Though the restaurants and clubs are thriving, parts of Beirut are still scarred. Here is the "city view" from The Palm Beach Hotel, which is right near where the bombs that killed PM Rafik Hariri were detonated:
I'm a Palestinian-American writer living in Iowa City. I'm currently working on two books and teaching creative writing at The University of Iowa. My work has appeared in Granta, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, BuzzFeed, and NPR. I have an MFA from Iowa and an MA international affairs from Columbia.