Fleeing Lebanon: An Improvised Journey from Beirut to Hangzhou

Escalation in Lebanon 

The sun shone high and bright over Ras Beirut. A group of elderly men sat fishing along the seawall, shaded by a towering lighthouse; the boardwalk bustled with ambling pedestrians. The tranquility of the scene before me did nothing to evoke the events of the past week—a country-wide explosion of electronic pagers on Wednesday; another remote explosion on Thursday, this one targeting walkie-talkies; two large apartment buildings struck by Israeli rockets on Friday.

I’ve long had an affinity for Lebanon, returning to spend a few days whenever the chance arises. The current context was, of course, unusual. In October 2023, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza had launched their “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation—a surprise attack on the south of Israel. Hezbollah, a Shia militant group based in southern Lebanon, had subsequently joined the fray, trading rocket fire with Israel over the past year.

Lebanon had, since then, seen periods of escalation interspersed with moments of calm. The capital, for its part, remained largely unaffected. Conversations with local friends generally seemed to orbit around the usual woes: currency devaluation, inequality, political corruption.

On this trip, however, things were different. The situation had degenerated abruptly, and tensions showed no signs of abating. I began to worry whether I would be able to return to China as planned.

Nevertheless, seizing on the day’s fleeting calm, I decided to make a few excursions. The streets coursed, as ever, with a ceaseless flow of people and cars. There were signs, however, that something was amiss. In western Beirut’s Bachoura district, I passed a group of men carrying mattresses, likely arriving in the capital to seek refuge from southern regions hard-hit by Israeli shelling. As I walked through Haret Hreik, a southern suburb of Beirut, men claiming to be members of Hezbollah approached and interrogated me, asking why I was in Lebanon. They let me loose only after ascertaining that I had no connection to Israel. In Jounieh, a town on the northeastern outskirts of the capital, the usually bustling gondolas of a mountain-bound téléférique hung almost empty; every passenger had his own seat. Gazing down at the coastline below, watching a riot of waves roll in and then recede, I found myself lost in thought.

A news alert from my smartphone jolted me back to my senses. Just an hour earlier, several regions in Lebanon had been hit by rocket attacks, claiming nearly five hundred lives—a death toll recalling the worst days of Lebanon’s civil war, in the early 1980s. Opening WhatsApp, I was inundated with dozens of messages. Plans to meet friends that evening were abruptly canceled.

I quickly hailed a cab back to my hotel in Beirut, only to be faced with an unsettling scene upon my arrival. An ambulance was parked at the entrance, having dropped off an injured guest to recover in his room. The lobby was packed, teeming with people—many dressed in what appeared to be Shia garb. Arriving at the reception desk, I was informed that the hotel had been fully booked for the night. In an adjoining lounge area, some guests quietly thumbed Islamic prayer beads; others scrolled through videos of rockets exploding on their smartphones; others rang up friends or family, and upon ending their calls lapsed into meditative stillness.

Just a few kilometers away, Beirut’s Rafic Hariri Airport was witnessing a massive surge in flight delays and cancellations. European and American airlines had already suspended their services several days earlier, and now Etihad Airways, EgyptAir, and Air Arabia were following suit, leaving Lebanon’s own Middle East Airlines (MEA) as the sole carrier still operating. The company’s ticket prices soared to new heights, accordingly.

Flights for the following day were canceled. Flights for the day after—also canceled. In an effort to catch up with events as best I could, I booked seats on four different flights that were scheduled to depart in the coming days. All of these were canceled, one after the other.

With the conflict suddenly intensifying, many shops were closing early. The Chinese embassy issued a special advisory urging immediate evacuation.

The situation had deteriorated with alarming speed. I was left with no choice but to consider evacuating the country by land.

Fleeing into Syria

In the minds of many, Syria is synonymous with war. To seek refuge there sounds like the sort of fanciful plot point one might find in a chapter of The Arabian Nights.

But Lebanon has few neighbors. To the west sits the Mediterranean Sea; Israel lies directly to the south; Syria borders east and north. Cyprus, though not distant by ferry, does not offer visa-free access to Chinese passport holders, and had not announced willingness to receive sea arrivals in any case, while the Israeli border was, of course, the frontline of the conflict.

This left me just one viable option—eastward, to the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Damascus is a mere hundred kilometers from Beirut, a distance akin to that which separates Shanghai and Suzhou. Though belonging in the modern day to different countries, the two cities share a great deal of culture and dialectal commonalities, and have a long history of human movement back and forth.

