In just five years, the 38-year-old Nadine Labaki has become the director laureate of her tiny, politically fragile country of Lebanon. She first came to prominence in 2007 with her debut, “Caramel,” a sleepily beguiling film about the private lives and longings of four women working in a beauty shop in Beirut, which Labaki, in the starring role, lovingly portrayed as a warmly gossipy city full of battered, Old World charm. The film refused to so much as nod at the 15-year civil war that tore the city apart. “You say Beirut and people think bombs and women crying in the street, but I wanted to show a sweet, everyday Lebanon, on a sunny day,” she says.

Yet with her new film, “Where Do We Go Now?,” which opens on May 11, Labaki directly addresses the country’s deep religious divisions. Set in a mixed Christian-Muslim village, the movie (starring Labaki alongside a cast of mostly nonactors) tells the story of Christian and Muslim women who go to Lysistrata-like extremes to keep their menfolk from turning on each other as sectarian strife breaks out around them. “The film is an homage to all the women in my country who wear black to this day to mourn husbands, sons and brothers,” Labaki says. “It’s a way of saying, ‘Can we talk about what happened in this country?’ Can we turn to one another and say, ‘I did something wrong, and I ask you to forgive me?’ ”

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Down a ramp from Beirut’s clamorous seaside road, motor yachts bob along a curving waterfront promenade. Tablecloths gleam white, and bottles of wine sweat in silver coolers. The boardwalk’s rough planks, a nod to maritime authenticity, present a design flaw perhaps foreseeable in this city: Women with Louis Vuitton handbags are forever extracting their spike heels from the cracks.

This new luxury playground, Zaitunay Bay, is Lebanon’s latest effort to recapture the prewar 1960s — when Brigitte Bardot was a regular and Beirut was a fashionable port of call. But for Arab visitors seeking respite from fear and uncertainty around the region, and for Lebanese content to stay out of the storm, Beirut is already back.

“Lebanon brings together the European, the Mediterranean, East and West,” said Noor al-Tai, strolling the boardwalk in a leather miniskirt, thigh-high boots and a fur vest, by way of explaining why Beirut was the logical destination when she fled violence at home in Iraq. “There is a very friendly atmosphere.”

Beirutis barely pause to remark that Zaitunay Bay sits on the Green Line, the boundary between East and West Beirut that was a deadly no-man’s land during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. In many Western minds, Lebanon’s image remains frozen in old snapshots: sectarian massacres, hostages tied to radiators, the Israeli invasion, smoke billowing from seafront high-rises. But, for the wealthy at least, the country long ago regained its spirit of fun and glamour.

Even this city’s indefatigable night life cannot completely submerge worries over the grinding conflict in neighboring Syria. But for Arabs tired of the shelling in Homs, the financial crisis in Dubai, or political anxiety in Cairo, Beirut is an eddy of peace.

“This country doesn’t change — the people like life,” said Sonia Bailouni, a Syrian psychologist sunning herself on the boardwalk.

The very divisions that started Lebanon’s civil war have may have helped insulate it from the past year’s Arab revolts. The war ended in 1990 after a rigid apportioning of power among religious sects. The system is fractious and inefficient but allows dissent and keeps the state weak, with little ability to impose or intimidate.

Amid the Lebanese factions’ mutual mistrust, there is no single authority to rally against. With Lebanese torn between wistfulness for change and fear of what it could unleash, an uneasy calm prevails.

It is not that Beirut’s tourism has not suffered. Hotel occupancy is down, standing at 55 percent for the first nine months of 2011, compared with 68 percent in 2010, according to the professional services company Ernst & Young. Many Westerners do not realize that Lebanon is still safe, and fun. Arab and Iranian tourists fear driving through Syria, by far the cheapest route.

But the downturn would be much more severe if not for those addicted to Beirut’s joie de vivre: the Lebanese diaspora, Saudis and Jordanians on summer pilgrimages to escape the heat, wealthy Beirutis. For those markets, even war with Israel in 2006 was a temporary disruption.

Debris from Israeli airstrikes still littered the streets when bars, restaurants and hotels reopened their doors.

Then, too, there are benefits for Lebanon in being a refuge. Syrians seeking peace and quiet have helped offset hotel losses, the Lebanese tourism minister told Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper: They head to Beirut for the weekend to avoid clashes after Friday Prayer, he said.

Beirut is also a destination for capital. Syrian businessmen have moved money to Lebanese banks, and investors fleeing Dubai’s crash help keep real estate prices high. Ms. Tai, the Iraqi, said she and her brothers moved their accounting business to Beirut in 2004 after their Baghdad neighborhood became a battleground for Islamist militias and American troops.

Besides, she said, she would no longer feel safe at home turning heads as she did on the boardwalk. Her fire-engine-red lipstick and long yellow hair were right at home in Beirut.

Ms. Bailouni, the Syrian sitting nearby, has lived in Beirut for years with her Lebanese husband, and now is bringing relatives from Aleppo, Syria, to Lebanon, where, she declared, war will not spread. “We already went through everything and worse,” she said. Then she combined Italian and Arabic in a makeshift phrase encapsulating Beirut’s mix of nonchalance and cosmopolitanism: “Finito la mishkala!” Loosely translated, “No more problems.”

Still, there is a hint of longing for the mayhem nearby. Some Lebanese yearn for ferment in a country that for all its fun remains corrupt and stagnant. Even an airport border guard, stamping in a reporter from rebellious Libya, gave a dejected sigh and said, “Nothing is happening here.”

One Lebanese journalist explained the lack of a “Lebanese Spring” this way: “We’re lazy, and we’re sectarian.”

Lebanon’s leaders scramble to keep the political peace. Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful party, backs Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. Rival parties favor Syria’s rebels, and even the Druse leader Walid Jumblatt, a coalition partner with Hezbollah, calls Mr. Assad a butcher. Yet such disputes barely budge Lebanon’s pragmatic politics: the parties are loath to rock the boat as they wrangle for patronage jobs.

One sunny afternoon in southern Lebanon, the center of the 2006 war, the only disturbance was the revving of Harley-Davidsons by a convoy of riders enjoying the spring flowers. Yet echoes of conflict can ripple through Beirut’s most relaxing places.

In West Beirut, Hamra’s nightclubs fill with teenagers as usual, but some now donate proceeds to Syrian refugees. Fadel Shaker, a beloved pop singer, shocked some fans when he appeared at a pro-rebel rally with an imam many viewed as extremist.

On the Mediterranean corniche, a popular spot where children ride bicycles and couples take sunset walks, Syrian migrants have always polished shoes and served coffee. Now, they whisper that they have fled government shelling, bringing wives and children into Lebanon.

On a sofa at Ka’kaya, a cozy cafe, two young men shared a water pipe and watched, on their phones, Syrian videos of bodies and rubble. At Café Younes, a haunt of professors with laptops, one coffee drinker berated another for business ties to a Syrian company — “Even if the public doesn’t know, you know!” — loud enough to turn heads.

Cafes may benefit from the crisis, said Wael el-Far, a purveyor of restaurant equipment who had sold high-end espresso machines to several Zaitunay Bay cafes. In tense times, he said, Lebanese “like to drink and spend money.”

And so they do at Zaitunay Bay. The industrial-chic metal facades at L’Atelier Art Lounge and the Cro Magnon Steakhouse face the boats, not the shell of the Holiday Inn, ravaged by mortars decades ago, or the place where a car bomb killed Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister, in 2005.

At the end of the yacht basin looms the Hotel St. George, the 1960s “it” spot, now a derelict hull caught in disputes with Zaitunay Bay’s well-connected developers.

On the promenade, Dina Erfan, a travel agent from Cairo, air-kissed her Lebanese friends. She had just arrived for a break from Egypt’s political suspense.

“Where else am I going to go?” she said. “Syria? Libya?”

One friend laughed. “Maybe next year,” she said.

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La ligne de sacs Sarah’s Bag est née de l’ingénieuse idée d’associer à la mode un programme d’aide de réinsertion sociale pour femmes libanaises détenues. Sarah Beydoun, la fondatrice et directrice artistique, propose des sacs fidèles à sa culture Moyen Orientale tout en gardant un intérêt pour la mode parisienne. Depuis sa boutique-atelier au cœur de Gemayzeh, quartier traditionnel de Beyrouth, elle a répondu à nos questions.

Tout a commencé avec une bonne cause. Étudiante, Sarah préparait sa thèse sur les femmes en prison au Liban. Avec l’aide d’une ONG, elle a trouvé bon de leur apprendre quelque chose qui pourrait vraiment leur être utile pour gagner leur vie. Pourquoi pas des sacs ? De fil en aiguille, Sarah’s Bag est né. De quoi concilier sa passion pour la mode et son envie d’aider les personnes défavorisées. Sa première création fut un sac à sequins que sa mère lui a acheté. « Elle a été ma première cliente ! raconte Sarah. Finalement, elle l’a encadré et me l’a offert. Il décore aujourd’hui mon atelier… »

La jeune femme attire plutôt vite les pays européens, intrigués par le concept. En février 2008, Le British Council la choisit pour représenter le Liban dans la course au prix du meilleur jeune international fashion entrepreneur. La même année, l’Institut du Monde Arabe à Paris, qui rend hommage à Oum Kalsoum, invite Sarah’s Bag a montrer et vendre ses sacs imprimés de l’ex-icône Égyptienne.
 Plus récemment, les Sarah’s bag se sont vus exposés dans les souks du « Kennedy Center International Festival » à Washington. L’engouement semble être mondial. « Certainement parce que celle qui porte un Sarah’s Bag le porte davantage pour refléter sa personnalité plutôt que son statut social » avance Sarah, rappelant le fait que ce soit de plus en plus rare aujourd’hui avec la folie du it-bag. Iris Apfel, à mon avis, serait parfaite avec un de mes sacs, et ferait une égérie génial ! » imagine-t-elle.

