Questions without answers

On the main traffic-jammed road that leads from Rafic-Hariri airport to the village of Hammana, multiple questions cross our minds as we pass a series of propaganda posters (either for Hezbollah or the Amal movement) in South Beirut.

How many airports worldwide are named after an assassinated politician?

How many Korean’ Blue Helmets’ militaries did we see after landing in Lebanon and waiting to go through passport control? 350, 400? Maybe 500. 

How long can a state call itself a state when it no longer functions? And then more questions, increasingly cruel: how many bottles of water must a child sell to drivers in their cars in order to eat adequately, given that the Lebanese pound has lost 80% of its value in two years and the government hasn’t officially devalued it? Inflation has made the prices of everyday products, including the ballot paper, explode.

What does everyday life mean in Lebanon?

These questions don’t have answers… we should remove the question marks. 

They don’t have a place here.

Remains

In the National Museum, a strange display case is located between the ancient marbles and bronze oil lamps. It contains melted archaic objects from the fires caused by bombings during the civil war. Bernard Wallet described how at that time, “making war is an art of living” in Beirut*. I wonder if this is the cause of Beirut’s persistent insomnia. One swoons from sharp, contradictory reactions in front of this display: whilst marvelling at the Phoenicians’ glass-making virtuosity, one simultaneously despairs at men bombing a museum until their own heritage melts. It is said that on the 22nd of November 1943, the Allies, in their attempt to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation, dropped a phosphorus bomb over Berlin which hit the ‘Tell Halaf’ Museum. All the museum’s objects were destroyed by the heat of the fire, except for the basalt pieces, which withstood the extreme temperatures due to their volcanic origin.**

*Bernard Wallet, Paysage avec palmiers (1984), Paris: Gallimard, et al. “NRF-L’Infini”, 1992, pg. 27.
**Ryoko Sekiguchi, 961 heures à Beyrouth (et 321 plats qui les accompagnent), Paris: P.O.L, 2021, pp. 199-200

Beirut on the horizon

From the mountains surrounding Hammana, on a clear day when the pollution isn’t too dense, one can make out the silhouettes of Beirut’s buildings on the horizon. It’s hard to imagine a day without pollution once you’ve seen the smoke produced by the generators in the village. Perhaps the day will come when there’s a shortage of diesel, but this would signify a total power shortage, with no electricity, lights, or refrigerators. From up here, Beirut seems condemned to remain a mere horizon and abstraction. 

Fires

The Lebanese writer Charif Majdalani describes in his “Diary of a Collapse” how the gigantic fires could not be controlled days before the October 2019 revolution. The brand-new fleet of Canadairs acquired by the government the previous year could not take off. “After a series of stammerings and absurd justifications, it became clear that the entire budget for the maintenance of these aircrafts had vanished into thin air”*. But it was the announcement of a new tax on calls via the free messaging service WhatsApp that really triggered the revolution.

*Charif Majdalani, Beyrouth 2020. Journal d’un effondrement, Arles: Actes Sud, 2020, pg. 44.

Thermal shock

It is also said that on the 22nd of November 1943, the few pieces that had not melted due to the heat of the phosphorus bomb later exploded when the firemen came to extinguish the flames at the Tell Halaf Museum. Boom.

Bourj Hammoud

Beirut is thus an island that no longer sleeps, and each neighbourhood resembles an insomniac islet that answers only to itself. Founded by the survivors of the 1915 genocide after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Bourj Hammoud quarter is the Armenian element in this island mosaic, a capital of shards and splinters, a city of fragments forming a patchwork of cultures that cohabit and intertwine. People who were ready to kill each other yesterday should be kind to one another today (“s’entre-tuaient”…“s’entre-parler”), as put by Arpi Mangassarian in a clever play on French words. Her messages, like her cooking, must have gone back and forth across the Middle East at least three times by now.

The worst thing about the country

In Mashghara, Beqaa, a man speaks at the end of one of Akhtamar’s concerts during their tour of Lebanon. 

He asks the musicians:

“What is the worst thing you’ve seen since arriving in Lebanon”?

Coline, the first violinist, replied that she was deeply saddened by the street children begging outside the airport.

“Well…” replied the man, “you haven’t yet met our politicians”!

To sleep: perchance to dream

At midnight, back on the road to Hammana, the fresh air and mountains lull me into sleep against the window of the minibus driven by Tony, the inexhaustible tour driver. Behind me, Beirut is still wide awake. The Mediterranean never seems to bring a breeze from the sea to the capital, just stifling humidity. Beirut never sleeps. It occasionally dozes gently in the toxic steam of the electric generators and mad traffic

The dream (1)

I had a vivid dream that night: I found myself surrounded by all of Lebanon’s armed factions. Dozens of militiamen stood at gunpoint, just waiting for the opportunity to shoot each other. I didn’t dare move, for fear of being the unwitting trigger of a new civil war, of yet another disaster.

Other islands

Lebanon is like a land-based archipelago. Here is the Shiite port of Baalbeck, with its ancient temples and Iranian-style mosques. Hezbollah flags decorate each quay, and the harbour authorities strongly discourage the use of cameras. Here is the Druze island of Baakleen, in the Chouf district/’sea’, where the men wear white caps and black sarouel trousers. They are unclassified Muslims who await the arrival of a Messiah and believe in reincarnation. Or here: the inland Beqaa valley and the Joub Jannine bay, on which Syrian refugees huddle on tented rafts bearing the UNHCR logo. And here: the islands created by Palestinian pirates, where wanted fugitives can disappear without a trace. Farther on, at the northern edge of our terrestrial archipelago, are the outlines of the Sunni city of Tripoli, which marks the end of our voyage. Mapping Lebanon could be compared to writing an adventure novel. Would the story be a spy thriller or a pirate tale? Or something in between?

