I am back in Abu Dhabi but still talking to people around me about Beirut and my three days there, which were jammed with enough events and anecdotes and revelations to have felt like three weeks.

Before we go any further, let’s link to a discussion that a Beirut-based blogger told me about, a discussion based on my blog post from the other day: “Hello from Battered Beirut.”

Here is the blogger’s post, and comments from his readers … who read me.

I was a bit surprised that several of the comments, presumably from people living in Beirut, seemed to agree with some of my observations. Generally, I would expect near universal hostility. (People hate when visitors say anything negative about their neighborhood/city/country, and I’m told by Lebanese expats that the Lebanese have a reputation for being particularly sensitive to “outsider” criticism.)

A few more thoughts about the Paris of the East.

And yes, I do use it ironically there.

One thread running through the comments at the Beirut blogger’s site is that anyone attempting to describe Beirut as the Paris of the East — which it may well have been, 50 years ago — should be shouted down.

Some generalizations:

1. Beirut strikes me as a city torn by sectarian/ethnic divides. A journalist here told me that Lebanon’s football team does not include a single Christian, and Christians make up about 40 percent of the country’s population. Apparently no soccer is played in the Christian corners of the country.

Further, the same individual (and remember, this is a journalist, and we are prone to hyperbole), also claimed that if Lebanon has a home football match against nations which are predominantly Shiite or Sunni, that Shiites (or Sunnis) will attend the match and cheer for the visiting team. That is, Beirut’s Shiites would show up to a Lebanon-Iran match and cheer for Iran. That Beirut’s Sunnis would turn out for a Lebanon-Saudi Arabia match and cheer for the Saudis. (We had a recent case where this clearly was not true: The game I covered, pitting the all-Sunni UAE against Lebanon — and the entire stadium seemed to be pulling for Lebanon.)

2.  I would never presume to be an expert on Beirut after three days. I do, however, bring the same sort of fresh eyes to the situation that any other first-time tourist would bring. One observation: There is one Beirut for monied tourists, the one of tony night clubs and restaurants, and the city that the rest of us see — the down-at-heel Beirut of war-shattered buildings, power surges, gypsy cabs, idle men, hanging laundry, broken sidewalks, choked roads, death-wish drivers and pollution-belching vehicles. I would guess the last of those “Paris of the East” comments (aside from the Chamber of Commerce) come from those who are whisked directly into the posh neighborhoods, and then stay there to eat and drink and carouse.

3. Many Lebanese apparently will defend Hezbollah to the end, but if the country is ever to be unified and coherent and peaceful, how can a significant chunk of the country be run by a political faction with its own military wing, one which could oppose the Lebanese military at any moment? To an outsider, this is the single craziest thing about Lebanon.

4. Anti-Israel sentiment is profound. Enormous. Sobering. It makes a person doubtful of any sort of lasting peace in the region.

5. Though they will attack each other, physically and verbally, all the Lebanese I spoke with are amazingly proud of their home. “A beautiful country, isn’t it?” I heard that several times. People waxing poetic about the beauties of the mountains and the valleys … which apparently they begrudge to everyone else in the country who doesn’t come from the same sect or neighborhood they come from.

6. Beirut is the most militarized city I’ve been in … maybe ever, and I’ve been to Berlin (before the fall of the wall), Sarajevo, Havana, Mexico. Not only do the police all carry automatic weapons, the city still has UN armored vehicles parked at key points in the city, and the large-caliber guns atop the vehicles are manned. Also, this is a place where, I was told, celebratory gunfire after good news (like a basketball victory) still kills people. When I asked “who has guns?” I was told “everyone.” Until Beirut is a place where cops wear no more than sidearms and the necessity of UN peacekeepers has vanished … it’s going to catch the eye of visitors. “Hey, there’s a tank around the corner from my hotel.” Not good for tourism.

Some other thoughts as I left town …

After visiting the UAE team hotel, where the just-fired coaches were quietly drinking beer and decompressing, I refused to pay 20,000 Lebanese lira for a ride back to the place where I was staying (I had paid 10,000 to get there, an hour before), got out of the cab and began walking. About 50 yards later, a cabbie was honking his horn at me. I walked into the middle of the street, he rolled down his window and I said, “How much” to my hotel, and he said, “10,000,” and I said, “Let’s go.”

On the ride over, as traffic picked up (even though it was midnight on Tuesday), he explained to me why the cabbie outside the posh hotel tried to charge me double (“He has to pay the hotel for every customer he picks up; that is why it is so high.”), making clear that he kept an eye for price-sensitive consumers, like me, and then swooped. He complained of Iran (“I don’t want to hear one word about that country. Not one word.”) and of tourists who use Beirut only to party and carouse and indulge themselves in ways they cannot or will not back home. (“They come for the drinks and the girls.”)

The next morning, the same Mad Max who had driven me to the soccer game the night before was waiting for me. I’d mentioned I would be leaving for the airport at 10:30, and there he was, waiting for me like my personal, too-expensive driver. We argued over the fare. I said 25,000 Lebanese lira (which is probably about right.) He said 25 U.S. dollars. I said 30,000 Lebanese lira. He wanted 25 dollars, still. I said, “I’ve got 30,000 in my pocket. I don’t have 25 dollars.” He said OK.  And I never did figure out if he was driving the wrong way on one-way streets, or whether the scooters flying at us from the opposite direction were going the wrong way … or perhaps both.

Beirut’s airport has more security checkpoints than JFK or LAX (I went through three magnetometers), but the airport may be the most impressive/efficient public building in the city. It is fairly new, clean, well-lit. It works. A good start, on the tourism side of things.

So, bottom line: Beirut, up or down?

I will not go back. Not for fun. I would not recommend it to someone unless they are willing to make the major investment to stay in the posh neighborhoods. As I mentioned earlier, colleagues of mine in the UAE have gone there and come back and raved about Beirut. Either I’m harder to please or perhaps my colleagues paid to stay in the fantasyland parts of the city.

Beirut and Lebanon seem to need a long stretch of peace and quiet and reconciliation.  As I mentioned before, the city and the country have advantages — a great geographical location, interesting scenery, ambitious human capital (even accounting for the hemorrhage of talented and educated emigres). But the place needs to be demilitarized, it needs to have a power grid that stays up, it needs investment in infrastructure, it needs a space to breathe and nurture a generation that doesn’t know war on a personal level.

If all that happens, Lebanon could become the tourist haven it was, before The Troubles. I hope for the sake of the friendly and helpful people I met there, that it works out. I do not expect it to happen soon.