Every time I return to Beirut, I wonder which version of the city will greet me. Sometimes it is vibrant, glamorous and impossibly alive: the Mediterranean sparkles beneath an endless blue sky, cafés spill onto cobblestone streets, galleries champion a new generation of Arab artists, restaurants fill long before sunset and remain busy deep into the night. It is stylish without trying too hard, effortlessly cosmopolitan and full of people determined to live every moment. Music drifts from open windows, laughter echoes through narrow alleyways and the scent of freshly baked manousheh lingers in the air – and women happily head to their Pilates classes. It feels like a city that refuses to dim its light, no matter how often darkness threatens.
Other times, Beirut is in mourning. On 28 February, following the US and Israel’s strikes on Iran, the conflict spilled far beyond its original front lines. After Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in Tehran on the first day of the war, Hezbollah launched attacks on Israel, and Lebanon, once again, found itself dragged into a regional conflict it had not chosen. The escalation was swift and unforgiving, pulling ordinary people into a crisis that felt both distant and intimately close. Villages across the south emptied. Families packed what little they could carry and headed north. Schools became emergency shelters. Coffee shops became makeshift kitchens. Entire communities were uprooted overnight, their routines replaced by uncertainty and fear. The roads filled with cars, mattresses strapped to roofs, children clutching toys and parents trying to reassure them with words they barely believed themselves.
By the time I arrived in Beirut in mid-March, after several weeks covering the war from Doha and Jerusalem as Sky News’s lead world news presenter, more than a million people had been displaced and almost one thousand killed. The numbers were staggering, but behind each statistic was a story of loss, resilience and survival.
Yet every morning, at 7.45am sharp, my driver, Sami, would be waiting outside the Mövenpick Hotel on Beirut’s Corniche. We’d pull away from the waterfront, the Mediterranean glinting in the early morning sun, passing joggers, fishermen casting their lines into the sea and families taking an early stroll, before weaving our way towards Gemmayzeh. The contrast was striking – life continuing as though nothing had changed, even as everything had. Some mornings we’d stop to collect my friend Nawal, a BBC correspondent, who, like me, was covering the war. The drive became our morning editorial meeting. Which hospital first? Which minister? Who was available for interview? Had there been strikes overnight? And then we’d arrive at the exercise studio.
At exactly eight o’clock, Reem would clap her hands softly and greet us all. “Good morning.” The studio was immaculate, with pale wood, curved mirrors and pristine white reformers lined up in neat rows. Around me, a group of glamorous Beirut women settled onto their machines, adjusting straps, tying back their hair and catching up on each other’s lives. Yet, outside, Lebanon was at war. But inside, for the next 60 minutes, the soundtrack wasn’t military briefings or casualty figures, rather it was Reem’s tender instructions and the gentle rhythm of springs beneath the reformers. Measured breathing; occasional laughter. “Does anyone know a really good dermatologist?” Amal* asked one morning while adjusting the straps around her feet. Three women answered immediately. Jeanette laughed. “Forget the dermatologist,” she said. “Magnesium. Magnesium fixes everything.” The room erupted. Someone else declared matcha completely overrated. Manal rolled her eyes and announced she was the only person left in Beirut still drinking coffee. Reem smiled without missing a beat. “Core engaged,” she reminded us.
There were recommendations for restaurants, gallery openings and facialists. Someone was planning a birthday dinner, another was deciding whether to book flights for a forthcoming trip. For a little while, the conversation could have belonged anywhere: London, Paris, New York… Above us, an Israeli surveillance drone seemed to fizz endlessly through the sky. Mostly, I heard rather than saw it – a low mechanical buzz that would fade and return, sometimes louder, sometimes barely perceptible, but rarely absent. The sound of a surveillance drone had become part of the texture of ordinary life, a sound so constant that eventually it disappeared into the background. Nobody looked up any more.
We’d debate the best collagen supplements then, 40 minutes later, I would be interviewing displaced families searching through the rubble for their belongings. I couldn’t reconcile the two at first. Then, gradually, I realised I’d misunderstood what I was witnessing. These women weren’t pretending the war wasn’t happening – they knew the truth better than anyone – they had simply refused to let it become their entire identity.
Of course, this wasn’t everyone’s Beirut. Beyond Gemmayzeh, Lebanon’s economic collapse had already left millions struggling long before war compounded the suffering. Entire families were living without reliable electricity, healthcare or income. For many, survival was not a philosophical question but a daily, urgent reality. And conflict has a way of reaching everyone. Halfway through one class, a phone buzzed. Nobody moved. We were balancing on one leg. A few seconds later, Amal glanced down. “It’s my sister,” she said quietly. “She’s in Tyre.” The room fell silent. Then, after a moment, the relief, visible on her face – she smiled. “Everything’s OK.” You could almost hear everyone exhale. Jeanette said she still had insomnia. Someone else wondered whether to postpone a family celebration. One moment they were debating moisturisers, the next they were talking about survival. That was Beirut.
After class I’d usually wander a few doors down for coffee before climbing back into Sami’s car. The drive never stopped feeling surreal. Gemmayzeh is one of Beirut’s most captivating neighbourhoods – if Soho had a Mediterranean twin, this would be it. Independent galleries, bookshops, design boutiques, tiny cafés serving immaculate flat whites… Then, within minutes, another Beirut: bulldozers pushing aside mountains of concrete and twisted steel, rescue workers searching through rubble, displaced families standing silently where homes had once stood, rows of tents stretching along the seafront, children kicking footballs between makeshift shelters… Those two Beiruts – one searching relentlessly for beauty, the other learning, once again, how to live alongside catastrophe – existed side by side. Those mornings at the reformer class changed the way I thought about Beirut. From the outside, resilience sounds extraordinary. In Beirut, it often looks remarkably ordinary. As journalists, we spend our lives documenting the moments that change history: the strikes, the diplomacy, the casualty figures. Those stories matter, but history is also written in the quieter decisions people make every day. The decision to open the café, to book the birthday dinner, to turn up for Pilates, to talk about skincare when everyone in the room knows another missile could arrive before lunch. Every war creates two stories. There is the one told through military briefings and front lines. Then there is the one lived by ordinary people. Beirut has taught me that those quieter stories are not a distraction from war, they are the reason people survive it.
Every time I return, I still wonder which version of the city will greet me: the glamorous one; the grieving one. The truth is, they have always been the same city. Beirut has simply learnt to carry both.