Beirut: Seven Days in a Small War

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vacant, except for the carcasses of two scorched jets on the runway. To the left stands Shuweifat, where Ahmed is on patrol. The vantage point is Israeli headquarters, a secondary school beside a music conservatory. Armored vehicles rest in the parking lot. It is here that one must arrange for an escort to the south, to Tyre. The trip is scheduled for Sunday. The Israeli officer is helpful. He laments the war. "The world has not been fair to the Palestinians." He tells of a Palestinian mother, the wife of a P.L.O. officer, who escaped West Beirut with her baby and came to the Israeli headquarters for protection. Mother and child were cared for and escorted safely south to Nabatiyah. The story is not told to create a good impression. The officer is 58, jaded, a former air force pilot. Having survived four crashes, he claims the right to optimism.

North to Byblos. Ads for Woody Allen movies and a curious recurring road sign, BABY LOVE ME, that seems to have no reference. Here one is yet farther from the war. Not a soldier in sight. Only the ancient city and the ancient port, still protected by a Crusader fortress. Kids in bathing suits dangle their legs from the tops of the walls. Pleasure boats bob in the water where the Phoenicians once sailed. Is this Lebanon too? At lunch at the Fishing Club restaurant, one makes cheerful conversation with the owner, Pepe Abed, half Mexican, half Lebanese, who boasts pleasantly about the celebrities who have dined at his place. Producing a huge, elaborate guest book, he points out the autographs of Candice Bergen and David Niven. Below the restaurant, a museum bar displays statuettes snatched from the sea—Phoenician, Hittite, Greek, Roman, Persian—headless, armless relics of former powers.

Where did you say the war was? Or is this the real Lebanon, the restaurant civilization that has survived every invasion, every destruction, and flourished on trade? Is the customer always right?

Back in West Beirut by sundown, at the shelled stadium. The topmost stands are crumbled like stale cake. The poles, where pennants flew, are down or bent. Great fissures mark the walls. The clock and Scoreboard are stopped cold. Gray stones are piled like giant's chalk, where steps were, where thousands upon thousands roared for the winners. A dog scavenges in the shadows. More shots from somewhere. Near by, a bomb crater filled with water serves the people as a swimming hole.

At night the moon makes a perfect crescent, cradling a star between its points like an Arab flag. At 2 a.m. Israeli jets fly low over the hotel, creating astonishing booms. The ears ring, stunned. In the black sky two sulfurous flares glow sickly yellow, blaze momentarily, then disappear before an orange spray of machine-gun bullets.

Friday, July 2

At the P.L.O. press office again, seeing it for perhaps the last time. Residents of the apartments above it are hauling box springs and couches through the lobby. Mahmoud Labadi, chief press spokesman and a thoughtful, mysterious man, has not yet arrived. His office looks as if it had been deserted months ago, all the leaflets and propaganda material lying in dust on the shelves. Down the street, bombed so frequently, stores remain enclosed behind sheets of corrugated metal. Sandbags are piled on oil drums. An officer finally arrives to announce that there will be a press