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…