The bus from Damascus crawls through traffic down Mount Lebanon. The passengers--guest-workers returning from Syria after the weekend, mothers smiling through their veils at children happy to be returning--gather their belongings. The eight year-old sitting next to me begins to shout "Beirut!"

Through the window I see the city spread out against the sea. This view suddenly brings Lebanon's recent history into focus. From my perspective (which is also that of an invading army), I can make out dense urban life, towers and wealthy suburbs. This is not the battle-scarred wasteland I imagined; this is a prize worth fighting for.

The drive to the centre provides me with my first lesson in Lebanese politics. The apartment blocks rise one over the other. Some are brand-new and shining; others remain scarred by damage from the civil war. Vegetation is as ubiquitous as political posters.

There is no obvious racial divide between the Lebanese sects, but the faces on the walls show who owns what. Faded images of Bashir Gemayel, a former president of Lebanon who led Christian militias during the long civil war, adorn buildings in Christian areas. Graphed "ticks" mark out areas dominated by Michel Aoun, a Christian ally of Hizbullah, and his Free Patriotic Movement. As you move into Shia areas, large murals of Hizbullah fighters festoon buildings from which Iranian flags fly, and Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, glares down from countless posters.

I follow the moustache of the assassinated former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, the pin-up of choice of the Sunni community and icon of the Future Movement, which is today led by his son Saad. There are no obvious front-lines; posters and flags just fade out into different neighbourhoods. They lead me to Hamra, the heart of Sunni West Beirut and the scene of street fighting this May when Hizbullah seized most the city.

On Sadat Street I sit down for a late-afternoon shisha with Tarik. His eyes never stop moving. He is permanently alert. In his early twenties, the recent violence has taken him from his former concerns. He speaks with the urgency of one still shocked.

"When they came, the Hizbullah and their allies, the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, we took out our private weapons. My father passed me one of the guns he's used in the civil war and we defended ourselves. I shot. I do not know if I killed. I just fired." 

I ask him if he knew anybody who got killed. "Yes. My cousin. Ziad Ghalayini." He points to a massive poster of a teenage boy standing in front of Beirut's famous Pigeon Rocks wearing a T-shirt that reads "Still Virgin" and a nice smile. He continues. "He died in my arms. They shot him when he was on his moped trying to come home. I'll introduce you to his father."

Over the road is the Ghalayini family bakery. The boy's father is listening to the Koran on tape when I come in. A veiled women in mourning brushes past me clutching flowers. "That's my wife. Those are for the cemetery," Ramadan Ghalayini announces. When I ask him who killed his son he has a one word answer for me: "Shia." 

Over the road, the pharmacist tries to explain her neighbourhood to me. "You know, there is peace now in Lebanon. Just politics. But people died. And people remember."

Picture credit: Paul Keller/flickr

(This is the first instalment of a week-long correspondent's diary in Beirut, published on Economist.com.)