Si Sarah aime particulièrement les créations excentriques de Maison Martin Margiela, elle admire avant tout Dries Van Noten, pour sa palette de couleurs uniques, et la manière dont il combine modernité et tradition. Un peu comme elle, finalement : pour créer ses sacs, Sarah garde toujours en tête sa culture et ses traditions moyen-orientales, et y ajoute sa touche de modernité. Pour ce printemps-été 2012, par exemple, sa collection mélange esprit gothique, couleurs néon et effet déchiré. « J’aime appeler cela l’harmonie dans le contraste » précise la créatrice. Les pièces décalées ne manquent pas non plus. On pense notamment au « Bonjus bag », créé après qu’un local ait fabriqué une brique de jus triangulaire dans les années 70, que tout le monde connaît au Liban. « Tous ceux qui y ont grandi se souviennent de Bonjus. Aujourd’hui, les marques s’inspirent de son packaging et de son image, alors j’ai voulu rendre hommage à ces icônes de notre enfance qui disparaissent au profit de la modernité » explique-t-elle. Et la pièce star de la saison, c’est ce sac au fermoir en liège, qui représente un bouchon de champagne. Du jamais vu ailleurs !

Pour trouver toutes ces belles et uniques pièces, rendez-vous en ligne ou chez Kabuki à Paris, qui conserve quelques pièces.  « Le Liban est en train de devenir le centre névralgique de la mode dans cette région » remarque la jeune femme. Pour réussir dans ce monde, où que vous soyez, je pense qu’il faut simplement savoir se réinventer soi-même et prendre du recul » ajoute-elle. Vu ses projets, c’est ce qu’elle semble faire chaque jour. Sarah et son équipe travaillent actuellement sur les costumes de scène d’une comédie musicale et théâtrale satirique, organisée pour des femmes en prison. Une sorte de thérapie par le jeu, où elles peuvent exprimer tout ce qu’elles ressentent. La mode n’aura jamais été aussi utile…

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A portrait of Sheik Abbas Musawi, a former leader of Hezbollah who was killed by Israel in 1992, in Baalbek, Lebanon.

Mazen, a carpenter who organizes protests against President Bashar al-Assad in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, has torn down the posters of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, that once decorated his car and shop.

Like many Syrians, Mazen, 35, revered Mr. Nasrallah for his confrontational stance with Israel. He considered Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group and political party, as an Arab champion of the dispossessed, not just for its Shiite Muslim base but for Sunnis like himself. But now that Hezbollah has stood by Mr. Assad during his deadly yearlong crackdown on the uprising against his rule, Mazen sees Hezbollah as a sectarian party that supports Mr. Assad because his opponents are mainly Sunnis.

“Now, I hate Hezbollah,” he said. “Nasrallah should stand with the people’s revolution if he believes in God.”

Mr. Nasrallah’s decision to maintain his critical alliance with Syria has risked Hezbollah’s standing and its attempts to build pan-Islamic ties in Lebanon and the wider Arab world.

Though Hezbollah’s base in Lebanon remains strong, it runs an increasing risk of finding itself isolated, possibly caught up in a sectarian war between its patron, Iran, the region’s Shiite power, and Saudi Arabia, a protector of Sunni interests in the Middle East. Its longtime ally, Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, has distanced itself from the Assad government, moving its headquarters out of Damascus, and Sunni revolutionaries in Syria have explicitly denounced Hezbollah as an enemy. At home, its Lebanese rivals sense a rare opportunity to erode its power.

In a delicate adjustment in the face of these new realities — and the resilience of the uprising — Hezbollah has shifted its tone. In carefully calibrated speeches last month, Mr. Nasrallah gently but firmly signaled that Mr. Assad could not crush the uprising by force and must lay down arms and seek a political settlement. He implicitly acknowledged the growing moral outrage in the wider Muslim world at the mounting death toll, obliquely noted that the Syrian government was accused of “targeting civilians” and urged Mr. Assad to “present the facts to the people.”

Behind the scenes, Mr. Nasrallah personally tried to start a reconciliation process in Syria early in the uprising and is now renewing those efforts, said Ali Barakeh, a Hamas official involved in the talks.

“He refuses the killing for both sides,” said Mr. Barakeh, the Beirut representative for Hamas.

Mr. Barakeh said that Mr. Nasrallah visited Damascus in April of last year and briefly persuaded Mr. Assad to try to reach a political solution, with Hezbollah and Hamas acting as mediators. But as Hamas began reaching out to fellow Sunni Muslims in the opposition, the plan was scuttled by the Syrian government.

Hezbollah rarely allows official interviews and has refused them for months. But supporters and current and former party activists suggest that the situation is fueling fears of an anti-Shiite backlash and is testing loyalists who must explain the party’s position to others, and themselves.

Mr. Nasrallah is tempering his position because he wants to avoid asking supporters to endure another war, said a former student activist who spends hours defending the party on Facebook, arguing, for example, that rogue forces, not Mr. Assad, are responsible for the “mistakes.”

Mr. Nasrallah “doesn’t want supporters to suffer,” said the woman, who works at a Hezbollah foundation, adding that some still feel “broken inside” from the 2006 war with Israel and “don’t want more pressure.”

Syria’s conflict is testing Hezbollah’s longstanding contradictions. It relies on public support, yet sometimes behaves autocratically; it is a national group founded to fight Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, but owes its military might — and the funds that rebuilt the south after the 2006 war — to Iran’s desire to project power; and it styles itself pan-Islamic, but it depends on rock-solid support from Lebanese Shiites for whom it won long-denied power as it became the Middle East’s most formidable militant group and Lebanon’s strongest political force.

Most of all, Hezbollah won respect by sticking to its principles, even among rival sects and the leftist cafe regulars in Beirut who are skeptical of its religious conservatism. Now it is paying a price for its politics of pragmatism in Syria.

To a young, college-educated health care worker who is a lifelong supporter of Hezbollah, the party’s support of Mr. Assad keeps faith with the most important principle of all: opposing Israel.

“This revolution is not made in Syria,” she told friends at a seaside cafe in Sidon, Lebanon, after shopping at a shiny new mall. “The real target is Lebanon and the resistance.”

Echoing the party line, she said that the United States and its Arab allies fomented Syria’s revolt to punish Hezbollah for fighting the Israelis in 2006.

But that argument has frayed. Hamas, unable to disown Syria’s Sunni revolutionaries, declared itself neutral, angering Mr. Assad, and then moved its leadership from Damascus. Some Hamas leaders from Gaza went further, praising the Syrian revolution to crowds that shout, “No, no, Hezbollah.”

Deprived of Hamas’s political cover, Hezbollah has been accused of sectarian hatred, and has been its target as well. Syrian rebels have burned the Hezbollah flag, claimed that its snipers are killing civilians in Syria, and named their brigades after historic warriors who defeated Shiites in Islam’s early schismatic battles. Early on, some analysts thought that if a Sunni government would arise in Damascus it might support Hezbollah against Israel. But now, says Michael Wahid Hanna of the Century Foundation, Hezbollah may have missed a chance to hedge its bets.

Hezbollah’s supporters, none of whom wished to be identified because the party discourages interviews with reporters, framed their fears in sectarian terms. One worried that if Sunnis came to power in Syria, they would bar Shiites access to shrines there and in Iraq, as prophesied in a Shiite text. Another supporter thought Sunni extremists might bomb Hezbollah areas.

Hezbollah seems in no danger of losing its most hard-core supporters. But some of its loyalists have questions.

In the Sidon cafe, the health worker declared that Syrians, with free education and medical care, had no reason to rebel. Her friend, a Shiite from Hezbollah’s heartland in southern Lebanon, disagreed. “They have things,” she said, “but they are fighting for their rights.”

A supporter in the Dahiya, Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold, said that Al Jazeera, the television news network, was faking atrocities and blaming the government for them. A friend mocked him: Mr. Assad’s fall would be bad for Shiites, he said, but he is “slaughtering his people.”

A Hezbollah party member said that government shelling had killed many civilians, but it was justified because the victims had let the rebels use their houses “as bunkers.” Israel used a similar argument, which Hezbollah condemned, to defend its bombing of Hezbollah neighborhoods in 2006.

Mr. Barakeh of Hamas suggested that Hezbollah’s leaders, who prize their reputations for morality, were troubled by the “killing of innocents” on both sides and knew that the government was not blameless. “They are aware,” he said.

He said he spoke with Mr. Nasrallah for five hours on March 9, telling him that neither side could win by force. On March 14, Hezbollah again blessed Hamas’s efforts to engage the opposition through its contacts in the Muslim Brotherhood, the pro-Hezbollah newspaper Assafir reported.

The next day, as Mr. Assad insisted that the rebels stop shooting first, Mr. Nasrallah called on all Syrians — “people, regime, state, army” — to lay down their arms “simultaneously.”

He later called for “serious and genuine” reforms. Citing religious, “pan-Arab and moral considerations,” he said a political solution was the duty of all “whose hearts are throbbing with sympathy for the Syrian people — men, women, children and elderly.” It was a dig at Saudi Arabia for trying to arm the rebels, but also nodded at regional anguish over the killing.

Even for Hezbollah loyalists who call Syria’s revolt foreign-inspired, the idea of revolution has a natural resonance.

“Arab people need to wake up,” the former student activist said at her office. “How do you spend your day, Arab guy? Watching Lady Gaga. Smoking argileh,” the traditional water pipe.

She fantasized about a “clean and pure” revolution in the Arab world. “If it was real, if it was really the people’s will,” she said, “it wouldn’t just be good, it would be great.”

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Houses are precious commodities in Beirut. Since Lebanon’s civil war ended two decades ago, the city has been rebuilt and revitalized into a place of soaring glass condominium towers, upstart art galleries, chic restaurants and cocktail lounges, and—risen from the rubble of the old souk—a pristine shopping mall filled with luxe fashion brands such as Yves Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney, and Louis Vuitton. But sadly, you can count on your fingers the traditional dwellings in the downtown area and the façades of several are scarred from smoke and shelling.

So when interior designer May Daouk moved back here from New York with her sons ten years ago, she was exceptionally lucky to find a charming single-story late-19th-century villa, belonging to one of Beirut’s leading families. Situated in the smart Achrafieh district and featuring a sea view and a tree-shaded terrace, it has a tranquillity rare in this frenetic city.

