Beirut the Beautiful

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BEIRUT--My wife and I arrived in Beirut this morning and were delighted from the start. Nice officials at the airport, nice people, NICE weather, and delicious food. We were met by our friend Nizar who's showing us around before Nizar and I begin our work here with partner NGOs rendering aid to Palestinian refugees.

Neither my wife nor I had much previous knowledge of Lebanon, yet somehow we've still managed to be surprised. Beirut is a beautiful city, and it stuns us both to imagine that this city emerged from a horrifying, generation-long, multifactional (72 militia) civil war only within the last 15 years. What we've seen of this city is as beautiful as Montreal.

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