The first place I went, after a nearly decade long absence from West Beirut, was Martyrs' Square, in the destroyed heart of the city.

I was driven out of West Beirut in 1984, along with other Western reporters, after being abducted five times, punched out, and on one occasion taken to a remote back lot and marked for execution.

Despite what I'd heard about Beirut's reconstruction, the city seemed exactly as it had before, minus militiamen, barricades, and the sound of weapons fire. Two hundred thousand Lebanese were killed during the sixteen year war, and while the vast majority of Beirut's buildings still stand, it remains one of the most destroyed and dislocated cities in the world.

At the Square I found the astonishing sight of Christians and Muslims playing cards together, enjoying the summer evening in a place which was once a free-fire zone between their two halves of the city. They sat beneath a statue of Mother Lebanon which was riddled with holes from flying bullets and shrapnel, Arabic music floating among elegant, shattered buildings.

This sight wasn't possible before the wars' end in 1991, when the United States acquiesced to Syrian dominace in Lebanese affairs, just days after Syria's President Asad signed onto the Gulf War coalition.

I found a boy in ragged clothes, trying to sell photographs taken of the Square before its destruction. It was the first time I had walked freely in this place, since I was his age, over two and one half decades ago. In him I see myself; a vendor of photographs, another keeper of Beirut's memories.

In Arabic, I ask the boy to hold his picture to his chest. Bringing the camera to my eye, I press the shutter release. Advancing the film and pressing the button once more, I feel in a way I hadn't known before, that Lebanon's long war, is finally over.

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