Vivacious and strongly independent, Daouk has clients in New York, Paris, and London as well as Lebanon. Her international outlook reflects the society in which she moves. Brought up in Beirut by an English nanny, she was educated in Switzerland and Boston before taking a job in New York with decorator Bunny Williams. “I learned so much from Bunny,” she says. “Above all, design is not about theory—it doesn’t matter whether pink and green go together. What matters are objects. They’re what give soul to a house. My home is a sanctuary where I’m surrounded by things I like.”

In this cosmopolitan city, it is no surprise to find a tradition of interiors infused with Western influences. Daouk takes that approach further by freely mixing old and new, adding adventurous colors, and giving a contemporary twist to Middle Eastern elements: Drum-shaped garden seats are finished in a fuchsia glaze; a brass table is sculpted to look as if it’s draped with gleaming fabric.

The entrance hall is a foretaste of the eclectic style within. A pair of Louis XVI–style settees are enlivened by bright ikat pillows, and a 19th-century Italian mirror complements an enormous star-shaped zinc ceiling pendant. What the entry doesn’t prepare you for, however, is the scale of the living room beyond. High-ceilinged and stretching the length of the house, it could easily accommodate 200 people. “You walk in and think, How can she live here?” says Daouk. “But it’s not scary, because it’s broken down into little spaces.”

The separation is accomplished partly by a triple arch (a traditional feature of Lebanese houses) that divides a quarter of the room from the rest, creating an enclave complete with a splendid Italian chimney-piece. Here Daouk has placed a daybed, a brass-edged campaign desk, and violet-lacquer bookshelves. “The desk is English. This is an Adnet bed done with Hermès leather. These cushions are Syrian,” the designer explains. “It’s not about whether this matches that—it’s about making it personal.” She is no more restrained by period than by ethnicity; nearby, a mid-20th-century tubular-metal garden seat rubs shoulders with two Victorian armchairs. (Even in the most contemporary room—the kitchen—stainless-steel surfaces are offset by rush-seat bentwood chairs.)

Another island of comfort lies at the opposite end of the living room, where three elegant fretwork windows echo the internal archway and a plump chaise longue is positioned for maximum reading light. The middle of the space, meanwhile, is more sociable, with an inviting cluster of seating and side tables. What unifies this expansive and varied interior is Daouk’s love of vibrant colors—specifically the striking lilac she selected for the walls. The shade also serves to balance the household’s strong masculine bias. “Everything in my house is boys,” she says, referring to her three sons. “So I painted the walls purple and put a pink rug on the floor.”

As in many Lebanese residences, the main room is also the principal thoroughfare. It gives onto the dining room, the master bedroom, and the boys’ den (which, in turn, leads to their bedrooms). In the light-filled master suite, a custom-made striped kilim attests to Daouk’s gift for discovering local suppliers. Her bath is hung with exquisite lace curtains made in the Chouf Mountains, to the southeast of Beirut.

The dining room is an inspired creation that effectively melds two spaces. At one end, a rectangular table for formal dinners is centered against a wall hung with architectural prints of Lebanon’s ancient city of Baalbek; at the other, a smaller, octagonal table for casual family meals has a backdrop that is bare save for a single Syrian calligraphic panel above the door. Rugs of contrasting hues emphasize the demarcation. Here, again, the furniture is spectacularly diverse: Arabic chairs inlaid with mother-of-pearl; an antique double bergère; a red-lacquer sideboard; an Arts and Crafts table of English oak.

Although Daouk loves the objects that surround her, she’s not fussy about them. “I use antique fabrics, but if they get damaged I just replace them,” she says. “The black sofa in the dining room? It’s used mainly by the dog, who likes to be able to see what she might get for dinner.” A house should be as comfortable as it is beautiful—that’s the message from this stylish designer. “Because I don’t want to live in a showcase,” Daouk says. “I want to live in a home.”

Click here for more pictures

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IN his 72 years, Serge Hochar has produced 53 vintages of Château Musar, a wine that has enthralled several generations only partly because of its unusual provenance, the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.

On a whirlwind visit to New York last week, he conducted a late-night tasting at the Blue Ribbon wine bar, poured wines at a dinner at the Spotted Pig and led a lunchtime serving of older vintages at the John Dory, all in less than 48 hours. At the Spotted Pig, Mr. Hochar shared some of his hard-earned wisdom with a predominantly young crowd that seemed to hang on every word.

“I know nothing about wine,” he said. “I know how to make wine, but I know nothing about wine, and each day I discover that I know less.”

It was an unusual message in a world that seems so wedded to technical facts and certainty. Far more often wine discussions center on easily discernible questions of pH and acidity, the source of wood for barrels, fermentation temperatures and viticultural techniques. But Mr. Hochar, slender and natty in a gray suit and red tie, was having none of that.

Instead, he spoke in gnomic phrases, which perhaps did little to further an understanding of precisely how Musar is made, but did much to explain why his audience, and I, find his wines compelling.

“He’s like a philosopher in a way,” said Christy Frank, who discovered Musar as a business school student and now runs a wine shop, Frankly Wines, in TriBeCa, which is adorned with an image of Musar in stained glass. “I love that he never answers the question he’s asked but always takes it to another level and makes it about life rather than about wine.”

The wines themselves are remarkable. The red, a blend of cabernet sauvignon with cinsault and carignan, is like an otherworldly Bordeaux — rich, ripe, lightly spicy with its own peculiar funk that people tend to love or hate. The white is even more unusual, made of obaideh and merwah, ancient indigenous grapes. Both are complex and worthy of long aging.

But just as significant was the Musar story. Through the decades of strife that engulfed Lebanon, Mr. Hochar continued making his family’s wines. Aside from the general astonishment that wines so good could come from so unheralded a viticultural source, Château Musar became an emblem of perseverance and human achievement in the wake of dehumanizing conflict.

Now, as Lebanon has quieted down, a new generation has fallen in love with the wines of Musar. The wines themselves exert their charms, of course, but much of the allure comes from Mr. Hochar’s way of doing business, of making his own rules and persuading his audience through the power of his charisma.

At the Spotted Pig dinner, for example, he insisted on reversing the usual order of food and wine service. After beginning with appetizers and Musar’s Jeune Rosé and Jeune Blanc, which Mr. Hochar described as modern wines made at the behest of Musar’s winemaker, the next course was char-grilled lamb with Swiss chard, zaatar yogurt and a compote of black olives and tomatoes, served with three vintages of Musar red. This was followed by quail marinated in cinnamon and saffron, served with three vintages of Musar white.

“Once you taste the wines, you’ll understand why my white is my biggest red,” he explained.

It’s the sort of wisdom that endears him to fans, like Carla Rzeszewski, the wine director at the Spotted Pig, who, with the chef, April Bloomfield, spent four days putting together the brilliant menu to go with the wines.

“I think I fell in love with these wines before I knew Serge,” Ms. Rzeszewski said. “But I think the wine follows the winemaker, if the wine is honest and true and raw.”

Of the three reds, all delicious with the lamb, the 2001 was lovely, pure and very young, all elbows and knees. The 2000 had a touch of characteristic funk to it, yet seemed even more disjointed than the ’01. By contrast the 1993 was mellow and fully integrated, with a core of fruit augmented by subtle earthy, almost animal aromas and an attractive funkiness that seemed to stem primarily from volatile acidity, or V.A., a quality that when too pronounced can be a flaw. But Mr. Hochar sees it differently.

“Wine is such a complex thing, and V.A. is part of wine,” Mr. Hochar said. “If you have none, it’s a flaw. It’s part of fermentation. It’s a question of balance. Life is harmony.”

After the reds came the quail and the white wines. Indeed, as Mr. Hochar suggested, they were bigger than the reds — not more alcoholic, but richer. At room temperature, their texture and opaque complexity reminded me of good white Bordeaux or the white Riojas of López de Heredia. The ’04 had a slightly honeyed quality yet was stone dry. The ’03 offered more mineral flavors, while the ’01 seemed to lack a bit of harmony. Best of all was an older white served with the cheese, a gorgeous 1975 that had the same sweet-yet-dry quality as the ’04.

“As they grow older, they grow younger,” Mr. Hochar said.

The one consistent thing about the wines is how inconsistent they are, as Mr. Hochar might say. Each vintage is profoundly individual, partly, no doubt, because wine from Lebanon, one of the oldest wine regions in the world, is so unusual, and partly because Mr. Hochar makes so little use of modern winemaking techniques, which might serve to file away Musar’s distinctive edges.

“The dimension of taste in Lebanon is different than anywhere else,” he said. “Not better, but different. Better has no meaning.”

In a world full of wines trying to be the best, many people find it refreshing to see a wine simply trying to be itself.

“Everybody is hungry for something that’s just honest,” Ms. Rzeszewski said, “that’s forthcoming about where it comes from, instead of just being polished.”

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Imagine a set of electronics as easy to play with as Legos. TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir introduces littleBits, a set of simple, interchangeable blocks that make programming as simple and important a part of creativity as snapping blocks together.

Ayah Bdeir is the creator of littleBits, an open source system of preassembled, modular circuits that snap together with magnets – making learning about electronics fun, easy and creative. An engineer, inventor and interactive artist, Ayah received her master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab and undergraduate degrees in computer engineering and sociology from the American University of Beirut. Ayah has taught graduate classes at NYU and Parsons and taught numerous workshops to get non-engineers – particularly young girls – interested in science and technology. She is also the founder of karaj, Beirut’s lab for experimental art, architecture and technology. littleBits was named Best of Toyfair, has won the editor’s Choice award from MAKE magazine, and has been acquired by MoMA for its collection.

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The New Directors/New Films series at MOMA opened last week with the story of a group of Muslim and Christian women in a remote village who band together to stop their hotheaded men from engulfing their community in yet another war. The film, titled “Where Do We Go Now?” and directed by Nadine Labaki, set box-office records in Lebanon since opening there in September and received a standing ovation at the festival’s première.