Medicines

The pharmacist at the Mashgara community clinic explains that a box of blood pressure medication cost 20,000 Lebanese pounds two years ago. Today, the same box costs 320,000 pounds. Salaries however have not changed.

Selim

Selim, Sarah’s brother, has made a different choice. He’s been living in Paris for almost 20 years, supporting his family when he can. “Sending money is normal of course, but at the same time, it allows the government to continue doing nothing to change the situation. People here shouldn’t be living as if they were on a drip.” This is also the view of the IMF, which estimates that money transfers from the Lebanese diaspora represent (on average) 16% of GDP and 40% of the receiving families’ budget.*

*Xavier Baron, Le Liban. Une exception menacée — en 100 questions, Paris : Tallandier, 2020, pg. 275.

Chickens and debts

Furthermore, Selim settled in this part of the Beqaa more than two weeks ago and there has not been a single watt supplied by ‘Électricité du Liban’ (EDL), the public operator in charge of the country’s electricity network. The company’s cumulative deficit is estimated at 30 billion dollars – unpaid bills, illegal connections, and technical losses*. It is said that in the EDL headquarters, chickens are being raised.**

*Xavier Baron, ibid. pp. 243-244.
**Camille Ammoun, op. cit. pg. 17.

Blackout

In Lebanon, the electricity goes out regularly. In the time it takes for the backup generators to operate, there is always a moment of silence – no more lights, fans or speakers. But no one pays attention any longer. No one grumbles or gets impatient. You have to be a newcomer to the country to notice and be surprised.

Talking about Beirut

How can we talk about Beirut without mentioning its many disasters? How to describe Beirut omitting the background of civil war while simultaneously avoiding Oriental romanticism? Or the revolution of 2019, blown out by a gigantic explosion and a pandemic, then swept away by an unprecedented economic crisis? It suddenly seems unfair to me to imprison a city in its own tragedies. Or in its clichés, like the one that compares the city to a phoenix rising from the ashes after each new catastrophe. In 1982, when the Israeli army besieged the city, the Palestinian poet Marwoud Darwich (then a refugee living in Beirut) wrote quite succinctly in “A Memory for Forgetting” that: “each person who arrives in Beirut sees Beirut in his own way, but we don’t know, and no one knows if the combined sum of these images is Beirut.”*

*Marmoud Darwich, Une mémoire pour l’oubli, Arles: Actes Sud (1994), 2007, pg. 101.

Magician

The painter and poet Etel Adnan from Beirut writes:

“Beirut is a magical city
Acting on the world like a
Wicked spell”.*

*Etel Adnan, L’Express Beyrouth-Enfer (1970), Paris: Galerie Lelong & Co. 2021, pg. 22.

Amnesia

Wandering around the streets, squares and stairs of the capital, one is inevitably struck by the absence of sites of historical significance. Generally speaking, it seems that Lebanon has chosen voluntary amnesia over commemoration.

Amnesty

Before his murder at the age of 58, in February 2020 in the south of Lebanon, the Shiite intellectual Lokman Slim published an article together with his wife Monika Borgmann in the newspaper ‘L’Orient-Le Jour’. They wrote that the Lebanese state’s preference for oblivion was apparent in their constant resorting to amnesty laws. They allow the ruling oligarchy to remain in place for all intents and purposes. “The adoption of an amnesty law has always been a way for this system to solve its problems, especially to reach a political compromise […]. Amnesty has become a kind of ritual, part of the exit strategies from the various crises that Lebanon has gone through”*. Slim writes that whether the amnesty is general or specific, whether it is used to erase blood crimes or financial offences, “amnesty is part of the country’s political culture and constitutes a mechanism for repairing the system”. The state, therefore, opts for the order to forget and repress, whereas a historical or memorial site would allow a collective agreement on the facts, an essential step in overcoming past traumas.

*Lokman Slim and Monika Borgmann, ‘Le nouvel échec de la loi d’amnistie, signe d’un essoufflement du système libanais’, L’Orient-Le Jour, 6 juin 2020. The paper is accessible online.

The repressed

Traces of history that time and property developers have yet to erase can be found all over Beirut, despite the voluntary amnesia concerning the past. Empty lots with damaged buildings that sport facades studded with mortar splinters and bullet holes stand next to gleaming new constructions. These include strange buildings – there’s one in the shape of a grenade, another a battleship, and another that looks like a tank*. In Beirut, urbanism, architecture and law seem to have a clear relationship with psychoanalysis.

*These buildings were designed by the Lebanese architect Bernard Khoury (www.bernardkhoury.com). I would like to thank Cyril Simon, cellist of the Akhtamar Quartet, for having drawn my attention to them.

Exposed to the elements

The capital is home to old battlefields from the succession of wars and bombings. The recent explosion on August the 4th 2020, added a substantial amount of empty space, all of which is now free ground for property developers. 

“Under the open sky, the builders of the future
are digging out the entrails of a city.”*

*Michel Cassir, Beirut clair de lune, with photographs by Houda Kassatly, Beirut: éditions Al-Ayn, et al. “Traces”, 2012, p. 86.