On the advice of local contacts, I arranged for a driver to help me make the trip. We agreed to depart from Beirut at 9pm. That night, we would traverse Lebanon along Route 30, cutting through the country from west to east. After crossing the border, my journey would continue along a short stretch of Syria’s Route 1, leading finally to Damascus.

Topographically, the trip would take me through one of the Levant’s few elevated regions, as we climbed Mount Lebanon, descended into the strictures of the Beqaa Valley, and then skirted the foothills of the imposing Anti-Lebanon range. Beyond these mountains lay the vast basin which cradles the city of Damascus, where, if all went to plan, I was to arrive around 11:30pm.

As dusk approached, I packed my bags and sent farewell messages to local friends. The Lebanese among them had scattered to their various family homes—some to safer mountain provinces, others to the more precarious Beqaa Valley, where they intended to brave mounting dangers together with loved ones.

Only one close friend of mine planned to remain in Beirut indefinitely, an American. He invited me over for a last meeting at his apartment, where we sipped thick Turkish coffees and watched from his balcony as the Mediterranean transformed in a final, dazzling array of colors to its pale, dusky gray, and the sun’s burning edge was eclipsed by cold waves into shadow. The call to prayer from a neighboring mosque punctuated the day’s end.

“Come with me to Syria,” I said. “Who knows how much longer Beirut will remain safe?” “I’m from the US,” he replied, shaking his head wryly. “There’s a good chance I wouldn’t be allowed through the border at all. And if they did let me through, once in Syria I’d likely be seen as a foreign agent or some other potential threat.”

His reasoning gave me pause. An American passport, universally considered one of the world’s most powerful, was rendered less than helpful here. My Chinese travel documents, on the other hand, granted me remarkable access across much of the region. Except for Yemen, where the situation was quite dire, and a few countries like Kuwait and Algeria, which remained more closed-off, I had found visa-free, e-visa, or visa-on-arrival policies nearly everywhere. On the ground, generally speaking, my presence elicits curiosity rather than suspicion or hostility.

Later that night, as my car sped eastward, I glimpsed the minaret of the Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque as it flashed past the window. Just out of sight were two distinct Saint George Cathedrals—among Lebanon’s most prominent Maronite and Greek Orthodox Christian churches, respectively. This area, where Martyrs’ Square transitions into Downtown Beirut, serves as a critical node in the religious and political life of the city. Nearby are the prime minister’s headquarters and parliament building, symbols of unified governance in a district that was one of the bloodiest zones of engagement during Lebanon’s sectarian civil war.

In this small nation of just over five million people, there are a total of eighteen officially recognized religious sects. Christian denominations include Maronite Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Apostolics, while Muslims broadly identify as Sunni or Shia, not to mention the Druze, a fiercely independent early offshoot of Shia Islam. Starting with the establishment of the French Mandate in 1920, and continuing through Lebanon’s independence in 1943, Lebanon’s Christian communities had dominated governance of the territory, with their political influence roughly—if not perfectly—commensurate to Christians’ demographic predominance in the early 20th century. However, over time, the country’s imbalanced, sectarian political system failed to reconcile competing interests or adapt to population shifts. An influx of Palestinian refugees, most of them Muslim, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War only aggravated existing sectarian tensions, with a brutal civil war finally breaking out in 1975. Foreign powers including Western and Gulf Arab states, Iran, Syria, and Israel all played into Lebanon’s internal strife, transforming the conflict into a fifteen-year tug-of-war. Though more than three decades have passed since the war ended, divisions remain deeply entrenched.

Route 30 wound its way through the mountains, rising sharply after a series of hairpin bends. The governorate of Mount Lebanon loomed ahead, its dark mass punctuated by the glimmer of white cedars—the country’s national symbol—faithfully standing sentinel. This region is home to many Christians and Druze; Lebanon’s poet laureate, Gibran Khalil Gibran, hailed from a small village nestled among these very hills.

In the view of many Lebanese Christians, Hezbollah’s unilateral decision in fall 2023 to open a front with Israel, while presented as a means of supporting Gaza, had in reality committed the Lebanese people to a war not of their own choosing, and further plunged the nation into the mire of violence. Israel is a wealthy, developed country with the backing of American military aid, while Hezbollah is a mere insurgency—against such a mismatched opponent, fleeting achievements notwithstanding, how could one hope to achieve lasting victory?