I had seen the film a few days earlier, but I still found myself looking forward to watching it again. I was also curious to see how others would react to it. The film seemed so specifically Lebanese—in its theme of religious strife, in its locale, in the interactions between the characters—that I wasn’t sure if I was relating to it because I myself am Lebanese and had grown up, like Labaki, in the Lebanese civil war (it went on from 1975 until 1990), or if I was responding to it as a general moviegoer. The applause for the film at MOMA was reassuring confirmation that, like Labaki’s début film “Caramel,” her latest effort entirely transcended its local subject matter and setting.

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An Ethiopian housemaid in Lebanon committed suicide on Wednesday, Ethiopia’s consul general said, a week after video footage of her being dragged along the streets by a man and forced into a car sparked national outrage.

“I went to the hospital today and they said that she hanged herself at 6 o’clock this morning,” Asaminew Debelie Bonssa told Reuters, adding that the maid, Alem Dechasa, had been taken to hospital in order to recover from her forcible abduction.

“I am deeply shocked. I went to see her yesterday and I was told that she was ok,” said Bonssa.

Last week, Lebanese television channel LBCI sparked nationwide indignation after broadcasting footage of a man violently dragging Dechasa along a street in Beirut and screaming at her to “get into the car.”

Another man was then seen helping to force Dechasa into the back of the car while she squirmed and screamed “no, no, no.”

On Friday, the Lebanese Cabinet condemned the violent incident and asked for an investigation into the matter.

After the video was aired, LBCI used the car’s number plate number to identify one of the men.

Outraged by the video, activists in Lebanon posted the man’s contact information on internet social media sites and called for action against him.

Reports of domestic worker abuse are rife in this small Mediterranean state.

The hospital was not immediately available for comment.

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Avatar Architettura decks out a working space for fashion designers with chic recycled wooden pallets.

Avatar Architettura has decked out a working space for fashion designers in Beirut with recycled wooden pallets otherwise destined for one of the city’s notorious landfills. Known for strategies that “privilege ecology, flexible systems, biodiversity, and recycled materials in an urban context,” the Italian designers used the pallets to transform a 220 square meter space into a striking but highly flexible office and workshop.

The working space is situated in an undistinguished industrial building in Beirut, belying the well-lit haven hidden inside. The pallets are used to construct a dividing wall that is far more inspiring than the standard off-white office cubicle so typical in less-imaginative corporate offices.

At present the divider separates a private work space enclosed by glass from two different common areas where the designers take their meals, brainstorm, and work together. But the recycled wooden wall is also designed to be modular so that if necessary, this internal configuration can take on a new shape without having to take a sledgehammer to permanent walls.

Unique furniture items made from shipping pallets and other recycled materials green up the aesthetics even further, but all with a minimalist bent so contrary to the kind of extravagant decor typically favored by an earlier generation of Arab creatives.

Instead of plush velvet pillows and curtains, the recycled Loft in Beirut features natural materials, plenty of daylighting, and a distinct industrial-chic that is certain to catalyze awesome design ideas. And the best part? Anybody can scout out discarded wooden pallets to make similar recycled furniture at their own home or office for a steal!

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A view of Mount Hermon

Seemingly a world away from the hustle and bustle of Beirut, the Lebanon Mountain Trail, less than an hour’s drive from the capital, winds through the mountains that extend from the country’s northern to the southern borders. The trail showcases colorful foliage in the autumn, snowy summits in the winter, waterfalls in the spring and a respite from the hot summers on the coast. It is home to Roman ruins, temples, mosques and churches dating back over a thousand years.

“The scenery is absolutely staggering. You can be high up in mountains, and can look out over Beirut and the Mediterranean,” says Adrian Cazalet, a retired banker from England.

A shepherd sips a traditional herb drink called matte near the town of Rachaiya.

Mr. Cazalet first hiked the Lebanon Mountain Trail, known as the LMT, in its entirety from north to south in April 2010. A year later, he tried it again, this time reversing directions. He returned last November. Autumn, he recalls was completely different from his previous springtime hikes, with apples, pomegranates, persimmons, grapes and pears still ripe on the trees and with the countryside in autumnal shades of brown and gold. He’s now planning his third trip for May, when he will hike a small section of the trail.

Rotterdam, the Netherlands, contractor Wim Balvert hiked the entire trail in 2010, returning with his family in 2011 for a weeklong trip. “The trail,” he says, “goes through a very varying landscape, some of it empty and wild, some of it cultured, all of it beautiful. It is nowhere more than a few hours from Beirut, making it easy to get to it. My family was really impressed with the Qadisha Valley, where a donkey was used to carry our luggage to the guesthouse. The quietness of the area in the evening, and the sense of remoteness was amplified by visiting the hermits’ church in the valley.”

Hikers enjoy breakfast in a family run guesthouse in the northern village of Tashea.

The idea for the trail came about in 2002. Joseph Karam, a Lebanese expatriate based in Washington, D.C., envisioned an ecotourism project that would help the economic development of rural Lebanon and would also help preservation efforts in the country. The following year, through his environmental consulting company Ecodit, he submitted an application for a five-year funding program, receiving $3.3 million from USAID and $1.1 million from private donors.

“I woke up and said maybe we can do something like the Appalachian Trail,” he says. “People take months to walk it. I always had that fascination. The terrain was right for something like this.”

And so was the timing. Just a decade after the country’s 15-year civil war that lasted until 1990, Mr. Karam says that many Lebanese were returning home to rediscover their heritage. At the time, buses were taking groups of Beirutis to the mountains on day trips. But at that point there was no plan for a unified trail.

Working on the proposal, Mr. Karam and his 10-member team knew Lebanon was 220-kilometers long. Their initial idea was to make a 250-kilometer-long trail, but by the time the team finished drawing the route through the small country’s winding valleys and mountains, the trail had grown to 440 kilometers, providing a meticulous tour of Lebanon’s hidden archaeological treasures and wild beauty. In delineating the path of the LMT, the team carefully looked at security and safety considerations. The resulting LMT path was finalized in 2007.

One route that has been given special attention because of its cultural significance is the Baskinta Literary Trail. The 24-kilometer hike, going through the neighboring villages of Ain el-Qabou, Kfar Aqab, Wadi el-Karm, and Boqaatat Kenaan, showcases 22 literary landmarks related to celebrated novelists and poets, including Amin Maalouf, Suleiman Kettaneh, Rachid Ayoub and Georges Ghanem. A cultural center is dedicated to renowned author Abdallah Ghanem and a mausoleum commemorates Mikhail Naimy, who was born in Baskinta at the end of the 19th century and whose work was inspired by the surrounding mountains.

“I began my journey with a song in my heart and a firm determination in my soul,” Naimy wrote in “The Book of Mirdad,” his international best-seller. “But when, after a long a joyous march, I reached the lower end of the Slope and attempted to scale it with my eyes, I quietly swallowed my song. What appeared to me from a distance a straight, smooth and ribbonlike roadbed now stretched before me broad, and steep, and high, and unconquerable.

A sculpture at the Mikhail Naimy Mausoleum;

Indeed, for many visitors who hike the LMT, a highlight of the journey is their stay at guesthouses. Hikers get to see an intimate piece of rural Lebanon that they wouldn’t otherwise see, and the local hosts get the chance to showcase their villages, often for the first time, to visitors.

“I thought I knew Lebanese cuisine pretty well, but not in the villages,” says Beiruti Hana el-Hibri, author of “A Million Steps,” a memoir of her monthlong walk of the trail in 2009. “The thing about staying at a guesthouse is the cooking is different. Most of the food is from their gardens and their pantries. In the first house where I stayed, the woman said, ‘Everything you see is from my house and my garden—the eggs from the chickens, the yogurt from the cow, the vegetables.’”

Mr. Karam acknowledges that the path to acceptance of the project itself faced a winding road. “A lot of people were surprised and skeptical about what we were doing,” he says.

Just more than five years on, the positive response from the communities has surprised even Mr. Karam, with additional communities now applying to be connected to the trail. The LMT Association, which organizes guided hikes, is now reviewing the applications of six villages that wish to be connected to the trail, including Andkit in the north and Deir Mimas in the south, which would further increase the total length of the LMT. In addition, “the LMT is becoming a magnet for conservation,” Mr. Karam says, with some local municipalities legally protecting the path from construction and paving. Despite these developments the LMT remains in danger of development, with a three-kilometer stretch between Baskinta and Mtain having been paved over for a roadway. (The LMT Association is testing an alternative route for the part that was paved.)

Hikers cross the Hasbani River.

Still, Mr. Karam hopes that as the LMT unites Lebanon with the international community, Beirutis with Lebanon’s rural population and the country’s various communities with one another, so too will the winding trail unite people in its protection.

“The idea is to spread the word beyond us. It doesn’t matter if you’re Druze, Christian, Sunni or Shiite. You’re on trail and you feel like you’re part of larger destiny.”

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Lebanon players training before Wednesday's World Cup qualifier in Abu Dhabi. Lebanon can advance in the region with a tie.

 

Theo Bücker sat in a plush suite overlooking Martyrs Square, listening to a song written in honor of his team’s recent successes.

Bücker, 60, the German coach of Lebanon’s national soccer team, nodded politely, if a little awkwardly, as the aspiring female singer explained why she felt compelled to arrive at his suite with a MacBook laptop computer under her arm and play him a song she had written about a sport she had barely paid attention to until recently.

“It came to me one night in a dream, all of the names of the players,” she said to him, as the song filled the room. “I felt inspired after the last victory.”

The last victory was Lebanon’s surprising 2-1 win over South Korea in November during qualification for the 2014 World Cup. Despite being the lowest-ranked team in Asia at the start of qualification, and despite facing sectarian tensions that all but destroyed the sport in the country, Lebanon needs only a tie Wednesday in Abu Dhabi against United Arab Emirates to reach the final round of World Cup qualification in the region for the first time.

The team’s recent success has also given a divided country something to rally around.

“Lebanon football before I arrived wasn’t under the carpet,” said Bücker, who previously coached the national team from 2000 and 2003. “It was deeply under the ground. It was not existing at all.”

The local soccer league mirrored the sectarian violence that led Lebanon toward civil war from 1975 to 1990. Each soccer club had a distinct religious identity entrenched by the patronage of politicians who helped finance the teams. Teams like Al Ansar and Al Nejmeh were supported by the Sunni Hariri family, first by Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated, and then by his son Saad; Safa is supported by the Druze; Racing Beirut is aligned with the Orthodox Christians; and Al Ahed has strong links with Hezbollah.