The storyteller

Storyteller Chantal Mailhac is working on a show inspired by local mythology. She’s trying to form a narrative through tales much older than the tragedies Beirut has known over the last fifty years. She tells me that in Lebanon, “we don’t talk about what’s happened over the last seven thousand years”. Two years ago, she decided to teach her nine-year-old daughter Iara herself. Listening to her, the following passage from the October 2019 revolution which calls on people to burn history textbooks in front of the Ministry for Education springs to mind: “If you wanted us to know your history, you would have taught us at school”*. In Lebanon, no one learns about anything that happened since the last French soldier left, on the 23rd of December 1946**. From this point forward, history has no consensus: it lapsed into silence. Chantal also explains that the permanent state of emergency in which the Lebanese find themselves (acquiring food, petrol, a job, etc.) prevents them from taking an interest in their own history. Collective remembrance still seems like a far-away utopia.

*Camille Ammoun, Octobre Liban, Paris: Inculte, 2020, pg. 42.
**Xavier Baron, op. cit., pg. 339.

The port

On the edge of the city, surrounded by a burning ring road, sits the sinister and still-smoking ruins of the industrial port with its silos burst by the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrates on 4 August 2020. 215 dead, 6,500 injured, 300,000 people rendered homeless, and damage estimated at four billion euros*. There is a kind of memorial, tentative and improvised; hundreds of portraits of the victims, tags and graffiti that read: “My government did this”, “you loved Beirut and Beirut betrayed you”, “Act for Justice…” To reach this place, you must risk crossing the motorway on foot, or take a 30-minute detour through exhaust fumes and hot tarmac. What is there to see? A ruined port where activity has resumed. No matter the cost.

*Stéphanie Baz-Hatem, Liban. Debout malgré tout, Bruxelles: éditions Nevicata, et al. “L’âme des peuples”, 2022, pg. 12.

The darkness

In her account of the days following the explosion in the port of Beirut, Lamia Ziadé writes that “once the silos were destroyed, everything became possible, nothing would prevent Beirut from sinking into darkness. […] Since the 4th of August [2020], the silo has only been photographed from one angle, the side of the explosion. Dismembered, disfigured, mutilated: a monstrous carcass.”*

*Lamia Ziadé, Mon port de Beyrouth – C’est une malédiction, ton pauvre pays! Paris: P.O.L, 2021, pg. 12 and pg. 223.

The scene

I only really studied the images of the explosion two years later, in France, in an art installation at the Arles photography festival*. I was disturbed by the videos of anonymous witnesses filming what was initially a simple fire. Then by the dome caused by the explosion itself – the wall of the blast advancing at breakneck speed and destroying everything in its path, until the witness, at first flabbergasted by what he is filming, steps back, seeks a derisory shelter, “disconnects” from the scene to try to extract himself as best he can. Seeing these images, I wondered how there could have been survivors.

*Naïade Delapierre, “Beirut, 6.06 pm”, exhibition presented at the Bisous gallery, Arles: summer 2022.

The paradox

It’s a strange paradox: on the one hand, we’d like to speak more lightly of a city that’s fascinating in so many ways, and yet everything we see in Beirut reminds us that tragedy is still omnipresent. Wouldn’t ignoring it contribute to the general amnesia?

In “961 hours in Beirut (and 321 dishes to accompany them)”, Ryoko Sekiguchi paints a poetic portrait of the city through its cuisine and those who prepare it. The Japanese poet lived for a year in the Lebanese capital in 2018, therefore in the Beirut of ‘beforehand’*. She has recognized this, describing her book as ‘un livre de la veille’ (‘a book of the day before’). Nevertheless, it has done justice to the many attractions I see in Beirut: the light, quality of twilight, shade of the ochre stone and scent of the cafes.

*Ryoko Sekiguchi, 961 heures à Beyrouth[…], op. cit., pg. 11. 

The age of war

In ‘Fou de Beyrouth’, Sélim Nassib describes the end of the civil war. The narrator returns to the city centre, deserted since the beginning of the fighting in 1975. “I know that everything is demolished, it is not the destruction that surprises me, on the contrary. It’s the vegetation. […] Nature […] has conquered the city silently, with an obstinate slowness, enveloping movements, with flowing knots. […] Greenery is advancing over the mountains of rubbish, and the groves band together to hide the shell holes. The trees grow before my eyes; some are fifteen years old, the age of the war”*. The explosion in the port of Beirut lasted only five seconds. Nothing can really grow in such a short time.

*Sélim Nassib, Fou de Beyrouth, Balland editions (1992), quoted in Le Goût de Beyrouth, op. cit, pp. 40-41.

Nidal

Nidal is a very resourceful little boy. Having heard the sheikh explain how the tears of believers would redeem their sins, he wanted to fill up a bottle with his own tears and get a head start on redemption. He then told his friends he’d be able to sell them a few drops.

Metaphors

Wissam describes Lebanon as a bad mother who began abusing her children. He says there’s nothing worse for a child than the fear of being devoured by his own mother. He also describes Lebanon as “a super-rich cousin we met a while ago in Monaco”. Now, he’s a “junkie cousin” who swears he’ll go to rehab if we accept, one last time – to lend him the money. Wissam regrets that no one is ready to die for Lebanon today. Not even him.

The battle of the dead for the living

In “Beirut-Hell-Express” Etel Adnan writes that
“the dead are coming back to fight once again because the living are cowards!”*

*Etel Adnan, op. cit., pg. 24.

