Sybil, a twelve-year-old American, meets her grandmother, Kalya, for the first time. It is Beirut in 1975, and Lebanon is on the verge of civil war. From the window, Kalya looks out over the square where her friends Ammal and Myriam have arranged to meet. Aware of the tensions that threaten to tear the country apart, Kalya recalls a holiday she took many years ago with her own grandmother, at a time in Lebanon?s history when it was possible to contemplate a radiant future. The Return to Beirut is Andr?e Chedid?s hymn for a dying country. Flash-backs, memories and images of poetic beauty are richly interwoven to depict the smells, sounds and sights of a tragic land.