The altitude began to drop as Route 30 transitioned from rugged mountain roads into a straight, flat thoroughfare. We had arrived in the Beqaa Valley. This fertile expanse, dotted with olive groves, vineyards, and grain fields, provides the basis for Lebanon’s agriculture, ensuring the country’s self-sufficiency in food. The valley’s residents are strikingly diverse, including Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims, and Druze. Among these, many Shias hold a markedly different view of the war as compared to their Christian neighbors. To them, Israel’s Zionism constitutes a menace to the entire Arab-Islamic world—responsible, among other things, for seizing Palestinian lands, invading and bombing Lebanon, and wreaking havoc on Yemen. In the face of this threat, Hezbollah’s forces, though not Lebanon’s official army, are perceived as a critical defense against incursion, all the more so given that the group is largely credited for ending Israel’s previous eighteen-year occupation of southern Lebanon. With the country once again under attack, supporters of Hezbollah argue, all sects must stand united.

Just ahead, illuminated by faint streetlights, sat Masnaa, the last town within Lebanon’s borders. Beyond it loomed the dark silhouette of Syria’s mountains. A sense of finality gripped me. To many Chinese, Syria is a distant and unfamiliar entity. Yet from here in Lebanon, Syria always felt close, an omnipresent Other, lying just “over there”—as if beyond a paper-thin screen. Syria could be deciphered in graffiti scrawled under Beirut’s overpasses, traced in the accents of restaurant servers, eavesdropped in muttered conversations at streetside café tables. Now, the paper screen was to be pierced. As my car hurtled forward, I gazed at the far side of the hazy border that lay before me, expectant.

Caught Between Two Ports

We had arrived at the Lebanese border checkpoint. Though it lay a full five kilometers from the official boundary with Syria, it marked the end of the Lebanese government’s jurisdiction. Exit formalities took just ten minutes, and as I stepped out of the hall, I found myself leafing through my passport. Its pages recorded my comings and goings in Lebanon: red stamps for arrivals, black for departures, all marked “R.H.I.A” (Rafic Hariri International Airport) except for a newly emblazoned “MASNAA” in thick black letters.

I had escaped the worst chaos of the war, I reassured myself. No need to worry about rockets falling from the sky, transforming my immediate whereabouts into a news headline. Whatever lay ahead, I told myself I could relax. Stretching my back at the waist, I waved goodbye to my Lebanese driver and found a Syrian-plated black cab to continue the journey. Just a bit further ahead was the Syrian border hall; a stamp there and I would officially be in Syria.

Minutes later, I was assailed by the sight of a traffic jam stretching endlessly toward the horizon. Three interminable, vehicle-packed lanes—mostly Syrian-plated cars, if also a handful of Lebanese and here or there a bus. In the near-stillness of the night, their countless glowing red taillights projected a mesmerizing display. Inching forward, we crawled past a “Welcome to Syria” sign, and then another sign announcing an imminent checkpoint. Here, traffic ground to a halt. The temperature outdoors had dropped to 10°C, and the Levant’s autumn chill was beginning to seep through my shirt. I pulled on a thick jacket.

The cars ahead began to move. The driver hit the gas, but we advanced a mere fifteen meters before abruptly halting again.

Frustrated, the driver turned on some music. It became apparent that he had just one track to play: a dabke-style song by Lebanese singer Fares Karam. The first time I’d heard it was in the car of a Lebanese friend. She had bobbed her head to the rhythm while driving, turning to me excitedly to suggest we visit a new escape room which had opened just outside Beirut. Now, she was studying abroad, her social media feed a litany of reposts depicting rocket attacks on her homeland—images of bursting flames, the slow collapse of teetering apartment buildings, gray plumes of smoke blotting out once-blue skies. These eerily identical scenes seemed now to emerge from everywhere in the fire-ravaged country. Today, it happened to be the Beqaa Valley. Yesterday, the southern suburbs of Beirut. The day before, Nabatiyeh.

Fifteen minutes later, the procession of cars stirred again, advanced another fifteen meters, stopped.

The music ended, and a weighty silence settled in the car. In an attempt to break it, I used my smartphone to play a few songs. The first was a lively track by Nancy Ajram, its music video depicting young people dancing in darkness after a blackout. The driver and I exchanged complaints about Beirut’s incessant power outages and everyone’s reliance on private companies to buy electricity. He chuckled and said, “In Syria, we also have blackouts, but with our planned economy, there are no private electricity companies.”