Another Switzerland

There was a time when Lebanon was nicknamed “the Switzerland of the Middle East”. The country was known more for its banking secrecy than for the brutality of warlords, transformed today into vaguely respectable politicians. In the past, “this is Beirut” did not signify a field of urban ruins or an intractable mess. 

Principles

Hyam is a teacher and an activist. She never swears and participates in non-violent demonstrations. However, it is impossible to uphold her principles when she has a meeting at the Lebanese National Ministry of Education. 

Rural Scene

Three men are on a carpet at the side of the road to Baalbek, between two fields of dust. Seen through the car window, the scene is perfectly silent. The first man is standing. Leaning forward, he punches the second man who is on the ground. The third man sits, looking towards the horizon.

Santa

In this Shiite region, there are countless portraits of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. With his thick white beard and big smile, his official portrait gives him the air of an oriental Santa Claus. Like the other parties, Hezbollah distributes food parcels and gifts to its supporters. It is said that Nasrallah lives hidden in a basement in Beirut – nobody knows where exactly. Perhaps the children of party officials write him loving letters.

Regrets

Wissam says that when he opened his eyes after being blasted in his home on the 4th of August 2020, he immediately asked himself why he had chosen to return to Beirut rather than buy a house in Liechtenstein.

Cultivating your garden

A woman says: Instead of waiting for food parcels from corrupt political parties, people should start planting vegetables and harvesting them themselves.

The contradiction

During this journey, I recurrently have the impression that Lebanon has mastered a peculiar art: that of making me forget, sometimes, that I am in fact in Lebanon.

Bribery

One evening, we talk about bribery with our hosts. Having never had the occasion to bribe, I try to find out how to go about it correctly, when the other person implicitly expects money from me: “- You discreetly fold a few notes in the palm of your hand, approach the guy and shake his hand, thanking him for all he has done for you.” So, like in mobster or mafia movies. I learn that “corrupt” in Arabic is “féssed”. It is also used when a dish has gone bad, or the water has stagnated. “Féssed” means something rotten, out of date, foul. Not consumable unless you’re trying to intoxicate yourself.

Apricots

In Arabic, “michmich” means “apricot”. I learned that “in the season of apricots” is a popular expression roughly equivalent to “in a month of Sundays”. It is also the title of a book by the Palestinian poet Carol Sansour, who writes:

“I could bite the sun
To keep the fire from dying inside me
I could swallow the stormy sea
To keep my anger from flowing back.”*

I, for one, did not see apricots in Michmich.
By September, their season had long gone.

*Carol Sansour, À la saison des abricots, Geneva: Héros-Limite, 2022.

Uniform

There is a lot of activity this evening in the streets of Hammana, where a procession of newlyweds is underway. The town police officers supervising the already chaotic traffic do not look at all like the policemen we see in Europe. They wear civilian clothes, a multi-pocket waistcoat and a simple baseball cap that reads “Police“. I am told that this is perfectly normal: this is their regulation uniform.

Marriages and courts

In Lebanon, only men can pass Lebanese nationality to their wives or children, if they are foreigners. Marriage is regulated solely by religious authorities – civil marriage does not exist. It is also the religious authorities who set the conditions for divorce or inheritance. But while the Sunni and Shiite courts recognise polygamy and repudiation, the Druze authorities accept neither. Maronite courts do not authorise divorce, but in the Armenian Orthodox courts, marriage can be dissolved by the spouses’ mutual consent*. Thus, matrimonial rules depend on each community.

*Camille Ammoun, op. cit., pg. 30.

Marriage tourism

It is commonplace for Lebanese people to go abroad for a civil marriage, then return and have their union recognised by the State. Walid Joumblatt, the Druze leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, has been married abroad three times: in Iran, Cyprus and Turkey*. Here in Hammana, the wedding procession is now over. Near a fountain, I take the portrait of a person I have just interviewed, with my Polaroid. A couple approaches, pushing forward a little girl dressed for the festivities. “How much is the photo?” they ask. They must have thought I was the wedding photographer or, more probably given my appearance – a street artist.

*Interview with Walid Joumblatt by Stéphanie Baz-Hatem, op. cit. pg. 65. And Xavier Baron, op. cit. pg. 139.

Hard discount

Aurélien explains how Hezbollah has developed a network of supermarkets open to everyone. Discounts are made for customers carrying their “Party of God” card. Those who are still hesitant to inscribe to the Hezbollah party are offered a one-month free trial.

Confessions

Lebanon’s political system is confessional and communitarian. Citizens vote for their religious party. There are officially nineteen different religious communities in Lebanon (a country slightly larger than the Alsace region in France) for a population estimated to be (approximately) seven million*. Since the country’s independence in 1943, (and although this is not officially stated in the Lebanese Constitution), the President is a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni, and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies a Shiite**. The Lebanese intellectual Ahmad Beydoun describes the system accordingly: “It is as if a bit of each community’s identity was erased to prevent a clash with the other communities, and the state then occupied – or became – this erased surface”.*** Initially, the idea was to create a system in which decisions would be taken by consensus and not by majority logic so that no minority national component would be harmed. Therefore, confessionalism would have allowed the state to exist and endure. But this system closed on the Lebanese like a trap: it gave birth to big families, clientelism (“wasta”), corruption and a political conservatism impossible to reform.****

Longevity

In Lebanon, the same big families have shared power for decades. These include the Gemayels and the Aouns (Christians), the Hariri (Sunnis), the Jumblatt (Druze) and the Berri (Shiites). Power is passed down through the generations, which explains impressive political longevity – if the existence of an elected official is not brutally interrupted by a car bomb, for example. The same four Sunni families have held the post of Prime Minister for fifty of Lebanon’s seventy-five years of independence: the El-Solhs, the Karamés, the Salams and the Hariri*. The Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Nabih Berri, who is also the leader of the Shiite party Amal, was elected in 1992 and re-elected in 1996, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2018 and lastly in 2022 when he was 84 years old.

