Saturday, Nov 27, 2004
Some people dance to remember, some dance to forget. In Beirut, they just dance. They shimmied their way through the 1982 Israeli invasion and 16 years of civil war, and now they are swinging their way through the 21st century.
Beirut's nightlife did not shut down when the shelling started - it went underground. The Lebanese simply turned up the music to drown out the gunfire.
Returning home to Lebanon during the mid-1980s for holidays, I remember how my cousins and I would sneak out after curfew to while away the time in one of the few after-hours bars that were still operating, such as Backstreet or Uncle Sam's, a low-key pub near the American University in West Beirut.
We would revel in drinking warm beer and dragging on American-bought Marlboro Reds as we discussed politics in heated tongues over flickering candles. Sometimes, if our Christian friends could be bothered to drive through the endless check points set up to divide east and west Beirut, they would join us.
For those of us who did not have to endure the daily bombardment and pain of war, the more erratic the electricity, the bigger the thrill and the more poignant our exchange of stories appeared to be.
Today, it is not so much courage, but cash and connections that is needed to get into the glitzy array of bars and clubs sprinkled around the centre of town.
The spectre of nightlife entertainment varies from Crystal, Beirut's largest and arguably tackiest nightclub, to Casablanca, a Bohemian- style restaurant and bar with views of the corniche.
Competition to be the trendiest and slickest in terms of design is intense. Some venues close within months of opening, depending on the mood of Beirut's revellers. One of the first clubs to hit the scene straight after the war was B018, Beirut's underground club that still has echoes of war and death. Submerged underground in an area where Muslim refugees were massacred in 1976, clubbers display a kind of group amnesia as they dance on tables set with memorial photos of old Hollywood entertainers, waiting for the state of the art ceiling to open and reveal Beirut's polluted sky.
This is still one of the most popular clubs in Beirut that is able to attract some of the biggest names on the circuit. Last week, Judge Jules, the well-known DJ, made a guest appearance at the club.
At Crystal, the heady scent of Fendi, Gucci and Prada engulfs you at the door. Mountains of glossy, brown and blonde hair and beautiful hands with varnished talons cling-filmed in transparent silks, jig along to the latest sounds, adorning women mouthing the words to songs. Here, the jetset Lebanese crowd can be as flash and gaudy as they like. Whenever someone buys a Dollars 3,000 bottle of Moet & Chandon, the music stops and a spotlight is beamed on to the customers as their order is carried to their table. They then get their name embossed on the wall.
For something a little less over the top there is the baroque-style lounge bar
Zinc. Housed in an old French colonial villa, Zinc is a favourite with people who want to dance for fun, not display.
It can be heartbreaking sometimes to see a generation of people brought up in almost endless war, dancing on the tables to Vera Lynn's second world war ballad, Those Were the Days. Growing up during the war, this song was a favourite with my great-aunts who used to delight in waltzing to the memories of their glamorous Beirut past.
Indeed, it is easy to forget that some of the Palestinian refugee camps that are in Lebanon, including the rat-infested Bourj al-Barajneh camp, are located less than 15 minutes away from the nightlife.
To untrained ears, the supersonic boom resounding from Beirut's nightlife could resemble the tremors endured during nearly two decades of destruction.
But these are just the sounds of the Lebanese enjoying themselves again. Some have even worked the psyche of the war into their nightlife by choosing to drink and dance at Beirut's 1975, a bar named for the year the civil war broke out.
It features a smokey atmosphere to suggest shelling, walls lined with sandbags and a ceiling covered with a dark green camouflage net. Waiters at 1975 wear battle fatigues and serve drinks from ammunition boxes loaded with ice and bottles of vodka.
On an evening out when conversation turns to the latest Israeli attack near Lebanon's border, however, it is difficult to rely on vodka and music to anaesthetise the pain of conflict.
Lina Saigol is the FT's European M&A correspondent based in London
By LINA SAIGOL
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