The war's over

The Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire took effect Monday, Lebanese troops deployed to the south on Wednesday and displaced Lebanese returned to their homes in droves all week. But in my mind the five-week war wasn't officially over until Friday morning, when the Starbucks and Body Shop stores in Beirut's Hamra district reopened. They were the last of the chain stores to reopen in one of Beirut's major commercial districts.

It seemed the right day for me to leave Lebanon. Two colleagues are staying, so we'll have people in place in case the ceasefire doesn't hold - and people in Beirut are betting that it won't. Since Monday, I've been asking people whether they're relieved that the fighting is over. Almost uniformly, the response is that they're happy for a reprieve from the destruction and uncertainty, but they know it's only temporary. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah came close to accomplishing their goals during the nasty, short conflict. So the feeling is that it's just a matter of months or weeks before things flare up again, and it shows on the faces of people throughout the city.

It's painful to see, because - as I've been telling everyone who asks about our safety, comfort, etc. - Beirut is an amazing city. You rarely see in one city such a vibrant mixture of history, cultural diversity, natural beauty and flat-out bacchanalian excess. As a Lebanese guy I knew in Cambridge wrote in an e-mail: "Lebanese have their own way of dealing with stress and bad days, and that is with partying." It shows in the attention to detail: There are multi-story clubs designed by world-class architects and bars with massive pieces of plane fuselage adorning the interior.

We had dinner with a few other journalists on Friday, my last night, at a great restaurant called Abdel Wahab, which serves traditional Lebanese fare on a beautiful terrace overlooking the Ashrafieh district, with its old, narrow streets and shiny new bars and restaurants. Over mezze and good Lebanese wine we traded stories of our favorite war souvenirs (morbid, but true) - who'd been able to snag the Israeli leaflet featuring Hassan Nasrallah as a snake, or the poster of Nasrallah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiling next to each other, or (jackpot) a Hezbollah flag.

We also talked about Hezbollah's political coup of the day - covered extensively on CNN - of handing out $12,000 lump-sum payments to people who'd lost their homes in the war Hezbollah triggered. It was a bold move, financed by Iran in crisp American $100 bills, but with Hezbollah written all over it. This group takes care of its own. In the days since the ceasefire took hold, they've cemented their support among Lebanon's Shiite community and further angered those who think Hezbollah usurps the power of the Lebanese government.

During the war, you didn't often hear people speak ill of Hezbollah, because they were fighting the Israeli enemy, and even the Sunnis and Christians who despise the group for its militancy said, at least in public, that they hoped Hezbollah would deal Israel a blow. Now that the war is over and its cost is becoming clear, you hear some of those same people wishing that Israel had finished Hezbollah off, i.e., assassinated Nasrallah, who's becoming a legendary figure in the region. The country seems, to many, more polarized now than at the beginning of the war, which doesn't bode well at all.

It was a tragic and incredibly interesting time to be here, and part of me will miss the place, the people and the chance to work on such a big and important story. But it's time to get back to Africa, after nearly five weeks away. While I was gone, Darfur got worse, Congo had its first free elections since 1960 and Somalia continued teetering toward civil war - I have some catching up to do.