*Xavier Baron, op. cit. pg. 227.

Bank robbers (1)

Lebanese people no longer have the right to empty their bank accounts. Their savings are frozen by the state. So, recently some people have started robbing their banks to withdraw money that belongs to them. In one day, four such robberies took place in the country. ‘Robbers’ have become heroes on social media.

The national cement

This is how Lebanese-Quebec artist Wajdi Mouawad described the corrupt “elites” in Lebanon who have thrived and held on to power since the end of the civil war: “These murderers who committed the crimes, who ordered the kidnappings, who ordered the torture and confiscated the country know that the hatred we have for each other is the cement that holds them in place. […] Party leaders, militia leaders, harangue leaders, leaders of dark beasts in a dark story, all of them spit out the word “country” like one spits out insults. […] And since our hatred of each other is the support against which their power is leaning, day after day, these old presidents, chiefs, and the whole cohort of buffoons awaken our hatred every time we attempt a revolution. They do it to separate us.”* Hatred of each other, of another faith or village, hatred of the traitor or defector who does not fit into the boxes that the leaders of the state have defined. They do not do this for their population but for their own profit.

*Extract from Wajdi Mouawad’s speech at the Arab World Institute, delivered as part of the “24h for Lebanon” event, organised on the 25th and 26th of September 2020 in support of the Lebanese people after the explosion in the port of Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfvrFSJz9kI, beginning of the speech at 4:11:50 on this video

Ballots for sale

In Lebanon, the people’s votes can be bought like any other everyday product. The price of a ballot paper varies according to inflation levels and the size of the election. For instance, during the legislative elections of May 2022, voters could be seen waiting for the best offer from the candidates before making their choice*. Or, the day after the election, a crowd of citizens who had fulfilled their electoral duty went to the Beirut suburbs to collect their dues. In a village in the Keserwan District north of Beirut, it was noted that the ballot had reached 800 dollars in the last legislative elections. In 2020, 90% of Lebanese households earned less than $250 a month and the minimum monthly wage was around $30**.

*Read in particular Muriel Rozelier, ‘Au Liban, les votes s’achètent ouvertement’, Le Figaro, 15th of May 2022.
**Lyana Alameddine, ‘80 % de pauvres au Liban : comment cette donnée est-elle calculée ?’, L’Orient-Le Jour, 29th of  January 2022.

Finding refuge

Of the two million refugees currently living in Lebanon (out of a total population of seven million), 500,000 are estimated to be Syrian children. As Lebanon has not ratified international refugee conventions, the children have no rights and sometimes no official existence.

The little hunter

In the middle of the mountains, a child, about eight years old, walks briskly. He is holding a hunting rifle. It looks like a toy, but it’s not.

Bank robbers (2)

Five more “armed cash withdrawals” in the country today. The banks are closing for a few days because of this spread of robberies. In Akkar (northwest Lebanon), a man has been imprisoned for forcing his banker to give him his savings. To protest against his detention, members of his clan took up arms and allegedly opened fire on the police – without causing any injuries. A well-informed expatriate concludes: “These are good-natured shots”.

Very bad trip

Hasan produces organic cannabis with fine leaves and a pungent smell. He recounts the following anecdote and assures us that it’s true. One time, he’d prepared a huge ball of hash at home (“enough to last five or six weeks”). He invited his friend Ahmad over to smoke, and as the hours slipped by, they ended up smoking the whole ball that evening. Ahmad then asked Hasan if he had any left. “Sadly not,” Hasan replied, “but my neighbour must have some”. Hasan then got up, completely stoned, and left the house. He began walking towards his neighbour’s farm, located higher up on the other side of the mountain. After a while, he decided it was more pleasant to walk down the slope than up it, so he turned around and retraced his steps, without really knowing what he was doing. He saw Ahmad sitting on the threshold of his house waiting for him, and asked: “Hi neighbour, do you have any grass left? Ahmad, too stoned to recognise him, replied, “No, but Hasan has gone to the neighbour’s house to get some. We’ll just have to wait for him!”

Erased

Aurélien is terrified he’ll lose his identity card. Replacing it would be tricky: Aurélien no longer officially exists since a clumsy civil servant erased his entire family by spilling coffee on the relevant page of the large civil register. There’s no copy or digital backup.

Wake-up call

After a night spent under the stars in a Hermel maquis, I had the strange experience of waking up to the sound of gunshots. They didn’t sound like hunting rifles, but more like automatic weapons – AK47s or heavy machine 12.7s? Our host informs us that the area has two Hezbollah training camps. We’re told that the militia is preparing to leave for Ukraine to reinforce Putin’s armies. Putin, Iran’s ally, finances the principal Shiite party. Geopolitics of breakfast.

Trash

Two loving dogs copulate under the smiling portrait of an “independent” candidate in the last legislative elections – a Sunni politician whom the French press describes as a “sultry jet setter”*. Meanwhile, a few metres from this large billboard, a man and a young boy dutifully dump their trash on the side of the road. These are the two images I remember clearly from my arrival in Tripoli.

