| Linds rightly points out... forgot the money shot. :)
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| Get your party on... get your party out. Most alcohol-purveying venues here closed last night (the deadline is midnight tonight) so it's been a wild few evenings as people prepare to mourn the loss. Apparently the line to buy alcohol at the country's only distributor yesterday stretched around the parking lot -- and it is still WAY too hot here to stand outside comfortably.
 
But the good news is Ramadan is the best time of year in Qatar, for sure. And even if there's no alcohol, it'll be years before we run out of that really, really cheap gas.. ;)
 (that's $7.20, fyi!)
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| I hadn't been since January, 2007.
Back then, as the "presidential crisis" got underway and standoff and strikes made mayhem of whatever small sanity the assassinations and summer war had left people, it was as some of you may recall...
   
Today: much different.
Where Hariri was killed in 2005, the street re-paved, a monument built.
before
after 
Where bridges were bombed by Israel in the summer war: now rebuilt, or getting there.
before
after 
And in many places, I noticed, provocations subtly removed -- from sight if not from memory!
before 
after 
Overall a different Beirut, not exactly August '04 (from which my hangover still vaguely lingers...!) but something like that. Shukran li Qatar!, as the signs say: the Doha Agreement seems to have "done the trick" for now at least.
 
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