Ahed’s jersey sponsor is Al Manar, Hezbollah’s TV network, which is considered a terrorist entity by the United States.

Every weekend, the country’s soccer matches resembled a mini-civil war. The violence got so bad that in 2007 the Lebanese Football Association, under pressure from the government, barred all spectators from matches. The stadiums stayed silent for five years. Bücker, who experienced that silence firsthand as a coach for Ahed, knew the sectarianism that blighted the game needed to be drawn out of the national team.

“You are just selecting players based on performance and not because they are from Ahed or Ansar, Christian or Druze or Shia,” he said.

“I don’t care if someone is Christian or a Muslim,” Bücker said. “There are only good and bad football players, that is all. I made them faceless, without any number. I am just looking for performance.”

Which is exactly what Bücker got. After a series of disastrous results — including a humiliating 6-0 loss at South Korea — Lebanon picked up 7 points in three matches. No one, not even Bücker, could have predicted what happened next when South Korea came to Beirut in November.

That 2-1 victory over the 2002 World Cup semifinalists took place in front of nearly 60,000 fans at Camille Chamoun Stadium after the government decided that the fans could return.

Bücker is now something of a national hero.

“The Lebanese are tired of all the problems of the past,” he said. “They are happy that this is uniting them. Now they have a very good reason to come back to the stadium.”

“I believe it is very good for the nation. They have found something which is really uniting them. There’s a deep love for football in the country. But before they had no home to dedicate their love. Now they have a home, now they can support their own team.”

On Sunday at Olympic Stadium in the northern city of Tripoli, the fragility of Lebanon’s soccer recovery was on display.

It was the last round of league matches to be played before Lebanon’s qualifier against United Arab Emirates. Only 108 fans showed up to see Tripoli Sporting Club take on Ahed, which has six players on the national team. The stadium used to be the pearl of Lebanese soccer but has fallen into disrepair after the army seized it to use as a base against the restive Palestinian refugee camps in the north of the country.

Soldiers with machine guns patrolled the running track that surrounded the field, a green and brown mess damaged by the helicopters that regularly land. Two men with coffee cups scooped as much muddy water from the penalty area as possible before the teams emerged from the tunnel.

Khodr Arja, a 16-year-old Tripoli fan, said he could not remember the last time fans were allowed in the stadium. “It’s new and we are happy to see it,” he said from a near-empty stand as the players trudged through the mud. “The federation is not helping the audience to come here.

“It should be for free. Look at the pitch. It is a farm, yes? The worst pitch in the world. Everything is bad.”

But even a few dozen fans marked progress.

“We don’t see many fans, but it’s better than nothing,” said Ali Hijazy, a soccer journalist with Al Jadeed TV. “It is like a revolution in Lebanese football.

“The football was miserable. Politics is a great reason why Lebanese football was bad. The politics is still here in Lebanese society, but Theo Bücker is working with the national team, with no politics or religious views. The Lebanese national team is doing the job that no politician can do.”

On Monday, Bücker gathered his squad at Safa Stadium in central Beirut for one last training session before heading to the Gulf. The team was supposed to play Qatar, but the match was canceled Monday morning, leaving the federation to scramble for a new opponent. But Bücker had bigger things on his mind. He urged his players to move beyond the sectarianism that has divided the country.

“You are the ideal for Lebanon and Lebanese football,” he said, shouting. “Think: if you can’t respect each other, how will other people here respect you?”

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A solar-powered goat farm in Lebanon now enjoys clean energy around the clock while the rest of the country sits in darkness for up to 18 hours a day.

Hasan Istaytiyyah was lucky to have six hours of state-run energy a day before he decided to install a solar photovoltaic system and ditch his dirty generator. Now he tells Daily Star that he has energy all the time, and finally feels connected with the rest of the world through internet access and satellite TV despite his remote location in the Bekaa Valley near the border of Syria.

Istaytiyyah’s story is a familiar one. Although Lebanon has strong northerly winds and piles of sunshine, the country’s leadership has failed to incorporate renewable energy to help meet the 2,400 MW daily demand. With a 900MW shortfall, many residents – particularly in rural areas – are without power for up to 18 hours a day.

Eco Friendly Solar Panels

Istaytiyyah’s goat farm in Qaa was plagued by the state’s energy shortages until 2010 when he saw an advertisement for solar energy listed by Eco Friendly, an environmental consultancy started by Patrick Ardahalian, Daily Star reports.

The entire system cost $9,372, which includes installation and VAT, according to a comment left on Eco Friendly’s Facebook page.

Not only does he have access to energy all the time, but Istaytiyyah was also able to get rid of his noisy, polluting generator when the PV system was installed.

“My farm became more friendly to my family and friends and closer to the civilized way of life despite its remoteness,” he said.

Wasted potential

Even though Lebanon has sun for roughly 300 days a year and the government pledged to provide at least 12% of its energy by using renewable sources by 2020, National Secretary of the Green Part Samir Skaf told Daily Star that the recently published National Energy Plan shows that the government will only provide 6.6% of the country’s needs using renewable sources.

Pierre Koury, Manager at the Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation disagrees, saying that natural gas is part of the plan, and therefore accounts for the rest of the country’s renewable energy source.

George Abboud, founder of Earth Technologies, blames the government’s shortsightedness, claiming that ”the customs fees for his energy-efficient LED bulbs are 15 percent, while those for regular bulbs are 5 percent. And last year he was unable to import electric cars for a taxi company he wanted to establish, because he was told that all cars imported into Lebanon are required to run on fuel,” Daily Star reports.

While government stays stuck in the status quo, citizens dissatisfied with their poor living conditions are taking power into their own hands. And as more do so, installation costs will drop.

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Emma Watson wearing an Elie Saab cocktail dress. Photo: REX

Two words are synonymous with red-carpet fashion these days: Elie Saab. Rarely a week goes by without a beautiful celebrity wearing an exquisite, twinkling creation by the 47-year-old Lebanese designer at an awards ceremony or starry premiere. Remember the curvaceous, crimson-hued, cap-sleeved gown Kate Winslet wore to collect her Emmy last September? It was an Elie Saab (a copy now graces the waxwork Winslet at Madame Tussauds). And the emerald-sequined ‘mermaid’ gowns Gwyneth Paltrow and Zoe Saldana wore on the same night in November to functions on either side of the Atlantic? Elie Saab.In the past year the roll-call of leading ladies who have chosen Saab’s fluttering chiffon or billowing satin to wear on the red carpet has trebled.

Standout pieces included those adorning Mila Kunis (who wore Elie Saab last Oscar night, as did Abbie Cornish and Céline Dion), Scarlett Johansson (Golden Globes), Sarah Jessica Parker (Cannes) and Keira Knightley (Toronto film festival). Last month The Artist actress Bérénice Bejo wore a stone wool dress with cap sleeves for the Bafta tea party at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles. And Angelina Jolie wore a pleated halter-neck jumpsuit to the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards gala. For tomorrow night’s Oscars, Elie Saab finds himself comfortably in pole position.

I met Mr Saab – no one calls him ‘Elie’ – after the ready-to-wear shows in Paris last October at a party in his apartment in the 16th arrondissement. It is a typically Parisian flat of wood-panelled interiors, chandeliers and vast gilt-edged mirrors that could have come from the Palace of Versailles. I found Saab looking far more relaxed than the man I had watched take a hesitant bow post-show, chatting to (mostly female) guests.

Dressed by Saab: Kate Winslet (Emmys, 2011); Gwyneth Paltrow (Bambi awards, 2011); Halle Berry (Oscars, 2002). PHOTOS: REX

I spied Catherine Kallon, the founder of the blog Red Carpet Fashion Awards, which is considered the oracle on all matters of celebrity dressing, and asked her about our host. ‘I regard Elie Saab as one of the most important red-carpet designers of our time because he knows what a celebrity wants: to feel glamorous and sexy wearing a modern gown that will guarantee her column inches.’

The next day I met Saab at his magnificent marbled Paris flagship at 1 Rond Point des Champs-Elysées, where the simplest day dress starts at €1,375. He is wearing black jeans, a grey cashmere crew-neck jumper and a soft leather biker jacket.

It is 10 years since the name Elie Saab began to be whispered in celebrity fashion circles. Halle Berry wore a burgundy haute couture dress when she won an Oscar for Best Actress in 2002. The dress had been in her wardrobe for a year. ‘She wore it out of love, not because a stylist told her to wear it,’ Saab tells me. ‘That is the force behind wearing my designs. Everything comes from the heart,’ he says, pounding his own with his fist. ‘Celebrities are important not because they are famous. It’s because they are normal women. When women see Kate Winslet in a dress they can imagine how it might look on them. She’s not an 18-year-old model who is two metres tall.’

Not that Saab isn’t popular with models. Anja Rubik, the ‘face’ of the Elie Saab perfume, had told me backstage pre-show, ‘As a model you really want to put on an Elie Saab dress because you know it will make you look good.’ After the show, models clung to him like a pop star, as did his many Lebanese clients. ‘How long have I been a fan?’ one exclaimed. ‘Since the beginning.’

The ‘beginning’ happened long before Saab dressed Queen Rania of Jordan for her coronation in 1999, or when Halle Berry wore that frock to the Oscars. Saab was born in 1964, the eldest son of five children of a prosperous wood merchant, a Maronite Christian, in Damour, south of Beirut. ‘When I was five I had a vision of what I wanted to do in life. I was a child but not a child,’ he says. ‘My two sisters were the first victims of my vision.

A gown from the spring/summer 2012 Elie Saab couture collection. PHOTO: REX

I made them clothes and they encouraged me.’ For fabric, Saab used his mother’s old tablecloths and curtains, and newspapers came in handy for pattern cutting. ‘Up to age eight or nine I can remember being very happy. Even as a child I was a critic regarding a woman. I was aware of her sense of style, and would think up ways she could look more beautiful and glamorous. My sisters played along with it.’

