On clear days, my temporary office offered a perfect, panoramic view of sprawling Beirut below me. Even in blustery weather, the view of this congested city was awe-inspiring. And not just because of the skyline, or the countless apartment blocks that seemed wedged in wherever space permitted.

Seeing this vibrant city from my vantage point in the hillside suburb of Mansourieh was a profound, daily reminder of human resiliency and, more particularly, the tenacity of the Lebanese people in struggling their way out of the utter devastation of their 16-year civil war.

The war, from 1975 to 1991, tore the country apart along sectarian lines and devastated downtown Beirut. An estimated 130,000 people died, and countless more fled into exile. That migration, followed by earlier ones, now means that more Lebanese live abroad than the 4 million currently living in the country.

I couldn’t have grasped the extent of the devastation, and just how great was the city’s recovery, if it weren’t for a book my host showed me during my first few days in the country. Martin spoke to me about this coffee-table volume over dinner on Feb. 6, the first night of my month-long stay in Lebanon. Several days later, when we toured downtown Beirut, stopping occasionally for me to photograph Roman ruins being excavated in the heart of the city, he insisted we visit the Virgin Megastore to track down the book. Clearly, he was eager that I see it for myself.

The volume showed one building after another that was destroyed in the war, and what it looks like today: restored, or in many cases, made even better than it was before the havoc that could easily have left this city abandoned forever. Page after page shows the extent of Beirut’s comeback, with billions of dollars spent reconstructing vast portions of the downtown section of this city beside the Mediterranean.

But as much as anything, the reconstruction spoke of the hope of a people who simply wouldn’t give up. The book was a tempting buy, but I resisted; it was heavy and I needed to be traveling light.

That rebuilding also embodied the hope for a more stable future, in itself a remarkable step of faith. For crunched as the Lebanese are between Israel to the south and Hezbollah-supporting Syria to the east, they live in perpetual fear that others will use their territory as a proxy battleground.

And that’s exactly what is happening once more for the Lebanese. The Lebanese government has been politically powerless to rein in Hezbollah; doing so could easily split the country’s army and trigger another civil war. And it is the same army that is incapable of defending the country from Israel’s military juggernaut.

The Lebanese and their leadership knew that these realities meant they were reconstructing their capital, and trying to rebuild the rest of their society, on a massive political fault line.

Martin, like many Lebanese I met, lived through the horrors of the civil war. And whatever other healing and nation-building was still needed in this country, with its anguished history and its fragile present, these Lebanese could at least point to the city’s reconstruction with pride and gratitude. A rebuilt Beirut told the world, and themselves, that life will go on. “We will not let our future be determined by our past,” the reconstruction said.

Walking through downtown Beirut early this spring, with its unique blend of European (especially French) and Middle Eastern cultures, I felt perfectly safe – and grateful to witness all around me a legacy to what people can do to transcend the misery and destruction of warfare. With equal safety, I delighted in traveling to some of Lebanon’s historic sites: the Crusader castle at Sidon, the Phoenician port of Byblos with a history going back 7,000 years, and the spectacular Roman ruins at Baalbek, a UNESCO World Heritage site which, to my embarrassment, I hadn’t even heard of until I got to Lebanon.

But that was February. Now, the events of the past week once again seem all too familiar to the Lebanese. The unanswerable question is, how high will the political equivalent of the Richter scale rise during this present turmoil?

On Tuesday, a senior Israeli military official said their campaign against Hezbollah could last several weeks yet. Unless diplomacy can end things sooner, even more Lebanese will die in this bitter Israeli-Hezbollah showdown.

When we’ve visited a place, we have a particular interest in it, and perhaps even an emotional investment. So I keep scouring the Web sites for news on Lebanon, hoping for a speedy end to the carnage and that the Israeli bombs will stop.

And as I look ahead, I ask myself, “How much rebuilding, of structures and shattered lives, or their now ruined tourism industry, will the Lebanese have to go through once again when this round ends?”

Today, as I think yet again of that view from my office window overlooking Beirut, I wish I’d bought that book after all. Today, in particular, I could use its message of hope.