My first summer job was at the port of Beirut. It was the late ’90s and I was just a teenager. I spent muggy months entering shipping data as part of an ambitious new program to move the port from analog to digital log keeping.

As if the Lebanese haven’t suffered enough. For months, they have been caught between an economic meltdown, crumbling public services and a surging pandemic.

What follows is dedicated to Donald Rumsfeld and to Athanasios Vamvakidis, foreign exchange strategist at BofA Securities Inc.