“Rizkallah 3a iyyamak ya tramway Beirut, chalouk
la innak dighri w btimshi 3ala sikki deghri” – so the Ibrahim Merachli song
went. The wagons in the last of their days became places to sell fast food, and
the services themselves were stopped in 1971. Still if you walk in Beirut, you
can still see some of the lines protruding from under the asphalt – testimony
that the past, present and future intermingle together in Beirut, cohesively or
not is a different question.