BEIRUT, Lebanon — Every November, I walk downtown with my husband and children through the holiday hush of streets closed for the annual Beirut Marathon. We pass Ottoman-era villas with arched windows, a Versace-branded glass tower and the bullet-pocked hulk that was a Holiday Inn until the Battle of the Hotels in the 1970s. We wave at the soldiers still stationed there, and at the teenage volunteers waiting to pass out water.

As a symbol of Lebanese resilience, the 15-year-old marathon is a bit of a cliché, like the list of Beirut contrasts — war-torn glitz, trauma alongside normalcy — above. The race’s explicit insistence on defying divisions and violence can have a whiff of protesting too much. And yet. When we reach the starting line and crowd into the corral to begin the Family Fun Run, it is impossible not to be moved.

There are balloons and Lebanese flags and people from every religion, class and political faction. The sense of community is literal; in this smallish city, where I have lived for five years with my family as the Beirut bureau chief of The New York Times, we inevitably find ourselves running alongside friends from school and work.

Some clichés are true: Holding a marathon in a place that many outsiders, a generation after Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, still picture as a dangerous wasteland does count as an act of hope. At the starting gun of each race, an announcer shouts in Arabic, English and French: “We run for peace! For unity! For Lebanon!”