Beirut now cloaked in strife

As he skims recent headlines describing a fatal car bombing near a popular seaside sports club in Beirut, David Henley is happy to be safely nestled in his Bay Shores home.

Just a week before, he was swimming at the beach where Lebanese lawmaker Walid Eido and nine others were killed Wednesday.

Henley went to Beirut — deemed by some the Paris of the Middle East — with a friend who was to be recognized with an honorary doctorate in a ceremony at the American University of Beirut. Though he anticipated mass destruction from last year’s war with Israel as well as remnants of the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, Henley, a retired brigadier general and foreign correspondent, was overwhelmed by what he encountered.

“I knew right away there was strife when I came in from the airport and I had to go through tanks and armored soldiers just to get in the cab,” he said. “People are waiting for blasts every minute and they are afraid to go out at night. If you can afford it, you’re leaving.”

In its heyday, the location of last week’s bombing looked similar to portions of the Newport Beach coastline, a cluster of grand, waterside resorts where tourists flocked to spend their holidays. There is even a small amusement park, complete with Ferris wheel.

But today, there is little amusement to be had in the capital city, where newly-erected, glass skyscrapers tower over piles of rubble and tourism is “almost extinct.” Enrollment is down and there are few Americans left at the American University, which used to attract about 150 American exchange students every year, Henley said.

Though Henley felt relatively safe during his stay in Beirut — a result of the abundance of armed guards, metal detectors and coils of barbed wire strewn about the city — an encounter with Hezbollah guards left him anxious.

While he was photographing ruins at one of several refugee camps in south Beirut, three guards approached, and one revealed a pistol before demanding Henley leave the area.

“I got the hell out of there real fast,” Henley said.

The militant, pro-Syrian group has set up a sprawling tent city in downtown Beirut in an effort to pressure the Lebanese government.

“It’s eerie,” Henley said. “It’s like [if you went] up to Fashion Island and you [saw] hundreds of thousands of people living in tents among the big, tall office buildings.”

Henley’s home is adorned with relics and photographs from the 79 countries he has visited in his 71 years, and he serves as the honorary consul to Uruguay, as well as a Chapman University trustee and a member of the board of advisors for the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum.

His next stop is Russia, and he has no plans to stop exploring the world until he is “six feet under,” though he spends half the year at home because “you can’t be traveling constantly or you’d never get any perspective.”

“People don’t realize the freedoms we have here until they’ve stepped outside,” he said. “We can do anything we want and we don’t have to always look over our shoulders, we don’t have to hear bomb blasts and we don’t have to see destroyed buildings everywhere we go.”