francois-marie-arouet:

I, for the life of me, cannot figure out how its magic works.

Before Lebanon, had you ever heard of so many people from all corners of the world finding their way to this one place, nestled between mountains and sea, on business, on pleasure, coming for two weeks—and then staying two decades?

Before Lebanon, had you ever heard someone speak of a place as a lover, lamenting their heart that they had lost to the branches its cedars?

Before Lebanon, had you ever seen such beauty—around every street corner, in curves of semitic faces, in the crooked union of the ancient and the new, the west and the east?

I do not understand this effect, this magic.  Perhaps none of us ever will, we lost foreigners who never loved our blood half so much as this.  We only stand as enchanted testimonies to its reality.