*Arthur Sarradin, ‘Omar Harfouch, le jet setter libanais qui se rêve Premier ministre’, Libération, 13th of May 2022.

The dream (2)

I want to report on the start of the October 2019 revolution. But since I forgot my digital camera, I find myself running behind demonstrators through the streets of Beirut, with an old Rolleiflex whose roll of film has long since run out, condemning me to reuse the negative with overlay shots. I desperately turn the crank handle to get the film out of the box, while continuing to run without knowing where I’m going.

The grenade

Someone threw a grenade in the centre of Tripoli. For security reasons, we changed the location of tonight’s concert. Akhtamar will not play in the famous souk of the Mediterranean’s poorest city but in a trendy café in the squeaky-clean Christian quarter. So, I find myself drinking cocktails in a bistro that a French official presents as “Le Café de Flore de Tripoli”. The audience consists mainly of European ex-pats, listening to Norah Jones as the musicians tune their instruments. All because of a grenade.

The Library at Night

At night in Beirut, the lights stay on in an apartment on the first floor of a building in the Hamra district. Apparently, this is the vast library of a private individual who makes it accessible to the general public. In Lebanon, even books avoid institutions.

The weather of war

Aurélien was born in 1980. He remembers the war as the setting, the backdrop of his childhood. Or as an autonomous phenomenon. “Some days we prayed that there would be bombings and that we wouldn’t go to school. And when the blasts came too close to our group of friends, we would instinctively split up and join our families in the shelters” he explained. The similarity between Aurélien’s words and unpredictable weather comes to mind, and I am reminded of Jean Hatzfeld’s account: “In Lebanon, I’d understood that between killings and destruction, the war was gradually escaping both political logic and popular common sense. […] Beyond a certain degree of violence, war lives in a kind of mental autarky”*. Like the rain or the wind, war is self-sufficient.

*Jean Hatzfeld, L’Air de la guerre. Sur les routes de Croatie et de Bosnie-Herzégovine, Paris: Éditions de l’Olivier, 1994.

Harpsichords

Michel says that there are only two harpsichords in Lebanon. One is in the National Conservatory of Beirut. The other is in Bcharré, in a small music school where Michel teaches piano. It is a dark green instrument, made in 1973 in Kabul, a city not well-known for its harpsichord workshops. Michel explains that the musician who played the Beirut instrument has left Lebanon. Although he is now the only harpsichordist in the country, Michel feels that he is not of a sufficiently high standard to carry such a title.

Labels

During this journey, I realize that I have started to categorize in a typically Lebanese way, in spite of myself. I speak of “Shiite regions”, “Druze villages”, “Christian neighbourhoods”, and “Sunni towns”. I even go a step further, writing “Shiite intellectual”, “Druze gymnast”, and “Sunni politician”. I wonder if it’s possible to use these adjectives (which aim at clarifying reality) yet avoid them becoming charged labels, like they used to be on the identity papers of Lebanese men and women – tragic epithets which, at the time of the civil war, could mean a death sentence. I remember a visit to Vukovar when I awkwardly asked a young activist if she was Croatian or Serbian. “Here, we don’t define ourselves like that anymore,” she replied. With 15 million Lebanese people living abroad, the word “Lebanese” is often followed by a hyphen and a second word.  “Lebanese-” something. A prefix to be completed, expanded, rather than a reductive adjective. This is the grammar of the diaspora.

The Conservatory

The Lebanese National Conservatory of Music stands opposite the Grand Serail, also known as the Government Palace. It is therefore located in an ultra-secure part of Beirut, a stone’s throw from the squares where the October 2019 demonstrators gathered. We are told that the building’s plaque has been removed, to prevent the facade from being damaged by revolutionaries. A small, dissuasive indication has been left of its previous function: Beirut Evangelical Church. Thugs would happily attack a public building. They would be more reluctant to vandalise a church.

War or nothing

When Hasan the hashish grower is asked if he isn’t worried about his crop being robbed by thieves, he replies that stealing doesn’t happen here. “We fight a war or nothing.”

The Yellow House

On Beirut’s former demarcation line (“Green Line”) stands the Yellow House. It is the only place where the civil war is openly discussed through exhibitions and contemporary art installations. Ideally placed, the building allowed snipers to cover a large area of death. Entering the Yellow House is like entering a giant darkroom. It’s as if the war was still going on and inviting visitors here to witness Beirut through its own scope, its own visual memory.

Interrogation

I am told the story of a French artist in residence in Beirut: one day she had a professional appointment in the south of the city, and upon arriving early, decided to walk around the surrounding Shiite neighbourhood. Intrigued by graffiti on a wall, she took a picture of it, including an anonymous building’s façade in the shot. A few moments later, a car pulled up alongside her. “Please follow us.” Bag over her head. Ten minutes of blind driving. She is ushered into an interrogation room. Her identity is checked. She doesn’t speak Arabic. They don’t speak English. Time passes. A lot of time. Then they finally release her, almost apologetically – “Sorry, but it’s the procedure”. As she leaves, she realises that she has spent four hours locked in the very same building she had taken a photo of. On the façade of the headquarters of the local Hezbollah militia, someone had mysteriously written the word “prick”, and she had been amused.

