The Holiday Inn

If a city is trying to shake off its image as a place of unending war, hostage taking and suicide bombings, the first thing it does is to remove, or at least rehabilitate, the reminders of its brutal past.

You’d think. The old Holiday Inn, Beirut’s most in-your-face expression of the 15-year war, still stands like a mute sentinel one block south of St. George Bay. The conflict was something of a high-rise war, with factions exchanging sniper and artillery fire from the city’s rooftops and balconies. Beirutis are still debating what to do with the pockmarked tower, with some suggesting it be turned into a museum of memory and reconciliation.

The hotel was a stronghold of the Phalangist militia. Shown today, left, and in the bad old days.

My take, and it’s the cynical one of an outsider with little understanding of Lebanon, is that the Holiday Inn still stands because the nation’s politicians and their business allies have not figured out how to make a buck out of it. Yes, I'm that guy.

Sometimes it sounds like the war is still going on. Don't let 'em see you flinch.