Parallel seasons: How Lebanon hides from reality

Beirut, Lebanon - As Israel bombed southern Lebanon, no one was in the mood for a full-scale celebration of Christmas despite the religious, emotional and economic significance of the season.

Despite the hardships, some people still tried to celebrate. Cafes were bustling with visitors, and the winter traffic was very much present on Beirut’s main streets. But these scenes hid the reality of many Beirutis and the full spectrum of the Lebanese population’s experiences.

Such jollity is usually centred in a few Beirut streets while the streets around them reflect a sharp economic difference.

After the civil war ended in 1990, reconstruction began in Lebanon, focusing on bringing luxury real estate to downtown Beirut and developing the service industry. But the projects never made it out to most of the streets around the centre, which used to be part of a vibrant market by the port that served all the city’s social classes.

The waterfront became clogged by years of “development” and “reconstruction” as luxury skyscrapers for those who could afford a “luxurious life” shot up and stood, shoulder-to-shoulder, with their backs to the city.

A city that is struggling.

It is four years into an unprecedented financial crisis, and the city has yet to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic or from the massive 2020 blast in the port that killed 261 people and left thousands without a home.

Beirut suffers year-round as it waits for the tourist seasons, notably Christmas and the summer holidays, to come around and inject “fresh dollars” into the system.

The cash is even more vital after the financial crisis hit the banks and people’s savings disappeared overnight. Not only were their accounts catastrophically devalued, but they were also inaccessible, prompting a rash of people holding up banks to withdraw their own money.

But tourism cannot be counted on to bring a respite this year because Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza has reduced movement in Beirut’s airport by 15 percent.

Foutine Khoury, a volunteer with the local organisation Mar Mansour who has been working with poor families for 14 years, says the number of families in extreme poverty who rely on charity increased significantly after the 2019 economic crisis.

“We have 250 families that rely on us, and that’s a very big number considering that we’re operating in a small geographical location,” she says.

“Those we thought [were] doing financially well, their situation now is really different,” Khoury adds. “No one is now able to have a decent living situation.”

The crisis peaks during holidays.

In winter, heating becomes the main expense for families, and in the summer, cooling is the big worry. The price of electricity, diesel or gas becomes a crisis.

The sun burns outside, street cats hide under parked cars, and shop owners retreat to the shade of their stores. It is too hot to stand outside and chat.

Abou Hadi, who is nearly 60, waits patiently in the living room of his family’s apartment on the second floor of a 1980s concrete building. It was a mid-August Thursday, and he was lying on the sofa, wearing a white undershirt and light trousers, strategically positioned between three fans.

One hangs on the wall to his right, another stands in the balcony doorway to his left, and the third is in the middle, right across from the sofa. None of them is turning.

Abou Hadi is waiting for the electricity to come back on so his fan setup starts working and he can nap. The electricity has been cut off a lot, and private generators are expensive, so people buy the minimum possible amperage from generator owners. Even then, Abou Hadi still turns it off now and then because diesel is so expensive.

“We haven’t been sleeping at night,” he says. “With this heat, it is impossible to shut an eye.”

Abou Hadi lives on el-Khanda el-Ghamee Street in Beirut, barely five blocks from the sea. But the towers built during and after the war block the sea breeze and suffocate his neighbourhood.

The reality for a large portion of those living in Lebanon is invisible to people enjoying those few blocks of affluent merriment to the point that some have callously declared an end to the financial crisis.

The woman who runs a small grocery shop near Abou Hadi’s home points bitterly to the throngs of visitors and residents “enjoying their summer”.

“Restaurants are full, beaches are full, and you expect us to believe that there’s a crisis?” she says. “The crisis only falls upon people like us. Everyone else has an income in dollars, and they’re living their lives!”

This distress is shared by many through the seasons, Khoury says.

“Families feel extra anguish during the tourism season. They see all these people going out to the restaurants, shops and bars while they are sitting at home, unable to even buy bread,” she explains.

The fact that Lebanon’s restaurants and clubs are full does not mean the country is as well off as it seems, argues Farah Al Shami, a development economist and senior fellow at the Arab Reform Initiative.

On the surface, every tourist season gives the impression that a recovery is finally happening. Dollars are being injected into the system, and everyone hopes to go back to the way things were before 2019 until the season ends and nothing really changes.