Street children

Three street children stand outside a sandwich shop in Beirut, next to the Yellow House. As we’re waiting for the pitas we ordered for them, we chat in sign language. They are Syrian siblings, two sisters and a brother: six, five and four years old respectively. Each clutches the money they earnt through begging that morning in a small, transparent plastic bag. The eldest shows me, not without pride, a wound on her knee; I also notice a nasty burn on the boy’s hand. I tell them they need to see a doctor. The older girl looks at me, amused and disdainful at the same time. She replies with unequivocal gestures: “I am the doctor!”

The terrestrial archipelago

The Franco-Lebanese illustrator Zeina Abirached refers to Lebanon as an “island of a very special kind: a land island”*. Since the trains disappeared, she explains, Lebanon can no longer be reached by land. I wonder if the word “archipelago” wouldn’t better describe this country. A “set of islands grouped over a relatively large area”, states the Larousse dictionary. Autonomous and closed fragments that form a vaguely incoherent whole, and yet more or less understandable, like Beirut. Or maybe it’s the other way around: Beirut is just a miniature reflection of this insular Lebanon. This would explain why, at each stage in this country, we live a common experience, in the continuity of the previous one, and at the same time something radically different.

*Quoted by Ryoko Sekiguchi in op. cit. pg. 42. The quoted article was published in the magazine XXI under the title “Terminus Liban”, winter 2020, pp. 164-189. Other works by Zeina Abirached include Je me souviens: Beyrouth (2008), Le Piano oriental (2015), Mourir, partir, revenir. Le Jeu des hirondelles (2017) and Prendre refuge (2018).

The use of trains

Trains have not been running here for decades. However, there is still a national railway company in Lebanon – built in 1895, it was the first Middle Eastern railway, linking Beirut to Damascus. The few cows one sees on the roadside are no longer watching anything go by. I read in a tourist guide that during the civil war, railway wagons were often used to build barricades*. In Sarajevo on the other hand, it was their tram wagons that changed purpose. They served as protection from sniper fire.

*In the 2023 edition of the Petit Futé, available online in the chapter “ancienne gare de Beyrouth”.

Back on track

Aurélien thinks he remembers seeing a train running in his country. But he’s not quite sure: it was a long time ago. According to Carlos Raffah, president of the ‘Train-Train’ association which has been trying to revive trains in Lebanon since 2005, a railway network would allow the country to “reconnect not only to the world but above all to itself”*. Carlos Raffah is 46 years old and has never taken the train in his country. He believes that “the train transports everyone regardless of community. It is a real democratic tool and the only possible way forward”**. In May 2019, Chinese officials visiting Lebanon expressed interest in a project to rebuild the country’s railways – among other hypothetical investments.***

*Zeina Abirached, ‘Terminus Liban’, article published in XXI, op. cit. pg. 189
**Ibid
***Desi S. ‘China Wants to Revive Lebanon’s Railway’, article published on the 961 News website, 26th of May 2019.

From station to station

Originally, the rails of the Beirut-Damascus line were Belgian, and the locomotives were Swiss. The stations, on the other hand, were French and built on the same architectural model as the stations of the secondary railway networks in France*. We happen upon some of them, along the remnants of the ghost railway. These ruined houses look like those of Étigny (Yonne), or Laifour (Ardennes), but no: they are the stations of Sawfar and Riyaq. On the internet, I discovered that in 2014, the Mar Mikhaël station in Beirut was transformed into a trendy bar. An old locomotive was used for the DJ booth, and they charge an average of eleven euros for a drink. The only Lebanese railway station still used as a public space is in the small town of Saadnayel. The municipality has undertaken the restoration of the building and an old engine. In June 2015, the abandoned building was transformed into a library and reopened to the public.**

*Zeina Abirached, ‘Terminus Liban’, op. cit.
**Changiz M.Varzi, “Promenade le long des voies ferrées abandonnées du Liban”, French edition of Middle-East Eye, 7th of June 2016.

Smoke

In Baalbeck (where the station is uncannily identical to that of Montrond-le-Château, in the Doubs), diesel exhaust fills the air which would once have been full of coal smoke from the old steam engines. We have lunch in a restaurant that opens onto the main street. The electric generator runs out of fuel: the fridges and ventilator fans immediately stop working. Soon the whole room is immersed in a greasy haze from the kitchens. Outside, a traffic jam is forming. The exhaust fumes start to mingle with the smoke from the grills and my fellow diners’ cigarettes. I wonder if getting lung cancer just from eating a lamb kebab is possible.

Déjà vu

In the traffic jam, everyone honks their horns and curses at each other. Suddenly, an older man gets out of a Chevrolet with tinted windows, walks to the car behind his own, and discreetly addresses the driver, who immediately bows. I spent the rest of the meal trying to remember the film this scene reminded me of. After drinking my coffee, I managed to identify my feeling of déjà vu: it was Godfather II. The moment when a friend of the young Vito Corleone orders a man behind him to sit down in the theatre. He then realises that the man is the boss of the local mafia, and quickly apologises.

Beethoven

A French-speaking tourist guide attended the concert Akhtamar gave tonight in Baalbeck. He told everyone that he’d worked with Stéphane Bern on the episode of “Échappées belles” about Lebanon. He also recognised the sonata Akhtamar played, which he is firmly convinced he heard at a festival where Beethoven arrived by helicopter. I regret not having visited the Roman ruins of Baalbeck with this guide.

*Translator’s note: Stéphane Bern is a star on French television and presents a popular show with cultural and historical themes. “Échappées belles” translates as “Beautiful Escapades”.

