There is a line that crosses the city. Today, it looks like any other street in Beirut. Its eclectic mix of cars and motorcycles, some shiny roaring rockets, others fifty-year old putt-putting piles of rusted mangled metal – all move in a bashful sense of rhythm down what used to be known as the “Green Line”.

Though a hopeful sounding name, its origins point to the distraught and complex borders of 1980s Beirut. During the civil war, alliances were broken and made almost every day and the sectarian divides seemed to nonsensically rift and unite the people of the dilapidated city.

Yet, in this cacophony of battles, an untouchable line tore the city so radically that, during the fifteen years of bloodshed, not a single car drove down this road. Slowly, in an elegant reaction to the increasing death toll, nature took back what was untouched and a thick line of greenery was reborn along the rubble and shrapnel scattered down the street.

The line had begun as a separation between the predominantly Muslim West Beirut and the Christians of East Beirut, but as alliances faded and the city caved to the endless vendettas of different militias, the line grew, separating Shia from Sunni, Druze from Alawite, and all the while the shrubs turned to bushes and the saplings into trees. With snipers and checkpoints as its apathetic gardeners, the foliage of the Green Line grew so thick that it seemed as though a hedge had been carefully trimmed from the North to the South of the entire city.

Today, the trees and shrubs have all been mowed down and a patchy road named Damascus Street was built along the main portion of the Green Line. The wartime borders separating the city now gave way to a new form of segregation: one centering around wealth.

Beirut’s political landscape is as arid as the Green Line was once lush. There is no corruption, the system is corruption. Powerful oligarchs and their families keep a tight grip over what one may sarcastically call a government. The neighbourhoods once rife with religious and ethnic identity have been muddled and the borders now split areas between the wealthy and the poor. The southern suburbs – Sabra, Shatila and Bourj-el Barajneh – have been left to the struggling refugees living within them. Even Hezbollah, a once thoroughly involved Shia militia, have left only their sun-faded propaganda posters.

In Beirut’s central district and all across the east of the city, a multitude of tall empty skyscrapers spot the streets while old bullet-ridden three story buildings stay nudged between them, untouched since the end of the war. The skyscrapers are empty, and purposely so, as means for the elite to launder money through phoney rent cheques. So while the poor struggle to find clean water and lodging, the rich live abroad and their apartments stay empty.

Along the edges of the city, especially to the south, a new form of border arises. Not a border of barbed wires, though there are plenty, not a border of walls, there are few left standing – a border of smell. Beirut is surrounded by a stench so thick that, breathing by the mouth to avoid smelling, a distinctive greasy taste settles on your tongue.

Shortly after the war, the Lebanese government set up the Naameh landfill in the Mount Lebanon area as a temporary measure. The landfill was to take in two million tons of garbage. It has taken in fifteen million tons over the last eighteen years. As the delimitation of the dump stretched further outwards, so too did the stench and pollution. Eventually, the landfill had nowhere left to grow unless the garbage were to be dumped directly onto the houses of the already sick and infuriated locals. Still, even after almost two decades, the government has found no plan to resolve the situation. The garbage simply started to pile up on the streets of Beirut. No matter whether these were the streets of the rich, the poor, the Sunni, the Shia or the Maronites, with nowhere left to go the garbage began to pile in front of every house and building.

When borders can no longer contain a problem, borders become meaningless: that’s what the Lebanese garbage crisis has taught us.

The sectarian and economic divisions usually so strong in Lebanese society were dropped for an instant and protests began to assemble. From every corner of the city they came and gathered in front of the heavily guarded downtown. Indeed, the downtown of Beirut does not belong to the Beirutis: its beautiful streets are privatised and it belongs to the oligarchs and their ironically named group “Solidere”. Within this walled off section of the city is the Parliament building, around which the enraged Beirutis gathered.

The first few protests were small and easily dismantled. As each protest grew, assembling increasingly different strata of the population, the government, in a sign of fear, drew up a massive wall around Parliament. Built in the hope of discouraging the protesters, the wall had the polar opposite effect: it stood to the Beirutis as the symbol of a common struggle, a common border that they all shared against their government.

The protests only grew, the crisis spread to the rest of the nation, and the wall served simply as a hurdle above which each came to throw out their garbage. Seeing their mistake, or rather smelling it, in a single night the government dismantled the wall and removed the garbage from the parliament steps.

The protesters had not only made demands. They had provided solutions to their garbage crisis.

“Start recycling!” yelled some. “Buy incinerators!” yelled others, but perhaps the most brilliant idea to have been neglected was to go beyond the Lebanese borders for help.

Indeed, one solution was to look towards neighbouring countries or even Sweden and sell them the garbage. But the Lebanese government, realizing they were making more profit per tonne of garbage by keeping it in the landfills refused to sell, and the overdrawn landfills of the city opened again.

Today the garbage is still disposed along the edges of the landfills, the surrounding inhabitants still suffer from innumerable diseases, and the same men remain in power. Recent municipal elections in Beirut gave way to an abysmal 20 per cent turnout, mostly due to the fact that it had already been delayed twice as a result of the instability with the Syrian conflict raging along the border. An estimated third of the country is now populated by displaced Syrian refugees, which is awry to the older populace, having already lived through such a massive influx and subsequent civil war. The garbage too only increases with the population and efforts to recycle are completely overwhelmed.

Still, a silver lining shines from the recent municipal elections. Beirut Madinati, which translates to “Beirut is my city”, was the main opposition party. Though defeated by a traditionally fierce alliance known as the “Beirutis list” supported by Saad Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, the Beirut Madinati challenged the status quo. Their platform ran on the discontent caused by the recent garbage crisis as well as the lack of stable and equal urban infrastructure. For once, the political movement in Lebanon had nothing to do with religion – indeed they garnered votes from Christians and Muslims alike.

Strange as it may be, with the government as a common enemy, sectarian differences seem to be fading. Though Beirut is far from forgetting its troubled past, the eclectic colours of its societies are slowly mixing, and the green line is no more, all thanks to a little trash.