“The recovery is very minimal,” she says. “It’s the parallel economies of the parallel seasons.”

Lebanese living overseas “either send remittances or come during tourism high seasons and spend their money here, which is like remittances. This creat[es] a dual reality,” Al Shami explains.

Even between those people there is a wide disparity. In May, caretaker Tourism Minister Walid Nassar said he expected two million tourists to visit Lebanon over the summer, bringing with them a cash injection of about $9bn. Lebanon relies a lot on remittances, which made up 54 percent of the country’s 2021 gross domestic product.

Like every year, the idea was marketed as a “Lebanese product” that would boost the economy, and the Ministry of Tourism launched a campaign called “Ahla bhal talleh”, or "a very warm Lebanese welcome".

But the Lebanese economy has not improved.

The country is struggling with food inflation, which hit 274 percent in August, and 80 percent of Beirut’s residents are living in multidimensional poverty.

“Tourism, real estate and the parallel financial system all fall under the rentier, non-productive economy,” Al Shami says, referring to the fact that wealth generated in Lebanon remains with a few and does not benefit the whole economy.

Last summer, Abou Hadi’s children Nour and Hadi had plans to bring their families from abroad and spend the summer with their parents in Beirut.

It did not last long. Hadi took his family back to Sweden because it was so hot and his children could not sleep at night without electricity. Nour cut her vacation short too. Even though she managed to take everyone for outings, prices were high, and they were not able to do nearly as much this year as they had a few years earlier on the same budget. She found some items were cheaper back in Abu Dhabi, where she lives with her husband and children, which was never the case before.

Lebanon is increasingly dollarised as merchants and others try to protect their investments. But for those who have no dollar income, this means prices quickly rise out of their reach as the Lebanese pound devalues and inflation drives up even the dollar prices. Many Lebanese have relied on or supplemented their income via remittances sent by family, and that reliance has amplified since the financial crisis.

Relying on remittances is not a sustainable economic model, Al Shami says.

The main beneficiaries of the seasonal visits are businesses that cater to tourists, such as restaurants, nightclubs, beach resorts and activities such as paragliding and diving. But the money they make does not go into the Lebanese economy and, therefore, does not change the status quo for most Lebanese

“New businesses opening in Lebanon are not keeping whatever profits they make in Lebanese banks and in the Lebanese financial system,” Al Shami explains.

In the midst of Lebanon’s grinding financial crisis, the only people with liquidity to open new businesses or reopen their old businesses are people who are already part of a small, affluent sector of the population.

“Most of those who can actually reopen and recover from the crisis are those who had already started businesses abroad during the crisis and opened bank accounts abroad and made new savings abroad,” Al Shami says.

Any attempt at reforming the banking sector and the Lebanese economy at large has been derailed. The current model is carefully protected by the political ruling elite.

In his barbershop in el-Khanda el-Ghamee in August, Selman Ali Khreis stands by an empty chair. There are no customers that day. In fact, there are no customers most days. He cannot afford to pay for a generator and is limited to the four hours of municipal electricity he gets a day.

“This country is corrupt,” he exclaims.

“They [tourists] come to hotels or tourist attractions. We don’t see any here,” he says. “They [tour guides] bring them to see old buildings and sometimes to a food stand, but not here.

“They’re here to have fun. I’m 73, and I still have to work.”

Upstairs in Abou Hadi’s place, Nour is cooking the last “fancy” lunch before she leaves Lebanon: mansaf, a Gulf dish of meat and rice garnished with nuts.

As the smell of fried nuts fills the apartment, Em Hadi, Nour’s mother giggles and says, “Yes, Nour can afford them, but we haven’t had those in a while!”

Meanwhile, Mahmoud, one of Hadi’s closest friends, jokes about how Hadi spends his summer nights on the street while waiting for the electricity to come back on so he could go to sleep.

Abou Hadi laughs and says: “There are people living the good life … yachts, chalets, outings. … Those who have money live comfortably.

But those who cannot afford it like us spend their day waiting to get some electricity. My friends find me in the street at 3am. At least there I can get a breeze. Otherwise, we suffocate in our houses.”

Em Hadi cuts him off. “We can’t even dream of a breeze here,” she says.