Indignant

Tony, the tour driver, speaks neither French nor English. We communicate through signs and sounds. He’s driven all over the country, but that doesn’t stop him from grumbling every time a pothole or speed bump shakes the minibus. With each jolt, a sound of indignation – usually a little click of a pinched tongue.

Code of Conduct

How can we expect drivers to respect traffic lights in a country where electricity is so unreliable? When only one out of three lights at a crossroad is functional, it’s actually dangerous to stop at the red one. Better to drive into the night and honk your horn.

Horns

It seems that in Lebanon, horn honking is friendly – as long as the traffic is fluid, of course. People rarely beep the horn to insult a careless driver. They greet each other, warn each other, ask questions, and give way to others, all through varying intensities of honking.

Wrecks

In Bcharré, I saw Beetle VWs reduced to a pile of scrap metal with no roof, windows, or windscreen. No doors, boots, or seats either. Just ancient frames mounted on four wheels, a remnant of a steering wheel and an exposed rusty engine. I didn’t have time to photograph them. The next day they were gone. I was assured that they were running perfectly.

Palmyra Hotel

The Palmyra Hotel in Baalbeck is a delightfully old-fashioned establishment. It faces the spectacular Roman ruins of the temples of Jupiter and Bacchus. One can imagine Jean Cocteau and Jean Marais smoking opium on the club chairs in our private lounge. A portrait gallery shows the famous guests who have stayed here. There are even original drawings by Modigliani and Picasso on the walls. But the hot water doesn’t run properly and the master chandelier in the lounge only has one working bulb.

Prejudice

At the end of our trip, a teacher from the National Conservatory of Music asks us about our itinerary for the tour. He is visibly surprised that we went to play in Michmich – the town from which most Lebanese jihadists have left to join the ranks of Daech. He asks us if it is true that all the women there are veiled. He gestures to his face, mimicking a full veil. We are reminded just how fragmented, compartmentalised, and walled off this country is, as it was up to us as foreigners to deconstruct the prejudices of our host.

Tomorrow we’ll be at war

Apparently, war will break out tomorrow and last for two days. The cedar grove of Bcharré and this chalet in the White Hills, at an altitude of 2,000 metres, would be a beautiful place to wait for a ceasefire. If war floods the country again then I, like Noah stranded on Mount Ararat, would wait for the waters to recede before stepping out of my ark of words. Maybe the war never ended, and because of its fearsome power of submersion, Lebanon has become (by a mysterious, sudden geological acceleration) an archipelago. And thus, these mountains islands.

Acknowledgements

In September 2022, the Akhtamar quartet organised a series of free, classical music concerts across Lebanon in partnership with the Hammana Artist House, one of the very few artist residences in the country. The artists asked me to accompany them and recount the story of the “Music4Lebanon” tour through a series of texts written on the road and posted on a blog as the journey unfolded. 

Foremostly, I would like to thank the artists and organisers of the solidarity tour for their friendship and trust: Coline Alecian, Ondine Stasyk, Jennifer Pio and Cyril Simon from the Akhtamar quartet; Aurélien Zouki, Éric Deniaud and the whole Hammana Artist House team.

I would also like to thank all the people who agreed to talk about their personal island of Lebanon: Arpi, Lamia, Sarah, Selim, Chantal, Iara, Wissam, Hyam, Aurélien, Hasan, Joëlle, Michel, Ghalia, Ghoussoune, Abir, Hussein, Roghida, Hilda, Éric, Hanadi, Tony, Ahmedi and the three Syrian children in front of the Yellow House. I don’t know their names, but I have kept their faces and their wounds in my memory. 

The “Music4Lebanon” solidarity tour was made possible thanks to the support of the French Institute in Lebanon, the Boghossian Foundation, the French Embassy in Armenia, the Swiss Association of the Friends of Doctor Janusz Korczak, Wallonie-Bruxelles International and the Wallonie-Bruxelles Federation, as well as donations from Patricia Brenky, Maxime Stasyk, Patrick Alecian, Grégoire Simon, Élise Huguenin, Claude Adler, Caroll Adler, Christine Cogitore, Jean-Luc Stasyk, Georges Federmann, Solène Tardieu, Bruno Resende, Isabelle Laurent, Xavier Locus, Béatrice Loir, Béatrice and Christian von Hirschhausen, Anne Wendling, Eowyn Gross, Dominique Félix, Paul Bellemont, Anne-Marie Royer, Cécile Zobel, Johann Simon, Laure Bardet, Pierre and Martine Farron-Wirthner, Judith Adler de Oliveira, Allan Rothschild Claire Berriet, Philippe Boursaux, Delphine Druart, Vincent Picco, Monique Roattino, Alain Lambert, Jean Alecian, Anne-Marie Edmond, Jacques Cogitore, Fanny Petitprez, Isabelle Benillouz, Laurence Picco, Isis Larrere, Yvette Bez, Frédérique Picco, Béatrice Pio, and Mylène Pio.

A special thanks to Yoann Durand for introducing me to Bernard Wallet’s ‘Paysage avec palmiers’. To Clément Cogitore and Nadja Dumouchel for entrusting me with the inspiring ‘Une fois. Images and Stories’ by Wim Wenders. And finally, to Claire Audhuy for sharing her love for Mahmoud Darwich’s work with me. Books are islands too, and the libraries of friends are archipelagos that I always cross with pleasure.