In 1976, when Saab was 11, a year into the civil war in Lebanon, his hometown was ravaged in what became known as the Damour massacre. More than 500 men, women and children were killed. ‘Damour was completely destroyed,’ Saab said. ‘It was the first town to be hit by the war, and it came as a surprise. I felt much despair and regret seeing the town I grew up in destroyed.’

The family fled to the outskirts of Beirut. Many others from his village left Lebanon never to return. ‘I don’t want to tell you about the suffering. The fighting. I have friends from my school days and still we don’t talk about it. I want only to present good. The war brought much grief to my family and me, and it was naturally a huge obstacle to my dream of becoming a designer, but I used it to feed my resolve and accomplish what I had set out to achieve. The Lebanese appreciate good things. They may not be rich but they have expectations. This same mentality has always been a driving force within me.’

A trip to Paris with his family when he was 14 cemented his ambition. ‘Everything fascinated me, not just the shops. It wasn’t a case of maybe; I knew I would return [to Paris] as a designer. When you believe in something you grow strong.’

His choice of career was not that of his parents. ‘We were a normal family. Lebanese people care about education and the progress of their children. My father wanted me to be a lawyer. It wasn’t that fashion in my country was not for a young man – fashion was non-existent.’ But four years after his trip to Paris, in 1982, Saab declared he was going to have a fashion show, with models, in Beirut’s Casino du Liban. Friends and family thought he was joking. ‘I was 18. It was a war zone. There had never been such a presentation in Lebanon. Models didn’t exist. I found girls who worked in advertising, and students. I suspect most, like me, had never even been to a fashion show.

‘Building a business and turning it into a success is difficult no matter what the situation politically. That said, doing it in the middle of a war zone, where there is no stability, and when you don’t know what is going to happen from one day to the next, definitely is a harder situation than most. But I believed – and still believe – in Beirut’s attitude of “for better and for worse”. Buildings were destroyed, but the beauty and rich culture of the city remains undamaged. Today Beirut is in its final stages of reconstruction. I always dreamt of this time when Beirut would be fully rebuilt.’

Saab began by making couture wedding dresses, which became the heart of his business. Arab wedding celebrations can last up to a week and require several outfit changes for the women. It is considered normal for the designer of the gown to make outfits for sisters and other members of the family, including the mother, aunts, grandmother. ‘You can imagine with bridal gowns there has to be trust. Sometimes in one Lebanese Arab family you do 18 outfits.’ As the brand developed so did the clientele, who began to include actresses. They found in his contemporary gowns everything they needed to make an entrance. His reputation spread to Jeddah, Riyadh and Dubai.

In 1997 Saab was invited to show his couture collection in Rome as an official guest of the Italian fashion body. A year later he launched a ready-to-wear line during Milan Fashion Week. In 2000 the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture invited him to show his couture line in Paris, the ultimate accolade, which he has done every season since. In 2006 he was appointed as a Membre Correspon­dant, a feat achieved by only two other non-French citizens: Valentino and Giorgio Armani.

He puts much of his success down to his house style, a fusion of lavish Middle Eastern handiwork and classic and European trends. ‘I like feminine elegance, not extravagance. I try to give good taste. I still have some of my first dresses somewhere and they aren’t so different from what I do now.’

Lisa Armstrong, the fashion editor of The Daily Telegraph, says, ‘His strengths are that he makes clothes in which Middle Eastern clients can feel very glamorous and not too exposed. As for the red carpet, I would say he makes flattering dresses that have lots of impact. They’re never extreme and they won’t make an actress look foolish. I think the overwhelming impression you get of a woman in Elie Saab is that she looks comfortable and feels beautiful.’

Sophia Neophitou-Apostolou, the fashion stylist who collaborates with Saab on his haute couture and ready-to-wear shows, adds, ‘He knows exactly what he wants. That’s what I love about him. He understands “his” woman. She is never vulgar or showy.’

Saab met his wife, Claudine, the daughter of one of his first clients, when he was 20. ‘When she walked into my office I knew this woman was going to be in my life.’ They married in 1990 when he was 25 and have three sons. The eldest, Elie Jr, is 21 and works with his father on social media and his website. Saab has homes in Paris, Beirut (where his atelier is) and Geneva, where the family lives for most of the year.

Last month Saab opened his fifth global flagship, in Hong Kong’s Landmark Mall, to reinforce the brand’s presence in Asia. The others are in Dubai, Beirut, Paris and in Harrods. More are planned for 2013. ‘I’ve built my house slowly,’ Saab says. ‘I’m only now starting to develop daywear. A wedding dress is easier to do than a simple dress. To come up with a simple dress that women will love like a wedding dress, that is a challenge. I’m so proud now that young people in my country can dream of working in fashion. All my generation knew was war.’

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Blood red river: The river, which divides the east and western suburbs of Beirut turned an eerie shade of red last week

Dye illegally dumped by a factory is apparently responsible for turning the Beirut River an eerie shade of blood red.

An investigation began last week after the river, which separates the eastern and western suburbs of Beirut, turned a deep red, prompting fears there had been a mass dump from a slaughterhouse.

The river, which flows into the Mediterranean, was visited by government and local officials, with preliminary test indicating dye to be the culprit, the Daily Star said.

According to officials at Beirut’s Environment Ministry the contamination has been traced back to a factory in either nearby Hazmieh or Baabda.

Further analysis is being conducted on the substance by the American University of Beirut, Zawya.com reported, but there are fears the incident could have catastrophic effects on the local ecosystem if the substance is identified as industrial.

Tests are expected to conclude next week.

Industry Minister Vrej Sabounjian said strict measures will be taken against the party responsible for releasing the substance into the river.

He said: “There are guidelines and conditions for all registered industries in the country to abide by … A failure to respect these conditions will not be tolerated.”

Once part of an urban development project, the Beirut River is increasingly becoming a dumping ground for sewage and waste, said the Daily Star.

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The Zaitunay Bay development, which opened in December with shops and restaurants, is built on reclaimed land.

ALTHOUGH many residents of Beirut were strolling along the newly opened waterfront promenade, Zaitunay Bay, on a mild January morning, it was almost eerily quiet. The Lebanese capital is not exactly known for tranquillity  —  a cacophony of car horns provides the soundtrack for nearly all strolls here  — but on this attractive marina nestled below street level, you could hear the water lapping against the hulls of docked pleasure craft.

Six years in the making, the elegant pedestrian esplanade, which opened in December and will soon have 17 restaurants and 7 retail shops is a sign of the downtown coastline’s revival.

“Ten years ago, this area of Beirut was dead,” said Raphael Sabbagha, co-chairman of Zaitunay Bay’s development company.

Indeed, during the 15-year Lebanese civil war, a nearby section of Mediterranean coastline served as a notorious dumping ground. Where there was once an open sewer outlet bordering a mountain of garbage there’s now a stunning teak boardwalk, ample terrace seating and gray basalt walkways.

The ambitious 215,000-square-foot development, designed by the architect Steven Holl, literally grew out of the stabilized landfill. “All of this was reclaimed and rebuilt after the 1975 civil war,” said Farouk Kamal, the other chairman of the development company. Pointing about 2,000 feet inland, he added, “The seafront used to be in front of that church.”

The offerings at Zaitunay Bay are distinctly high-end. There is a Champagne bar, a yacht club and a jeweler. But this is not just another glittery attraction out of reach to average Lebanese. In December the esplanade hosted an open-air Christmas market, with a lighted olive tree. There are also free concerts and “cultural flea markets” planned for the public, including a flower market for Mother’s Day (in March) and a music festival on the summer solstice.

“It’s the phoenix of downtown Beirut coming back,” said Samir Boubess, owner of the Cozmo Café (961-136-1650; boubess.com) at Zaitunay Bay.

Karim Haidar, a chef who runs three restaurants in Paris, returned to Lebanon after 25 years to open the creative Lebanese kitchen Zabad (961-137-6620; zabadrestaurant.com). A recent nine-course tasting menu (86,000 Lebanese pounds, or $59 at 1,453 pounds to the dollar) began with a chickpea and tahini espuma, featured a tiger prawn kibbeh with figs and dates, and wrapped up with a dessert pancake of pistachio and blackberry caramel.

Starting March 1, visitors will be able to rent a boat to sail around the inviting, aquamarine-hued Mediterranean at Water Nation Sports Center (961-3204-455;waternation.com.). Water Nation also offers scuba courses (from $150), 12-hour sailing courses ($400), or 12 sessions of water skiing ($400).

Amarres Bistro & Café Français (961-137-2292; amarresbeirut.com) channels the South of France with well-executed standbys like duck confit (38,000 pounds) and steak tartare with truffles (35,000 pounds) and an interesting French and Lebanese wine list.

A different aesthetic reigns at the Cro Magnon Steakhouse & Bar (961-1371-276; lecromagnon.com). “We wanted to go for something very industrial, like a dockyard,” said its owner, Joey Ghazal. The restaurant serves dry-aged U.S.D.A. prime beef cuts. The bone-in filet mignon special ($48) added a caveman touch to a normally dainty cut of meat. There’s a cigar cabinet, leather banquettes and a vaulted brass ceiling.

Mr. Ghazal’s other offering at Zaitunay Bay is the nautical St. Elmo’s Brasserie (961-1367-356; stelmosbrasserie.com), which he described as “Boston fisherman style”: “I wanted it to be a place where sailors would go and have a drink and meet girls,” he said. With its sleek décor and lobster rolls (30,000 pounds), it is more reminiscent of Martha’s Vineyard.

The Canadian-born Mr. Ghazal was working in the restaurant business in Montreal when the chance to move to his family’s native Lebanon arose. It was as much a mission as a business opportunity. “It’s kind of humbling,” said Mr. Ghazal. “You’re coming back to your roots and doing something that advances your country.”

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New York Times foreign correspondent Anthony Shadiddied in Syria on Thursday, apparently of an asthma attack. His loss was particularly painful here in Beirut, where many of the correspondents who knew him are based. The feeling was: We lost one of the very best of us.

