Last week, a friend and I went to Beirut, Lebanon, and stopped in Damascus, Syria on the way. Leaving Amman for a few days gave me some new perspectives on life in the Arab world.

I went into the trip expecting to find two cities that were quite similar to Amman in most ways. I thought the three cities, with their countries bordering each other, couldn’t be too different in general feeling and culture.

I was mistaken. Although the citizens of the cities are nearly the same in terms of language and customs, each city has a very distinct culture.

I want to discuss a couple of things that struck me specifically about Beirut.

First a little background.

For hundreds of years, the Ottomans ruled most of what is now the Middle East. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire was split up among the allied powers. Great Britain got Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Iraq. France ended up with what is now Syria and Lebanon. In time, each nation achieved independence from their respective colonial powers with the exception of Palestine, which was further divided.

The fact that France was the colonial power is an important thing to know when it comes to Lebanon. Lebanon is a small country whose entire western coast is on the Mediterranean Sea.

The city of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city, is situated where Lebanon’s mountains meet the Mediterranean. In terms of culture, Arabic is spoken as a first language although many people are fluent in French.

The country is recovering rapidly from a civil war. Pre-war Beirut was famous as the “Paris of the Middle East.” For a long time it was a premier Mediterranean vacation destination.

That changed when war broke out in the 1970s. For 20 years, on-and-off violence raged through Lebanon and especially Beirut. Peace was finally brokered, and the city crept back out from the depths of war.

The violence ended more than ten years ago, but many of its older buildings still bear the scars of warfare. Downtown Beirut was one of the hardest hit.

Now the downtown area has been rebuilt completely. The palm trees, cafes and hip boutiques are back all with the sea shimmering in the background. It’s got trendy European and American shops too. Even Starbucks.

I felt I was at a junction of Eastern and Western culture. One minute we were sipping hazelnut-flavored cappuccinos surrounded by people speaking Frenchified-Arabic, dressed like they just walked off a Paris runway, and the next we were having falafel at your standard Arab street vendor.

It’s not that simple either. Almost every city has neighborhoods where you see different people, languages and fashions. We’re used to that as Americans.

However, in Lebanon it’s different. It seemed that the line of division between groups of people was blurred. Certainly, there were ethnic and religious differences, but it seemed the blurring agent was the overall good mood of the country. Everyone seemed happy and content (I realize I just made a very broad generalization).

For example, in Amman, like other large cities, the traffic is horrendous. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard nasty insults hurled at fellow motorists. People complain about the traffic, the heat, and seem to be counting the minutes to get out. It’s not that all strangers are rude, some are obviously friendly.

In Beirut the situation was entirely different than anywhere else. There are so many examples. For instance, most of the taxi drivers had a joke or funny story to tell. One very friendly and quite round middle-aged chap was particularly entertaining. I think it’s fair to say that 95 percent of the time we were in the car with him (25 minutes or so), he was either telling a joke or laughing with us at the one he had just told.

And it wasn’t just the taxi drivers. We visited some friends at their corner sandwich shop in Beirut in an area of the city with many small factories and car repair shops. We sat in their shop, hanging out as the workday was winding to a close. It was a sweltering, humid and dusty day, especially in that part of the city away from the sea breezes.

Guys would come to get a cold drink or an ice cream bar. They would come in all grimy and tired from a long day’s work at the garage. One would expect they would be tired and just wanting to get home at this time of day.

Not in Beirut.

The environment of the city is what makes Beirut such an interesting place. With the blending of the two cultures comes this great sense of humor that unifies people who would otherwise be divided. I think it’s also that very sense of humor that has helped the city to survive. It’s now in many ways returning to its glory days as a great place to visit.

I think there is a lesson to be learned from people of Beirut – a little humor can go a long way in helping to make it through tough times and helping to heal the deepest of wounds. Not only that, but it’s that same good sense of humor that helps things run a lot more smoothly in a place where the East and West meet.

Omar Tesdell is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Slater.