started asking people if we were on the right path to Mleeta, where the Hizbollah resistance base was (he had never been before), and after a few wrong turns, some useless directions and another hour of zig-zagging up mountains, we got there. The view was unbelievable. Apparently, good geography for military mortar bases is also good geography for tourist landscape vistas. We could see over three of the disputed territories reclaimed after the 2006 war, subsequent UN resolution and Israeli withdrawal. This base had been used to shell Israeli targets across the region – the border was a mere 20 miles away.

The place was littered in broken Israeli tanks and cars, with helmets and captured weaponry on display in triumph over their southern foes. There was one Israeli tank which had the barrel symbolically tied in a knot. After wandering around the display, I took off into the underground tunnels of the bunker, where little rooms had been carved out of stone for sleeping, planning, and of course prayer.

A little computer sat in a room of maps and I realized this was a much more coordinated effort than I had originally suspected. In the news they look like kids with rockets, but on the ground they are more obviously organized, armed, and tech-savvy. After passing the vantage point with the great view, I passed a remarkable display of modern weaponry, laid out and labeled (though mostly in Arabic) for identification.

They had it all – assault rifles, a dozen different kinds of anti-tank rockets, bunker busters, anti-personnel rockets, mortars of all kinds, tear gas, flak jackets, gasmasks, and even some laser-guided weaponry. Strangely, much of their weapons had Hebrew markings on them; I wondered how they had acquired Israeli weapons, apart from capture. As I continued to climb there was evidence of medical, engineering, and communication outposts. At the top of the hill were tanks and anti-air batteries mounted on top of APC’s and humvees. This was no rag-tag militia – this was an army with more strength than that of the Lebanese government.

As I left I read some Hizbollah propaganda and picked up some handouts. Although most of it was in Arabic, I had Hamed translate some of it – they had quotes of Israeli officials saying how Israel had been defeated by a surprisingly impressive and organized Mujahideen force, and how they had been ‘forced’ to withdraw. I wanted to hear a bit more, but I could tell he was getting a tired. Fasting all day will do that to you.

We ended the day by heading back towards Beirut and up into the mountains where the Druze live. Druze is a religion that sits somewhere in between Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism. The bullet points are that they believe in reincarnation, are much more laid back, wear funny black robes with white hats, and enjoy moustaches and belt buckles prominently displaying the Druze emblem, a five-pointed star. Nader is Druze, so when he called I told him I was kicking it with his people.

I checked out a castle built entirely by one man, the Mouza castle. It was one of those “I’ll prove everyone wrong” kind of moments in history, but the structure was quite impressive, overlooked a stunning mountain vista (this one with trees and rivers – the Druze occupy one of the choicest slices of Lebanese territory), and housed an enormous collection of weaponry, from Mesopotamian maces to civil war revolvers. Half of the castle was full of weapons.

We continued up the mountain with cool, fresh air flowing into the car as Hamed searched for this river he wanted to show me, near where he had been stationed as a soldier in the Lebanese army. As we passed a checkpoint, he motioned and said “I used to do his job, standing right there. I never understood what we were looking for.” We went in circles for a while asking directions and finally ended up next to a row of cafes where the river was supposed to be. It was nowhere to be found. By this time it was getting dark and we decided to head back and just stop at a good spot to see the sun go down over the mountains. And a great sunset it was indeed.

The rest of the weekend surrounding that day was more standard big city. I spent Thursday night out with my friend Nader’s local group, starting at a great electro/alternative spot called “Behind the Green Door”, which spun some wicked remixes and covers, many of which, to my delight, I only half-recognized. After that Nader and I (half of the group was fasting and therefore not drinking) continued on to BO18, which is really a coffin of a club. The tables are coffins, the barstools are twisted wood… it’s a décor I would best describe as “progressive Beetlejuice”. Halfway through the party the coffin opens (i.e. the ceiling) revealing the night sky and the crowd goes nuts.

The second day I walked all of downtown and got my bearings. Saw the churches, sat on the floor of the mosque after prayer, wandered through little passageways and passed through the shopping district. As you might suspect they have everything, from Zara to Massimo Dutti. That night we hit up Sky Bar, one of the most famous clubs in the world. I didn’t really know what to expect – I had just heard good things.

Thank god Nader is friends with one of the owners, because even at 9PM on a Ramadan night there was a packed line of people waiting to get in. And not ugly people. Glitz and glam abounded. Half of them looked like they just got off the Victoria Secret shuttle bus. As we walked around the ropes and shook hands with the bouncers and staff, what appeared to be a Russian lingerie model gave me a really dirty look from the front of the line. You know how you can smirk on the inside and maintain a straight face? That was me. I briefly let the edges of my mouth get the better of me as the glass elevator door closed and we started our ascent to the roof.

Upstairs it wasn’t packed yet, but it was clear that it was going to be. Weekend tables are booked months, some even a year, in advance and while the reservation of barstools isn’t an official practice, it’s the norm. The people we see are here early to pee on their barstools and claim them, lest they end up trapped in the middle of the dance floor all night with no access to the backlit watering hole. As we walk up to three barstools, tipped against the rail to indicate “urine already present”, Nader reaches across and gets a few handshakes and high fives from barkeeps. The seats are reserved for us.

The rooftop bar overlooks the Mediterranean with the lights of Beirut glittering reflectively behind a glowing white bar that stretches from end to end. The night starts slow with chill-house, lounge, and even bossa nova echoing in the background, leading me to wonder if this place is as crazy as I’ve heard. Maybe it’s just because it’s Ramadan. Everything chills out during Ramadan. But as the hours go by, our bottle slowly empties, and cigarettes magically smoke themselves into the night sky, people trickle in and the music start a slow ascension. I notice a changing of guards in the DJ booth – the firepower has arrived. This guy gets going immediately starting with Sinatra’s ‘New York, New York’, which quickly ushers in Jay Z’s semi-eponymous ‘Empire State of Mind’. The crowd loves it, the DJ feels it, and shit starts kicking. Now we’re talking.

I’ll just sum it up by saying that by the end of the night crazy electro beats were bumping in synchrony with pulsating laser lights, timed flames lining the edges of the roof, and fireworks which always seemed to be the right color for the mood. As I bounced up and down like a possessed pogo stick holding a sparkler somebody handed me, a final bout of flames, fireworks, and yelling erupted from the place, mirroring the energy of the climaxing DJ set. I looked around and understood why this place was so popular. It was all of the “life’s short, play hard” energy of Beirut packed into a glimmering little rooftop, overlooking a city unsure of a tomorrow that threatened, at any moment, to bring more than just the pounding headache we all knew was coming, but collectively decided to ignore just the same.

/eh