Reporters and other people who knew Shadid well shared their remembrances of him after the news spread. Jim Muir of the BBC wrote this email to his colleagues:

In our ego-plagued profession Anthony was a person of quiet accomplishment and courage, with a profound sympathy and feeling for the region and a rare elegance and insight in his writings. He will be terribly missed as a colleague and a wonderful human being. We are all in shock.

Peter Bouckaert, emergency director at Human Rights Watch, wrote this via Facebook from New York:

There are many great journalists and many great human beings, but it isn’t easy to be both. Anthony, you showed us the way. You will be so very much missed, can’t believe we were together just two weeks ago. … [Shadid showed] that we can cover war with empathy, and that even the top dog in the business can care about the green newcomer who is covering their first war. That we can be nice, good and interesting people while doing a difficult job. He does deserve a statue somewhere, and not just for his reporting.

Ben Gilbert, a radio correspondent based in Beirut, recalls Shadid’s attention to details:

On May 21, 2008, the day the sit-in ended in downtown Beirut, I saw Anthony near Buddha Bar, wandering among the half-deconstructed tents and their jubilant former occupants. He had notebook in hand, as usual. Watching. Writing.

We walked into a parking lot that had, just a few hours before, been part of the tent city for more than a year.

I was thinking big picture. “What does this mean?”

He was looking at the details.

“Is that corn?” Anthony asked, noticing a traffic island that divided the parking entrance from the exit. “It is!” he said, smiling. He was clearly amused with this discovery. Other plants stood near the corn. “And that’s hummus and mint and basil,” he said, with a gardener’s eye.

Hezbollah members had been occupying downtown so long they had planted gardens in the tiny patches of green they could find among the sea of concrete. I was walking right by this little golden nugget of detail, oblivious.

We parted ways after a little catching up. I saw him a short time later. He had been hanging out with a few opposition guys off to the side of the former protest for a half hour, chatting in Arabic. … “They had some great things to say,” he said.

He used all of it in the next day’s story.

In my opinion, Anthony was one of the best reporters to work this beat, ever. I am honored to have bumped into him in Baghdad, Cairo and Beirut, and to have seen him in action. He was someone I looked up to. He established a standard that all reporters in the Arab world should aspire to: a deep knowledge of the language, people and politics, and a desire to explain a very complicated place to the rest of the world, often in allotments of fewer than 1,200 words.

He was courageous, easygoing and a brilliant writer. It’s a loss for so many on so many levels. RIP Anthony. Nada, I’m so sorry for your loss.

Remco Andersen, a young Middle East correspondent for the Dutch daily De Volkskrant, said he remembered the first and only time he met Shadid:

I walked past him while he was writing in the Radisson canteen in Tripoli. He seemed happy doing it, tapping with his foot on the floor in the same rhythm as his fingers on the keyboard. I was stressed on a deadline and a little jealous of this wildly experienced guy who seemed to be enjoying himself on his deadline, while I had a knot in my stomach. I asked him how long he took to write a story, “Two hours writing, one hour outlining,” he replied happily. Since then, when I get stuck, I sometimes see that image. Two hours. And enjoy it. You’re telling a story. That is what I tell myself.

Friday in Beirut, journalists were meeting to have a drink for Anthony, to remember him and his work. Surely more will meet later in Tripoli, Benghazi, Cairo, Baghdad, around Homs, and Sana, the cities he visited and wrote about.

RIP from Beirut.

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Richard Bampfylde in the recently revitalized neighbourhood of Mar Mikhael, Beirut

When Richard Bampfylde decided to move to Beirut, he received some amusing responses. “A friend of mine told me that when he was a kid, his mother used to say that his bedroom was as bad as Beirut.” Another friend sent him an email alerting him to the fact that football matches in Lebanon are often poorly attended because sport there, like everything else, is highly politicised.

Bampfylde finds that people often have some sort of predictable reaction to a mention of Beirut. Forty years of intermittent war and near-constant political strife, coupled with the city’s well-documented love of parties and plastic surgery, have lent Beirut an almost mythic quality. But at the Bampfyldes’ dinner table, Beirut was a frequent topic of an entirely different sort. His Greek mother and English father had met and married there in the 1970s. “It was part of our family history,” says Bampfylde. “When I finally got to visit at the end of 2007, I fell in love with the city.”

Bampfylde, 32, was born in Bahrain and spent the first seven years of his life in the Gulf. Later, his parents moved to England, settling in Guildford, Surrey, where Bampfylde lived until he left for university in Leeds. A job landed him back in Bahrain in 2006. “I represented a UK consultancy that wanted to expand its business in the Gulf,” says Bampfylde. “I spent three years developing the business, very much by myself.” Though he made a good salary, he found himself spending most of it on evenings out and trips abroad. “Like a lot of the Gulf guys,” he says, “I used to come to Beirut on holiday.”

Beirut’s reputation as a bastion of liberalism in the Middle East attracts a sizeable tourist population who fly in to shop, eat, and stroll through the city’s scenic streets. “Coming from the Gulf,” says Bampfylde, “you find there’s a lot of freedom in Lebanon. You can express yourself and enjoy ordinary things, like sitting outside drinking a beer or being able to walk outside in the summer.”

Anxious for a change of scenery, Bampfylde knew exactly where he wanted to live next and why. “There’s something about Beirut. It’s a feeling of spontaneity, of opportunity. I feel more able to take risks here,” he says.

That new-found feeling of confidence has translated into a varied and fulfilling experience. Shortly after he moved to Lebanon in 2009, Bampfylde secured a job as a teacher at a local school. He acquired an electric scooter, which he later replaced with a Vespa. And he found a two-bedroom apartment to rent in the historic and recently revitalised neighbourhood of Mar Mikhael in the north-east of the city, now home to an increasing number of upscale bars and boutique businesses.

So far he has no complaints about expat life. “A perfect example of the je ne sais quoi feeling one has in Beirut is the taxi rides you can take here,” says Bampfylde. “If you get on with the taxi driver and have a long chat, he may not even charge you when you get to where you’re going. Nothing is regimented. I like that.”

In June 2010, a friend persuaded Bampfylde to accompany her to the Dbayeh refugee camp on the eastern outskirts of the city. Under the auspices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Dbayeh is home to some 4,000 Christian Palestinians. Bampfylde spent the afternoon as a guest in residents’ homes, eating saj, a traditional Lebanese flatbread, and drinking tea. The experience motivated him to set up an English course for Dbayeh’s refugees. “My friend helped me co-ordinate it, and the first course was that same summer. We’ve run three courses since.” He plans to submit a proposal to get funding to start a permanent English language programme there.

His volunteer work at Dbayeh emboldened Bampfylde to try his hand at what has been his ultimate goal all along: to be his own boss. “The idea for an international plat du jour takeaway came to me on a flight back from Hong Kong,” he says. “But people don’t do takeaway in Beirut. They get delivery.” Since plat du jour turned out to be a logistical challenge given his teaching commitments, to get things rolling he settled on making a British classic one day a week. “I found myself with afternoons off on Fridays, and decided a fish and chips delivery was the thing to do.”

So Bampfylde begins every weekend by dropping off orders of fish and chips, along with complementary bottles of beer, to the neighbourhoods around Gemmayzeh, Hamra, Mar Mikhael and downtown Beirut. He does all the buying and frying himself, which has given his flat a distinct chip shop fragrance.

So far, word of mouth alone has been good for business. “The idea has always been to not use Facebook or any sort of social media,” he says. “If you want fish and chips, call the telephone number. It’s old school. Of course, everyone in Lebanon is on Facebook, but I don’t like in-your-face marketing.”

Despite Lebanon’s capricious political climate, Bampfylde has no intentions of leaving any time soon. With his first hire – a delivery driver – impending, he feels his hard work is starting to pay off and hopes to make his business a full-time one. And Beirut continues to inspire him. “I feel quite confined by social pressures in London where one is expected to choose professions that make them ambassadors of where they come from,” he says. “I’m happy to do that, but in my own way. Beirut has been a lovely place to start again.”

……………………………………………………………..

Buying guide

Pros

●Four distinct seasons

●Lebanese cuisine

●The friendliness of the people, especially the taxi drivers

Cons

● You can’t watch live football matches

● The use of two currencies and the money that is lost in constant exchanges between them

● High cost of living

What you can buy for …

$150,000 A two-bedroom, 100 sq m apartment in Sin El Fil, a suburb of Beirut

$1m A three-bedroom, 250 sq m apartment in a newly constructed building in Achrafieh

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The Lebanese Army’s large deployment along the aptly named Syria Street is seemingly the only thing keeping anti-Assad Sunni and pro-Assad Alawite militias in the two rival neighborhoods from resuming a two-day gun battle they fought over the weekend.

Militias of the Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh and Alawite Jebel Mohsen neighborhoods have regularly fought each other since the end of the civil war. Politically, the Alawites here have long been close to the Assad regime, whose leadership belongs to the same Shiite offshoot sect of Islam. Many among Tripoli’s large Sunni population harbored a strong resentment toward the Syrian government after Syrian troops occupied parts of Lebanon from 1976 to 2005.

And Syria’s downward spiral toward civil war is weighing heavily on Lebanon — particularly in Tripoli and the rest of the north of the country. As events next door escalate, tensions in Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh have flared, with residents increasingly seeing themselves as a part of Syria’s conflict.

Bab al-Tabbaneh today could be mistaken for a Free Syrian Army enclave across the border: Scrawled graffiti call for the downfall of the Assad regime, the green, white and black flag of the Syrian opposition hangs on walls and bullet casings litter the street.

From the steep hillside of Jebel Mohsen a six-story tall portrait of Rifaat Eid, head of the main political faction of Lebanon’s Alawite minority, and posters of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria stare back.

“We know whenever things in Homs will be good for the Syrian Army, they will be bad here,” said Mr. Eid, head of the Arab Democratic Party. Mr. Eid argued that Sunni militias instigated the most recent fighting and attacked his neighborhood as revenge for the Syrian government’s heavy-handed assault on the opposition stronghold of Homs that began this month.

