Summers of our discontent

Many things can be said about the July-August 2006 war,whose first anniversary we will be commemorating later thismonth. However, for those who lived through it, a singleenduring image remains: that of sudden, irrevocable,traumatic collapse into chaos. One minute the Lebanese were enjoying the start of whatlooked to be a prosperous summer, the country was awash withemigrants and visitors, and the football World Cup had hadcreated a sense of being hooked into the nodes of acelebrating world; the next minute, Lebanon was being bombedremorselessly, citizens had become refugees in their owncountry, tourists and visitors were taking to the sea, andthe link to the world had been brutally severed with thesudden closing of Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport. In what was an instant, Lebanon’s capitalist culture, aculture of openness, of the promotion of free minds and thefree pursuit of profit, had been overturned by one ofconflict and destruction. The country never recovered