- The Captain's Cabin is Beirut's longest running bar and has served beer since 1964
- The watering hole was the only bar open during the Lebanese Civil War
- The bar's owner Andre Toriz has has seen many incidents over the years
- However, he isn't scared off and is now ready to take on ISIS
While many of Beirut’s glitzy bars appear one night and vanish the next, one unassuming venue has survived the country’s bitter civil war, the Israeli bombardment of 2006 and now the owner says he would happily take up arms against ISIS if Jihadists tried to stand in his way.
Tucked away on a quiet side street in the city’s Hamra district, The Captain’s Cabin looks like an unassuming watering hole, far removed from the high-end nightspots located just a few minutes away.
Behind the well-worn entrance lies an equally weathered dive bar where decades of graffiti and political memorabilia adorn the walls.
It’s Monday night as a group of edgy 20-somethings play pool at one side of the venue while at the other end a smaller group some, possibly older than the smokey bar itself, stare vacantly at Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah speaking on television while sharing a bottle of imported whiskey.
Chief among the latter is Andre Toriz, the bar’s 57-year-old owner. Toriz is a burly character with a huge smile who becomes animated as he speaks passionately about the bar’s colorful history.
“It was around 1964, there were three airline captains and my dad who started coming here as a way to have a drink and to play bridge away from their wives. Soon people started hearing about it including the tax authority, which fined them. The four men decided to make it legal after that so they went into business together and the bar opened officially in 1972,” he said.
From humble beginnings, the bar became more popular as people started to hear about the tiny drinking den.
Business was peaking when tragedy struck, the Lebanese Civil War broke out in 1975.
“It started small but they made it bigger and bigger, the bar was booming in 1975 when the war started. The other partners left because they were foreigners but my father stayed. He asked them to come and join in with the locals but they said they didn’t want to so he took over the entire business himself,” said Toriz.
Despite the raging battles outside, Andre’s father decided to keep the bar open as a refuge for customers caught in the war zone.
“Of course he kept it open,” he said as a matter of fact.
“If you want the business to go on then whatever happens you’ve got to stay."
However, running a bar while a brutal sectarian conflict rages outside, is not without obstacles and challenges.
In the early years of the conflict, power cuts were frequent and the bar was only able to open until 6 pm.
“It was very difficult. In the first years of the war they would only open for six hours per day and there was no electricity for around seven or eight months. Then you adapt and life goes on but of course there were lots of incidents and accidents,” Toriz added.
As the Clash plays on the bar’s stereo system, Toriz lowers his voice as he describes in detail some of the incidents which took place inside the memorabilia-lined walls.
“We had a problem one time when militiamen came in to take away somebody influential. He didn’t want to go because he was having a drink. He said, “I’ll finish my drink and then I will go with you guys”. They shot the stool next to him but he didn’t move, he finished his drink and then said ‘Let’s go’. Six hours later he came back and he said it was because of mistaken identity,” Toriz recalls.
However, it wasn’t just customers who could end up in sticky situations during the Lebanese Civil War and even bar staff were lucky to escape with their lives.
“We had a bartender and we gave him instructions not to give credit to anybody. Unluckily for him, my father was sleeping one day when these two guys came and asked to pay the next day - he refused and an argument broke out between the bartender and the men.
The guys left and said they would come back in five minutes. Luckily, the bartender knew who they were and by the time they returned with grenades and AK47s the bartender had left the bar and my father managed to reason with the men,” he said.
Toriz himself has often become trapped in the bar as battled were fought outside and on one occasion, during the 2006 conflict with Israel, he was stuck inside overnight.
“In 2006 I had a problem, I was trapped here for one night and there was shooting outside because there was a battle going on. On the second day I looked out to see what was going on and I saw some of my foreigner friends there. I asked them what the hell they were doing there and they said: “oh, we came to check on you.” So they came in, I closed the door and we had many drinks together until finally, they decided to go,” he said
.
Toriz is no stranger to danger or armed combat and even stocked up on weapons as he feared than ISIS might try to attack his home city.
“In some moments when ISIS was near to Beirut I said ok, I need to prepare. I and a lot of people around my age said that we should have weapons ready in case ISIS comes to Beirut. For me, I'm not going to leave this country, even if ISIS came," he said.
"People here in Lebanon, we’re fun to be with but we’re very aggressive to be against. We have 17 sects in this country and ISIS don’t like any of them. Whether its ISIS or Israel, who want to come to Lebanon, they can try but they won’t be able to come here. We are very hard to kill,” he added.
Despite many ups and downs over the years, Toriz says he will never give up on the bar.
“I love the bar, it’s part of my life. I have a girlfriend but she doesn’t like the business, getting drunk every night and stay overnight. But I will never leave. I’m going to carry on regardless. This is my cocoon, I don’t talk politics in here and we carry on no matter what,” he said.
