Beirut Lebanon

Armed clashes Wednesday in the Lebanese capital between supporters of the Western-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition threatened this divided country's fragile calm. The fighting began with opponents of the government setting tires ablaze to block the city's main roads, notably those leading to the international airport, where flights were suspended.

With the sound of helicopters hovering overhead, Samir hunched behind a pile of sandbags and sank his teeth into a hamburger. The thirtysomething Beirut resident was not a warrior taking a moment of respite on the battlefield. He was a regular customer dining with his black-veiled wife and little son at Buns and Guns, a new, war-themed restaurant where every detail, from the menu and decor to the names of sandwiches, is inspired by the military world.

MONDAY night, 9 p.m. The darkened streets were eerily empty. At Bread, there were five people at a window table and a couple at the bar. "It looks promising," said Nemr Abboud, co-owner of the restaurant. "Yesterday, we had zero. Today for lunch, zero." Half an hour later, Kamal Mouzawak, a leading proponent of organic farming in Lebanon, and three Italian companions sat down at another window table. "This is resistance," Mouzawak said. "Resistance is trying to have a regular life."

Family, friends and party loyalists gathered Thursday to bury Walid Eido, a 65-year-old anti-Syrian lawmaker assassinated with his son and eight other people in a bombing on Beirut's waterfront the day before. Flanked by slick secret service agents speaking into their sleeves, the funeral procession passed billboards with images of the Lebanese politician and his son, and the words: "The men of justice, the martyrs of justice."

After years of taking on debt, forgiving their neighbors and hiding the scars of civil war, the people of Lebanon are watching with dread as their carefully rebuilt country splinters around them. The last four days of Israeli airstrikes have shattered bridges, bloodied children and wasted roads.

More than 1,000 U.S. citizens were finally able to escape the fighting in Lebanon on Wednesday, as the first chartered cruise ship carrying American evacuees left Beirut for Cyprus. As many as 6,000 Americans could be out of Lebanon by the weekend, the U.S. State Department said. Thousands of Europeans are fleeing as well. Britain expects to evacuate about 5,000 citizens in what officials in London were calling the biggest such operation since the World War II evacuation of Dunkirk, France.

Israeli warplanes dropped 23 tons of bombs on a bunker allegedly sheltering top Hezbollah leaders and hammered Lebanon's countryside Wednesday in the single deadliest day for Lebanese civilians in a week of fighting. Thunderous blasts echoed over Beirut before 9 p.m. as dozens of aircraft dropped their loads of explosives on the impoverished, Hezbollah-run neighborhoods south of the capital.

The old stone house has an empty feel to it. Wassim and Rima Khader are alone there. Although their children are no longer small, they have sent them to the safety of the mountains. But they decided to stay behind, waiting for what will happen next. They pass their days, as so many Lebanese do, listening for any snippet of information that can provide some insight into what the future holds. They ponder these questions constantly: Will the Israelis enter the city as they did in 1982?

In this mountain village, once a stronghold for Christian militiamen who fought in Lebanon's bitter civil war, the woman strolling past fruit stands and cafes Saturday looked jarringly out of place. She was a Shiite Muslim, wearing a light-blue head scarf. In years gone by, she would not have dared to enter Bikfayya, where the afternoon air is cool as Beirut swelters about 10 miles below. But the Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon have made for a new order, at least for now.

I walked down the steps to the seaside restaurant looking for my old friend Issam. I didn't know what to expect. He'd been my driver, comrade and general dispenser of wisdom when I lived here as a foreign correspondent covering an earlier war. But I hadn't seen him in more than 20 years. Now I was back for the first time, chronicling Lebanon's latest trauma -- and looking around for snippets of my past.