For $50 a family can take a safe, radio-call taxi from the congested heart of Beirut to the uncluttered ancient waterfront of Tyre, a few miles north of the border with Israel. Lush banana plantations line the coastal route.
People are all around, but only God knows how many there are. Among the many mysteries within which Lebanon veils itself is its population count. A weary, way-worn Beirut newspaperman, a Levantine Hildy Johnson, explains over many cloudy glasses of arak that, because of the religious "confessional" allocation of political power, it is simply too sensitive an undertaking to carry out a census anymore. The last time Happy Days were here so as to make safe an official headcount was 1932, under the French Tricolor and 16 years before proclamation of the Lebanese Republic.
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