A Walk with President Mary Mikhael in Downtown Beirut

Friday evening (Oct. 1), I was invited for a walk downtown led by NEST President Mary Mikhael with a visiting committee from the World Council of Churches. The committee included ecumenical leaders from many global regions with Conrad Reisner, their distinguished chair.


As we walked the narrow and traffic-congested streets of Beirut in the tropical heat & humidity, President Mikhael would stop and point out public landmarks. We were moving from the Hamra district where NEST is located to city-center. Beirut is a relatively small city in square miles but densely populated and crammed with historic sites, both ancient and modern.


As we approached the parliament building which dates back to the Ottoman era of the 19th century, Mikhael showed us how both Christian and Jewish centers of worship were built around this building, for both Jews and Christians were protected peoples under Ottoman rule. The result is that the must public areas of downtown Beirut host some of the most beautiful churches and mosques I have seen in any global city.


What also makes these sacred sites significant is that several of the churches (including the very first Presbyterian church built in Lebanon) were destroyed, in whole or in part, during the Lebanese civil war of the late 20th century. Some of the churches which are built over much older churches dating back many centuries, were actually battle sites between different militias fighting inside the church buildings. All of them that were destroyed or damaged were re-built with funds from their own traditions, not with public funds. In the case of one church, beautiful icons from the 1700s were removed from the sanctuary and hidden in a hospital before gunfire broke out in the sanctuary. This beautiful church has been restored but those who re-built left the bullet marks on one wall to remind the public that a battle once scarred this holy place.


We also saw from different angles the reconstruction of Beirut's central synagogue as an historic site. The city was once home to a thriving Jewish community. It was significant that someone has taken the care and committed the funds to re-build this historic synagogue.


Then we walked around a neighborhood with four mosques, and an immense, beautiful new mosque built very recently. Near this new mosque is the burial site of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who was assassinated in 2005, and the tombs of his body guards and driver who were blown up in the explosion. Hariri was a Sunni Muslim, an entrepreneur, and the P.M. who oversaw the re-building of downtown Beirut after the civil war in the 1990s and first half of the last decade. We went into the tent over his grave and viewed pictures of him on the tent walls, and then walked into the next tent where his guards and driver are buried and saw their pictures.


Later we had dinner al fresco in a beautiful neighborhood near where the new souk (marketplaces) have been located. The Lebanese dishes reminded me of eating tappas in Barcelona. The Lebanese wine was outstanding. As we dined and the WCC members honored President Mary and Conrad Reisner, a group of clowns were posing for pictures with  families. This part of downtown Beirut felt like a Parisian street corner on a Friday evening.


Most of our group returned to NEST in taxis, but a few of us walked back in the darkness with President Mary. At one point we had to cross very near the home of an important public official that was well guarded by police and soldiers. Mikhael stopped to chat with the soldiers and then gave them most of her chocolates, her gift from the WCC group she had just received. 


As I remember this evening now, it was like a dream finally to see the center of this city and country about which I have heard from Presbyterians & other Christians for so many years.