Beirut blues

Asmahan writes letters - to make sense of her life and to preserve her fond memories of Beirut as it existed before civil strife destroyed it forever. Evocative, sensual, funny, and poignant, the letters - which are unlikely to ever reach their destinations - conjure up, with passion and disarming honesty, a woman's life and loves in a ravaged city, as well as her sense of being a hostage in her own country. As she writes, one story grows out of another. Vividly, passionately, and yet with clear-sighted humor, she records the astonishing details of her existence, her feelings about lovers…