Running in Beirut #2

My swan song to Beirut, through running.

I have pounded these streets over and over, and I think I know every smell and sound and colour. The salty sewage as the corniche pans out beside the seafront opposite McDonald’s at Ain el-Mreisseh. The illuminated balloons, touted by wandering sales children, providing an alternative to the failed street lamps. The swoosh of the sea. The cordoned-off stretch, smashed by a storm last winter, which no one has come to fix.

The young men slouching on the seafront railings, waiting out displacement and war and conscription and unemployment next to the waves. The young couples who perch on the rocks, side by side, soul by soul. The families with impressive picnic sets, chicken and bread and garlic paste set out on the benches in plastic boxes. They complete the set-up with shisha pipes whose “toufah-tayn” — double-apple — flavoured smoke perfumes the air.

For four years, I have gone running in Beirut. It is often hot and sweaty. There is little green space. But running has carried me, and allowed me to explore the city that became my home, even as I loved and loathed it all at once. It was my way out of discomfort and my way into my thoughts, the part of my mind where everything is organised and going to be OK at some point, even as I saw my adopted home fall further and faster.

Time was, these streets were different. I would run from my apartment near Sassine Square, up along Damascus Street. I would use random road blocks scattered on the pavements as an…