Believing New York would never change. Until it did.

Our reporter Vivian Lee left New York in late 2018 and moved to Beirut to cover the Middle East. The city had been home for six and half years, and it was where she started as a Times metro reporter.

Houston Street in Manhattan recently.   John Taggart for The New York Times

Here’s an excerpt from her essay from Beirut about New York, the timeless city that suddenly changed.

When I arrived here as a foreign correspondent, I found stories — civil war in Syria, authoritarianism in Egypt. But now the loudest headlines are all at home.

I text people in New York in the same tones my mother has taken to using since I moved to the Middle East: “Are you OK? Be careful.”

Every space in New York is its own theater. If the city offers absolution in anonymity, it also offers fleeting fame in the simple act of walking around.

But now the streets of New York are empty.

Disaster is making New Yorkers pine for the city that is as much out of their reach as mine. From Beirut, I scroll through the Instagram accounts devoted to immortalizing New Yorkers, read the essays about choosing to stay, follow the #BestNYAccent contest.

When I left, everyone said, Oh, you’ll come back, and it’ll be exactly the same. You’ll change, but New York never does. Even then I didn’t believe them, though I trusted that a certain timelessness would prevail. Now they don’t believe it either.