The next track was a Chinese song by Sodagreen, celebrating the quiet resilience of ordinary people. It reminded me of Lebanon’s vibrant volunteer culture. After the port explosion in 2020, volunteers had carried out rescue efforts, collected donations, and helped rebuild the shattered city. Now, with the war raging, ordinary Lebanese were stepping up once more—sheltering refugees, distributing food, and stitching together pillows to fight back the wave of chaos.

The playlist ended with a classic by Fairouz: “Do you remember the last time we met? Are you doing well now?” The driver and I hummed along, the wistful melody and heart-wrenching lyrics sounding now like a farewell—not just to Lebanon, but to a more peaceful era.

Every fifteen minutes, we inched forward another fifteen meters, seemingly in endless replay.

Midnight came and went. The Syrian entry stamp, when I finally received it, would belong to a new day. The valley was hauntingly quiet, so much so that I could hear the whirr of insects fluttering through the car windows. In the long hours of waiting, I was overtaken by a mixture of anxiety and exhaustion. In Syria, only local phone numbers could access the internet, leaving my phone offline. Calls and texts, however, still came through. In the early hours of the morning, I received an SMS from the Agricultural Bank of China. Apparently, I was eligible for a new credit card. I asked the driver if I could use his hotspot, but here in the hinterland, he had no signal either. Slumped in the old car’s decrepit passenger seat, I dozed fitfully, my head spinning. The driver, equally fatigued, rested his head on the steering wheel.

Entering Syria

The car shuddered forward, awakening me with a jolt. The sun had risen; nine hours had passed since we left Beirut. Up ahead, the stream of cars funneled into one single lane. Finally, we were arriving at the Syrian border checkpoint.

As I opened the car door, the hum of the throng outside hit me. Walking past children sitting beside a crowded entryway, I stepped into the inspection hall. This building was two or three times the size of the Lebanese hall from the night before. Two massive portraits of President Bashar al-Assad hung high on the walls, flanking one of his father, former President Hafez al-Assad. Lips pressed tight, expressions inscrutable, they seemed to cast an inquisitive gaze over all those seeking to enter this country that their family had ruled for over half a century.

Leading to the hall’s ten-plus service windows, long lines of hopeful entrants awaited their respective turns, each queue stretching twenty or more people deep. I joined the one which pointed toward a window labeled “All Nationalities.”

Glancing around, I saw that the majority of those in the crowd were Syrians. Some held pink and green Syrian ID cards, while others clutched dark blue Syrian passports as they shuffled forward in line. Lebanon is home to 1.5 million Syrians, nearly a third of its population, most of them refugees who fled the Syrian Civil War after 2011. Those holding ID cards had perhaps been among the first to depart, back when only an ID was needed to enter Lebanon. By 2012, as tens of thousands of refugees poured in, Lebanon tightened its policies, requiring Syrians to carry passports. By 2015, the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon had reached over a million, prompting the Lebanese government to implement stricter visa requirements.

Now, the tide had turned. With Lebanon descending into conflict, Syrian refugees were once again fleeing war, this time in the opposite direction, back to their homeland. Between September 24 and October 22, more than 300,000 Syrians crossed the border—over 10,000 per day, on average.

At the front of my line stood a man dressed in Bedouin attire: a gray robe and patterned kufiyah headscarf. Behind him was a young boy, his headscarf red and black. Nearby, an elderly man, his face deeply lined, held a bag of pistachios, a snack for the children. When he saw me standing there, a foreigner from East Asia, he scooped out a handful of pistachios and pressed them into my hand, patting me on the shoulder. Others also seemed to notice me, but elected to observe in silence. Like me, they had endured a sleepless night. Fatigue and anxiety were etched on every face. Whether they were returning to rebuild their lives or merely seeking temporary refuge, I couldn’t tell. I simply followed their heavy steps, inching forward in line.

After forty minutes of waiting, when I arrived at the service desk, the border official informed me that I was in the wrong place—this window was for Syrian nationals only. I quit the line and joined another marked “Arabs and Foreigners.” In Arab nationalist discourse, citizens of Arab countries are considered brothers and sisters, never “foreigners.” Hence the distinction.

The line for this window was more chaotic. People cut in from left and right, jostling for position into the snake-like formation. Amidst the crush of bodies, I couldn’t help but notice the emblems of various Arab passports, each adorned with a bird of prey.

