The 15-year civil war ended in 1990, but nearly 30 years on it still bears the scars of this bloody battle that cost 120,000 people their lives. Instead of erasing the pain, the Lebanese insist it wears the scars, so it's never forgotten.
A 20-minute walk south from the ornate boulevards and swanky bars of Downtown, you end up in the industrial Sodeco Square. At the vast crossroads where the once middle-class apartment block defiantly stands as a symbol of a divisive conflict that still permeates throughout Lebanese culture.
To get there I walked through the French-esque chocolate box enclave of Saifi Village and crossed the huge Charles Malek overpass highway with broken pavements, graffiti and wheelie bins overflowing with rubbish.
It was as if this main road was the battle line between the rebuilt, beautiful and historic Beirut and the real Beirut. The city where people live. It's here you see the old Beirut, the Beirut where for 15 years the ruling, French-backed Maronite Christians fought with the large, yet marginalised Muslim community, led by displaced Palestinians and back by the Soviets.
Sodeco Square was conveniently situated in the demarcation zone, the area of Beirut that separated the warring factions.
Up until then, it was known as Barakat House (see photo 3 below) - named after the name who commissioned it. It was designed by leading Lebanese architect, Youssef Aftimus and later added to by Fouad Kozah.
Up until then, it was apparently a bustling metropolis. A place well-to-do middle-class families called home and thriving businesses flocked.
I live in my imagination and I could hear children squealing with delight as they ran around the now bullet-riddled columns. I had to climb the barrierless stairs and over rubble to get to where immaculate women in their shift dresses and beehive hair-dos would gloat about their husbands, the doctor, the lawyer, the banker once walked.
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They have long been erased. Either killed or one of the million people displaced by war.
These families, possibly completely innocent to the power struggle between Muslim/Christian left/right, were replaced by snipers who fired at the enemy on the other side of the demarcation zone.
Not only is there presence felt in every vicariously standing, pebble-dashed walls of the exterior, but also in the etched and spraypainted, once lovingly decorated interior. Patches of water and sun-damaged wallpaper and singed negatives of the residents are all that remain of its original residences.
Declarations of loyalty to the fight, scrawlings of love and despair, and the onset of PTSD adorn the walls now.
The startlingly modern interior added to make it safe for visitors and suitable for events don't take away the power of Beit Beirut. The modern internal staircase doesn't compare to the somber broken concrete staircase that once led fathers home to their families and soldiers to their death.
This is a place where the extremes of joy and prosperity meet the anger of conflict.
I'm glad it was saved by the Lebanese heritage bodies. It needs to be here. It needs to be a constantly visible monument to what happens when people aren't represented.
