Beirut: Scarred City, Walks through Beauty and Brutalism

This is an extraordinary account - extraordinary because it says so much about the Middle East generally, far more than just a walking tour through Beirut, and deserves a wide readership. The author originally travelled to Beirut in 2019 to learn Arabic and decided to discover the city simply on foot (the only way to get to the heart of any city). But on returning again in 2021, from a discovery it becomes a love-letter to a city ‘scarred’ as title says, scarred by its history, by war, by the massive explosion in 2020 that ripped it apart but also scarred by development and corruption. From the scant author information on the back flap she seems to come from an archaeological background, and this makes her devastating indictment of the thoughtless damage done to the city’s cultural heritage - and her account of its history - all the more authoritative.If there is any criticism, one would like to have read more about the people she encountered and conversations with them, as she must have done to have written such a book (the photo on p. 234, for example, refers to one ‘Jamaila taking a photo,’ but we learn nothing about Jamaila or who, what or why she is photographing). The author pulls no punches in describing the horrors that this city has been through, but ultimately it is a story of survival, revival and optimism. This book is written from the heart, and this comes across in this extraordinary account. I thoroughly recommend it.