Leading the charge was an Iraqi eagle, long-necked with piercing eyes, proudly bearing the phrase “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) across its chest. Close behind there arrived a scrum of Egyptian eagles, their wings adorned with bold swathes of gold, exuding strength and a competitive spirit. Jordan’s eagle, perched before the banner of the Arab Revolt, claimed the moral high ground with an authority which offset the bird’s diminutive size.

Gripped tightly in their owners’ insistent hands, thrust forward by outstretched arms toward the service window and Syria, these majestic birds flapped and swooped, tracing graceful arcs which, at times, obscured the staid gates of Tiananmen embossed on the cover of my own passport.

Among the nationalities represented in the line, there were Lebanese as well. A few heavyset men just ahead of me looked to be frequent border-crossers; the cedar trees on their passport covers were so worn they were barely visible. When they fingered open their pages, it was to reveal what looked like dozens of stamps from the Masnaa checkpoint. Many items are sold cheaper in Syria than in Lebanon—these men probably made such frequent trips to save money shopping, much like those who cross from Hong Kong into Shenzhen to buy produce.

Behind me, two young women in headscarves noticed my Chinese passport and greeted me innocently. They explained that their hometown in the Beqaa Valley had become unsafe and that they were heading to stay with relatives in Syria for shelter. Among the hundreds of people crammed into the hall, their eyes were the only ones that still seemed to sparkle with life.

I also encountered a tall, thin man who told me he was Druze. I asked him why he hadn’t stayed in the safety of his mountain hometown. “Why come to Syria?” I inquired. “To visit a friend,” he replied.

At last, I reached the awaited window and handed over my passport. This newest border official told me that I had skipped a step: I needed first to buy a visa at another window—only then could I get a stamp. After asking around, I found the requisite window, which turned out to be a currency exchange counter. Syrian friends had told me that travelers were once required to exchange US$100 at this counter to gain entry. But this policy had recently been relaxed due to the overwhelming number of returnees making the crossing. After another twenty minutes in line, I exchanged $45 for two printed receipts. Brandishing these papers, I returned to the stamp window, where I found that the border official’s computer keyboard had broken down, slowing the process further. After what felt like an eternity, an entry stamp was finally pressed into my passport. At last, I had entered Syria.

Driving Toward Damascus

Back in the car, the driver had dozed off, his eyes half-closed. Awakening with a gasp at the sight of me, he gestured at his watch, remarking, “You know that whole procedure took you two and a half hours!” He shook his head over-dramatically, his expressions like those of a Shanghai cab driver, down to the smallest mannerism. Then he casually pulled a stack of purple banknotes from a plastic bag at his side and tossed them down near the gear shift.

Each bill, worth 5,000 Syrian pounds, was marked with the Syrian flag and the image of a soldier frozen in mid-salute. At the time, a single bill was equivalent to about three Chinese yuan, and already the largest banknote in circulation. As the driver started up the engine, he flicked a button on the car’s dashboard. The radio crackled as it switched over from a Lebanese station to “Al Madina Syria” (The City, Syria), which was broadcasting a top-of-the-hour announcement as it passed from 9- to 10-am programming.

Checkpoints lined the road, spaced just a few hundred meters apart from each other. Some looked like permanent structures, while others seemed to be makeshift shelters—just a few cars clustered together forming a barrier with three to five soldiers. At each stop, a soldier would ask me where I was from. Several greeted me in Mandarin with a “Ni hao,” and more than a few shook my hand. Some soldiers had what appeared to be almost Asian features, resembling a young Ramzan Kadyrov; others looked European, their expressions recalling those of the Hungarian man whose forced smile had inspired the “Hide the Pain Harold” meme.

When I said “shukran” (thank you) at each farewell, the driver would echo my simple Arabic interjection and expand upon it, smoothing the overall exchange with a practiced tone of friendliness, deference, and self-assuredness. At some point, he would nonchalantly pull a bill from the stack he had prepared and slip it into the hand of the soldier at the window, who, nodding in turn, would then disappear from view.

After four checkpoints, the road started to open up. Bounded on either side by scant hills, the passage was nearly bereft of vehicles altogether—a stark contrast to the congestion at the border. Pointing ahead with two fingers, the driver declared grandly, “Suriyah” (Syria). Gazing toward olive trees scattered across the rugged landscape, I repeated the word, “Suriyah,” with the same enthusiasm.

We passed two or three more checkpoints before roadside billboards began to appear, among them ads for ginger tea and chocolate pies. Houses began to dot the roadside as the harsh sterility of the border region gave way to the warmth of human life. The altitude dropped, and my driver sped up to 120 kilometers per hour; after a long downhill curve to the left, from behind a cluster of trees, the city emerged into view, sprawling. Damascus—at last.

