Screech! Honk! And a few polite words. That is what it takes for the 40-ton dump truck on a busy intersection at noontime in the middle of Beirut’s Ashrafieh district to make cars give him enough space to squeeze a left turn onto the district artery, Independence Avenue. Neither the narrow side street from which the trucker emerged with a load of sand and rock, nor the main street, is suited for heavy vehicles. But a fleet of his colleagues will repeat the exercise every 20 or 30 minutes throughout the day, and not only on this one sunny November day. They are hauling excavated soil from a massive construction site on the southern slope of the Ashrafieh hill over the course of several weeks, so that the foundations for another multi-story apartment block can soon be poured. The project where these lorries are loaded is not the only hyperactive
