So here we are back for another year. For a moment there I thought we might not come back. You know how Lebanon looks from the outside. If you watch international news you become convinced that Lebanon is a perpetual fireball of self-destruction. And let’s face it, a dozen kidnappings here, a dozen deaths in street battles there. I mean Air France even diverted a flight to Syria rather than land in Beirut. Things must have been bad. I was glad I lugged my PC to Europe after all. Maybe we’d stay. Maybe we’d not return to Beirut for years to come like so many families during the civil war. The food would rot in the fridge with no-one to keep flicking the tripswitch on. My clothes would disintegrate in the wardrobe, or at the very least go out of fashion. The man’ouché seller would miss us terribly.

But here we are. And to be honest, it looks a lot like when we left. Under the surface it may be quite different. But tuning into the tension won’t actually tell us when the explosion will come. So in the meantime, perhaps it’s not a bad thing not to know exactly what’s simmering away under the rug.