Once Upon a Time in Beirut

"My first memories of Beirut are of a dynamic tangle of contradictions: ancient and contemporary, pre and post war, Muslim, Christian, East and West, secular and devout, eye-popping wealth that rubbed against desperate poverty. In the middle of it all, the city drew its energy. Once a upon a time, in Beirut, I found an unlikely place to call home."

Beirut is not a typical destination for a young Australian couple embarking on their first year of married life. But when Catherine Taylor and her husband begin work as foerign correspondents based in the Middle East they decide to set up home in this ravaged city.

Catherine soon falls in love with the Paris of the Middle East, and becomes intrigued by the complexity of its people: their exuberance and warmth, and Beirut's vibrant Mediterranean lifestyle, seem to starkly contrast with the dark tales she has heard of violence and hatred.

As Catherine's work takes her across the region, from conflict on the West Bank to war in Iraq, a world beyond the clichéd descriptions on the nightly news gradually opens up. She has dinner with Osama bin Laden's best freind, attends a boxing chamionship for Muslim women in Cairo and gets to know a Hezbollah fighter.

When Catherine discovers she is pregnant, she is convinced she wants to stay in Beirut to give birth, but then Lebanon's prime minister is assassinated in a car bomb and the peaceful city she has come to call home seems in danger of being lost once again.

Once Upon a Time in Beirut is a story of belonging, the futility of war and an evocative portrait of the Middle East that will open your eyes to the fascinating region and take you on a journey into the hearts of its people.

A Bantam Book, Syndey, 2007. 364 pages.