Bab al-Tabbaneh residents claimed that Lebanese Army troops fired into their neighborhood from positions in Jebel Mohsen. But “this battle was not between us and the army, it was between us and Jebel Mohsen,” said Assad al-Hayek, a Bab al-Tabbaneh resident who saw his home damaged by the fighting. He added that he did not believe the army was “shooting to kill.”

The latest round of fighting began on Friday afternoon, hours after Salafist parties led a protest against the Assad regime through Tripoli’s main squares. As the sound of gunfire filled the air, businesses at the rear of Bab al-Tabbaneh quickly shuttered. Civilians shouted warnings of snipers and sprinted across soon-deserted streets for cover. For the next 24 hours, militias exchanged gunfire and grenades.

An army-brokered cease-fire halted the fighting on Saturday afternoon and Lebanese troops moved into sensitive areas. By the time the shooting stopped, three people were dead and more than 20 wounded. Each side blamed the other for starting the battle.

The Lebanese Army increasingly is finding itself caught in the middle as the Syria conflict continues to raise tensions in Lebanon.

After Syrian border incursions, kidnappings of Syrian dissidents who fled to Lebanon and instances of Syrian troops firing into Lebanon, the opposition March 14 coalition has called for the army to be deployed along the country’s borders. They would like the army to protect against any Syrian military aggression and defend the more than 6,000 Syrian refugees who have fled to Lebanon.

The Hezbollah-led March 8 bloc also wants the army on the border, but for much different reasons. Members of the largely pro-Syria coalition charge that the border areas are used as safe havens by the Free Syrian Army and as transit points for smuggling weapons to rebels.

Lately, March 14 has been accusing March 8 of using the Lebanese Army for its own — and Syria’s — benefit.

The Lebanese Army is one of the few state institutions respected in a country where political, ethnic and religious identities often supersede a national one. “The army really reflects the society, this mosaic,” said Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese Army general.

But more often than not, the Lebanese Army opts to stay out of conflicts, sitting on the sidelines until the shooting stops. Its chronic weakness and its cross-sectarian makeup also mean that its interference could exacerbate already dangerous situations rather than calm them.

The army “is made up of various sectarian groups and its political commanders are divided along different political lines of loyalties,” said Imad Salamey, a professor of political science at Beirut’s Lebanese American University. “So there isn’t much to expect from what the Lebanese Army can do in terms of playing a decisive military role.”

For the army to take action, there usually has to be political consensus. The last major operation that the Lebanese Army carried out was the 2007 routing of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Fatah al-Islam group in Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp north of Tripoli.

The clashes between Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jebel Mohsen were the kind of conflict that the Lebanese Army often tries to ignore. Yet this time, it was quick to deploy, warning that it would aggressively go after the fighters, regardless of which party they belonged to. On Saturday, local media reported that the army had killed a sniper in Bab al-Tabbaneh and arrested several people.

The fragile situations both in Tripoli and along the border represent a challenge for the army. Taking decisive and effective action at a time when accusations about the army’s loyalty abound could prove to be a dangerous move. Then again, allowing such situations to go unchecked could drag Lebanon into an even deeper, unwanted conflict.

According to Mr. Eid, the army intervened in the weekend clashes largely to protect his Alawite community in Jebel Mohsen, targeting only armed elements in Bab al-Tabbaneh. “If anything happens to Jebel Mohsen, the army — the Lebanese Army — will fight,” he said.

Mr. Eid added that the recent deployment to the border areas was in response to Syria’s request for the country to confront rumored Free Syrian Army activity and smuggling.

In Jebel Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh, parties involved in the fighting seem equally unperturbed by the current deployment of the Lebanese Army.

“The only clearly significant role the Lebanese Army plays in all these disputed issues is a primarily symbolic role and it gives a sense of comfort to the parties in dispute,” said Mr. Salamey.

Despite the military’s assertions that it would go after armed groups of any stripe and the arrests made during the clashes, it remains to be seen how realistic such action is.

On Sunday on Syria Street, a car slowly cruised past a Lebanese Army armored personnel carrier. Inside, bearded Sunni gunmen cradled assault rifles. The troops saw them, but did nothing.

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Billboards bearing portraits of Lebanese ex-premier Rafiq Hariri are pictured on the Sidon-Beirut highway in southern Lebanon on Feb. 13, 2012 on the anniversary eve of his assassination.

Though Beirut’s opulent array of lingerie boutiques, jewelry stores, and gift shops do brisk business in the romance trade throughout the year, many of them are shuttered on the most romantic day of all. Valentine’s Day is a semi-official holiday in Lebanon, though not because the citizens of this cosmopolitan, Middle Eastern country are reputedly more amorous than the rest of the Arab world. In fact, Feb. 14 is the date that former prime minister Rafik Hariri died in a massive car bombing in downtown Beirut in 2005, and each anniversary since has become a kind of saint’s day for those in the country who believe that the Hariri assassination was ordered by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which occupied Lebanon at the time.

This year, many of them finally feel that justice for Hariri’s murder is at hand — if not in an international court of law than by the whim of history and fortune. For almost a year now, the Syrian people themselves have risen up against Assad’s authoritarian rule, and many of those Lebanese gathering Tuesday at the annual Hariri memorial in downtown Beirut expressed hope that Assad would meet the same fate as the other dictators toppled by the popular revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring. “I hope he goes to hell,” says Joseph Mowad, a bodyguard of one of the anti-Syrian politicians attending the event, referring to the Syrian leader. “I hope he gets exactly what he did to our people in Lebanon.” They also took pride in the fact that the deaths of Hariri and several others led to mass demonstrations which eventually pushed the Syrian army out of Lebanon, an event that become known as the Cedar Revolution. They now claim it as a precursor to the Arab Spring. “I salute the [Syrian] martyrs of Dara’a and Homs,” said Samir Gagea, a member of parliament and leader of an anti-Syrian Christian political party, in a speech to the assembled audience. “The blood that fell there is merging with the blood that fell here… We are all fighting the same tyranny.”

But if justice comes for the dead Lebanese leader, it may likely be the kind of rough justice that throws Lebanon itself into chaos. There are warning signs of instability: the prices of assault rifles have more than doubled in the Beirut black market in the past year as arms dealers funnel weapons to the anti-Assad forces; well-to-do Syrians have been buying emergency apartments in Beirut and less fortunate ones have been heading to refugee camps in northern Lebanon. There is growing fear that the civil war in Syria, which has so far has claimed at least 5,000 lives, could drag Lebanon’s delicate sectarian and political balance down with it.

The Syrian crisis has re-opened one of the most senstive wounds in Lebanon’s body politic. Ever since Hariri’s assassination, Lebanon’s political factions have been bitterly — and sometimes violently — divided between those allied with or against the Syrian regime. In other words, those countries and militant groups that want to be part of the axis of resistance to Israel and America on the one hand, and, on the other, those that look to the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for patronage and protection.

Now critics say that Hizballah, the anti-Israeli militant group and Shi’ite Muslim political party, which is now the dominant power in Lebanon and which is supported by Syria, is pushing the Lebanese government to side with the Syrian regime. They say that Hizballah is forcing the Lebanese Army to block the flow of weapons to the Free Syrian Army, and the flow of Syrian opposition supporters fleeing the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown from entering Lebanon. Moreover, the Lebanese government has not joined the rest of the Arab League in condemning the Syrian regime or in calling for Assad to resign. “The present government is telling lies,” said Gagea. “We don’t have to be neutral. We can take the side of the revolution.” For its part, Hizballah, which receives much of its weapons and supplies from Iran, its other main patron, through Lebanon’s porous border with Syria, has promised to back the Assad regime until the end.

For all it’s strong talk, Lebanon’s anti-Syrian alliance is a shadow of its former self, having been defeated by Hizballah in gun battles in Beirut in 2008, and ejected from the government by Hizballah’s political machinations last year. Saad Hariri, Rafik’s eldest son, who inherited his billionaire father’s fortune and the leadership of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim community, hasn’t dared set foot back in Lebanon since Hizballah ousted him from the prime minister’s office seven months ago. The reputed playboy has been reduced to sending out press releases from his residence in Paris announcing which heads of state sent him condolences after he broke his leg in January skiing in France. Reacting to widespread speculation that his political ambitions have eaten through his personal fortune led to his denial on Monday of reports that his company had received a $2 billion interest free loan from the King of Saudi Arabia to keep it afloat.

But despite — or because of — the Hariri heir’s weaknesses, a groundswell of support for the Syrian revolution is beginning to bubble up, especially in Christian and Sunni areas of north Lebanon outside of Hizballah’s control. The northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest, has become a haven of sorts for free Syrian activists, refugees, and wounded Free Syrian Army fighters. On Friday, a mix of Syrian refugees and Lebanese Sunni Islamist gathered in the city’s central square in sympathy with embattled Syrian cities such as Homs. The angry demonstration — replete with black flags of mourning and prayer — had the same feel of the thousands of anti-American protests that had become routine in the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq, only now the rage was going in a different direction: “There is no God but God,” they shouted. “And Assad is the enemy of God.” Later, a group of young men began chanting “Down with Nasrallah,” referring to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah and the most feared man in Lebanon, until one of the event’s organizers, worried that thing might get our of control, calmed them down. Gun fights broke out later that day between pro and anti-Syrian neighborhoods in Tripoli.

Of course, the feeling of imminent disaster is nothing new in Lebanon. The country fought a 15-year sectarian civil war that ended in 1990, several wars with Israel, and still is home to some 400,000 Palestinian refugees. Yet it has managed in the last 22 years of semi-peace to gloss over its unresolved conflicts by turning itself into a one stop luxury shop and seaside playground for the region’s oil-elite, complete with nightclubs, beaches and money laundering. But already, tourism has fallen 21% since the Arab spring began, and the IMF last week warned that Lebanon’s economic growth could shrink to 1.5% down from 10% a year ago, a dangerous development for a country with one of the world’s largest per capita public debits. And more generally, the feeling is spreading that the Arab Spring may force Lebanon to a reckoning, and that the good times may be coming to an end. “Lebanon is a bottle of champagne sitting on top of a volcano,” says one skier, riding the chairlift on the slopes above Beirut, with a view of the Mediterranean on one side and a view of Syria on the other. “And it’s about to pop. ”

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