Soon enough, I was settling into a Damascene guesthouse, its internal courtyard warmed by a welcoming sun. The weather was clement; the streets were alive with activity. In the Old City, shopfronts stood shoulder to shoulder in tight ranks, selling antiques, copperware, mosaics, carpets. A masked merchant worked on stitching old rugs, while an antique shop clerk wrapped up a cross for a customer. The owner of a ceramic shop offered me a small teacup as a gift as I passed through. Inside Souq Al Hamidiyah, the famous covered market, stalls selling spices, soap, ice cream, jewelry, and clothing were all open for business, apparently thriving. Across the way, at the Umayyad Mosque, worshippers lined up for evening prayer. Walking through the city, I finally allowed myself to relax. Arriving back at the guesthouse, I fell asleep immediately.

Through Jordan to Hong Kong

At 5am, my alarm blared, dragging me back to consciousness. The bus to Amman was set to depart at 6. While Damascus does have an airport, international sanctions mean that only small airlines like Syrian Air and Cham Wings operate there, offering short-haul flights. The safer bet was to continue south by land to Jordan’s capital and fly from there back to China.

The bus to Amman was nearly full. The conductor boarded, bearing thirty-plus Syrian passports, four Jordanian passports, and one Chinese—mine. We set off southward on the M5 highway, reaching the border in an hour and a half. There, another long wait began.

Without warning, I heard a voice behind me call out in Mandarin, “Hey buddy, come sit back here—it’s cooler.” Turning my head, I saw a lean Arab man waving at me. He told me he was from Aleppo but often did business in Yiwu, China. After years of working abroad, he had at last saved up the US$8,000 required to pay for an exemption from Syrian military service. This had been his first time returning to his homeland since the civil war began over a decade ago.

A young man sitting directly next to the Mandarin-speaker moved aside to offer me a seat in the back. He had a carefully groomed beard and flourished the latest iPhone model in his hand whenever he spoke, exuding an air of affluence. A native of Damascus, he worked in Dubai, explaining that when he returned to Syria, he typically flew into Beirut and then drove home from there. On this occasion, however, with flights to Beirut canceled, he had been forced to re-route through Amman.

“So, you’re like me,” I said. “Both of us had to rebook because of Beirut’s airport closure.” He replied matter-of-factly, “All the Syrians in this bus are in more or less the same situation.”

Ahead of me, a woman spoke on the phone, her frustrated tone progressively shriller. “Jordan gets so much aid from the West every year—why can’t they upgrade this border crossing? They should make it like the US-Canada border!” I gathered that she had brought her daughter to visit family; the canceled flights from Beirut had thrown off their itinerary. Now, they had to reach Istanbul from Amman by the following evening to catch their flight back to Detroit.

When we arrived in Amman, it was already 8pm. I exchanged farewells with my middle-class traveling companions and took a taxi alone to a café I had visited once before, on Rainbow Street. In the evening’s calm, this city of seven hills glimmered with a dazzle of lights, but I couldn’t linger. After a quick stop at the café, I hurried to the airport.

Return to the East

As my airplane landed in Hong Kong, the limpid tones of a piano melody played softly in the cabin. I switched on my smartphone and was immediately accosted by the news: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. So many tons of explosives had been used in the strike that it triggered a minor earthquake in Beirut. Turning off my phone’s screen, I stepped gingerly off the plane, clutching a bundle of Lebanese souvenirs.

At the terminal, I bought a lackluster flat white coffee and sat by the glass wall, watching planes ascend and return to ground. 8,000 kilometers away, flights at Beirut Airport had been completely suspended. I pictured the once-crowded immigration hall now deserted, the art galleries I frequented in the city’s eastern district shuttered, the northern highway clogged with cars. I thought of all the lives caught up in this avalanche of history: Who had finished the bag of pistachios shared with me at the border? How many people now lay on the mattresses the men in Bachoura were carrying? Where had the eagles on those Arab passports finally alighted?

The crisp voice of a boarding announcement broke through my reverie, urging passengers to prepare for the next leg of their journey. To my left, an omiyage shop displayed new varieties of boxed pastries; to my right, a novelty store proposed a range of limited-edition brand-name mementos.

The world around me gleamed brightly, insistently, oblivious to the distant turmoil that now as ever filled my thoughts. The airport intercom sounded off again—time to board.