post 299/365
This city, this country never tires. A land of many contradictions which seems so obvious to the naked eye yet is part of the fabric of its normality.
lebanon civil war
Recreating the Lost Time
post 290/365
Upheaval of the present takes you back to nostalgia. Fragments of memories play in your mind. Incoherent thoughts edited. There is a certain place in the past where a part of you lived and no matter how far you have come, nostalgia takes over. It’s a romance with the past. These vintage images in black and white or in faded colors revived from imagination in full color. Vivid colors surface haunted memories of a buried past.
Beit Barakat
post 229/365
After life is exploded, changed, dehumanized, there are shattered pieces that do not heal for years, if at all. “What is left are scars and something else – shame, I suppose, shame for letting it all continue. Glances at the past where solace in tradition and myth prevailed only brings more shame over what the present is. We have lost the splendors of what our ancestors have created and go elsewhere.” (Anthony Shadid _ House of Stone)
A War Generation’s Hero
post 161/365
“Sometime in the middle of the 1970s, a glistening, barrel-chested, tri-colored robot of Japanese provenance entered the lives of Lebanese youth. Wing-like protrusions emerged from his incongruously teeny head like a set of bull’s horns. His arms were Herculean, substantial enough to hurl any enemy into a distant abyss, while his robot hands seemed always to be clenched into little balls of fury. On occasion, he would commune with a flying saucer, which allowed him to soar over the sky at light speed as he battled a malicious empire run by a galactic dictator named Lord Vega the Great and his equally malicious associates. This robot, this savior of humanity, was called Grendizer.”
I am very proud to be the first to translate this song into English, so here it goes:
The Agony of War and its Future
post 153/365
The word ‘war’ is feared by all
Everything that one can think of
Environment, Economics, Politics
All joins in the fray
Man against man
War begins
Sending dancers of death into the battlefield
Changing the landscape, death to all
Leaving behind a stage, full of agony
What can we say,
When wars are waged?
War Through the Eyes of a Genius
post 118/365
Maroun Bagdadi was arguably Lebanon’s most prominent filmmaker, one whose work has been seen all over the world. One of his best-known films, “Houroub Saghira” (Little Wars), a narrative on the brutalities of Lebanon’s civil war, was shown at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, drawing this comment from a prominent film critic: “To make a film about Beirut that eschews polemics for more universal, more human issues is an achievement.” In 1975, he directed his first feature film, Beyrouth ya Beyrouth, Koullouna Lil Watan, a 75-minute documentary produced in 1979, won the Jury Honor Prize at the International Leipzig Festival Documentary and Animated Film.
The Art of War
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This is war paint, he puts it on everyday so we can remind ourselves of the atrocities of a distance past. They seam like distant dreams painted to heal open wounds. Although his paintings are just pictures of this collective memory of a bygone war era, yet they are worthy of a thousand words as real as life itself.
The Tower of Death
post 96/365
Scarred from the relentless passage of time pitted with bombshells and covered with grime forgotten by those who oft pass it by, it rarely is gazed upon by anyone’s eye. Haunted by memories, littered with broken dreams, this old building crumbling down under the weight of its own conscious, stands there as a reminder of dark times passed.
Beirut’s Treasure House
post 79/365
Located on the former Green Line, the National Museum of Beirut is an impressive building with a magnificently displayed collection of archaeological artifacts that offers a great overview of Lebanon’s history and the civilizations that made their home here. The National Museum is considered to be one of the most significant Near Eastern museums because of its rich collection.
365 Days of Lebanon 