13a The Silk Museum

Recently I went to the Silk Museum, where I discovered Lebanon's history with silk, which dates back to the Phoenicians.

Though there is no real relevance between this and the silk Museum, there is a movement of predominantly Christian Lebanese who claim to be Phoenician and not Arab. This dates back to the civil war Lebanon experienced in the 70's and a good ways into the 90's. Those who countered the Palestinians and the Arab Nationalist causes, claimed that they were destroying the nation by using Lebanon as a battle ground against Israel. This they would not tolerate; interestingly they are the same people who initially supported the French Mandate on the grounds that Lebanon was a predominantly Christian country. Now they internalize their struggle and rationalize their culture as being unique to those of the region. It really is a pity that faith can be such a wedge between people, when (especially Christianity) was meant to harbor peace and love between all.

Though all the groups in Lebanon share a history of militancy, today it is only Hizballah that is actually a militia. Many questions arise as a result of their military presence in the country. For one, who will protect Lebanon? The government's security forces are not equipped for securing Lebanon's borders! For another, who will securely protect and represent the Shiite community. They are underrepresented in most everything in the country and this imbalance is largely due to a class struggle they have to cope with. (Though some might disagree with me on this last note, I would say there is a historic precedence of over representation of the Christians in Lebanon, and today an over representation of the Sunni in Lebanon) No balance has been properly found or made, even though the system is built on an assumed thread of equality. It inherently categorizes people, and thus creates power struggles between these categories, which debunks and destabilizes the balance of power it is presumptively based on.

What a mess!?

 THE SILK MUSEUM

:)

These are the worms that start off really small and eat till they reach triple and then some there weight.

When they have reached the right size (they only live for a month) they begin creating thread around there bodies, cocooning themselves inside.

This is what they look like when fully cocooned, they die inside the cocoon, turn into hard rocks!

Then they wash and process the cocoon shells, slowly extracting the string from the cocoon (remember this is how the Phoenicians did it, not how its done today). This takes several men to process.

Finally they stretch out the string and process it into silk. One silk scarf can take up to 10,000 cocoons.

The museum is lined with pictures of the old days and how the silk was made in those days!

It also has a garden that has such beautiful flowers and fruit trees!

And a view of Beirut from afar with the sea right in front of it. The museum is in Bsous!

Finally, I found my favorite wild flower growing in the mountains (its a resiliant bugger!)

3a Lazy B

I am doing a compilation of all the beaches in Lebanon in addition to all the other areas of Lebanon underneath the Project Lebanon Logo. I have pictures of  Beirut (most of it), I took pictures of Tripoli (most of it/still have the beach front), now comes the turn of Southern Lebanon. Honestly, I didn't go that far south, Damour and Jiyeh are just a hop, skip, and jump, away from Saida which is further south and one of the four major cities that line the coast of Lebanon (they are Sour, Saida, Beirut, and Tripoli). Only 20 minutes away from Saida is Sour. There was a recent attack on a UN envoy in Saida only a week ago, so the area has its security problems, but for the most part it is safe.  

4g Achrafiah

I have a small passion for flowers and trees. There beauty astounds me, and the color is just so magnificent. This is one reason why I take so many pictures of them.

Thus, today's post is dedicated to this one tree that grows flowers in spring that can be seen predominantly (or more often then not) in Eastern Beirut. Eastern Beirut is predominantly Christian and includes Bourj Hammoud, which is actually a little outside of Beirut, and Achrafia which is between the Bourj and Western Beirut.

A Little History Lesson for you about Beirut:

Lebanon was liberated in 1943 from the French Mandate imposed after World War II when the Ottoman Empire was split up by the Allied Forces.

During the cold war between Russia and America, the East and the West, specifically prior to the 75 civil war, Beirut was also divided between East and West, Western Beirut supporting the nationalist Eastern Movements, and Eastern Beirut generally following the American West and its allies! Till this day Service (our version of public transport) Drivers mark off there driving routes according to Eastern and Western divides. This has some geographic reasoning, distance between East and West and the general ambiance of both regions varies greatly. You can see these differences in the pictures as well as in the flower tree. The only exception is the street driving away from Western Beirut towards Eastern Beirut (Spears), it has the most concentrated grouping of these trees that I have seen in Beirut.

This is kinda why I like it so much, for one the larger the tree the older it is, we are talking 50, 60 years old. So it too has experienced and lived Lebanon's Violence. And it landmarks Lebanon's differences, while portraying them as something BEAUTIFUL. But most of all it emphasizes the in between nature of the Lebanese community with its trees covering the Spears Highway as if to protect it from hatred. It is in my opinion a treasure that we take for granted.

One of the younger trees! In the Sodeco area right into Achrafia and Mathaf!

The streets are all tighter in Achrafia than they are in West Beirut. Houses literally at every turn and narrow narrow alleyways!

In between East and West Beirut, on the way to Hamra

On the wall to your Left you see Banners promoting the removal of the Tafia/Sectarian System following the Arab Spring Revolutions. And right above them are the flower trees leading you into East Beirut. They cover the whole street, and overlap from both ends of the street, its breathtaking!  

4f Bourj Hammoud

Bourj Hammoud is one of the many places outside of Beirut but close enough to it where you can enjoy a good visit now and then! There is this wonderful DVD store there where I buy my Movies from. Plus there are all sorts of shopping centers filled with Lebanese produced (and really good quality) stuff.

Bourj Hammoud is a part of the Metn Mohafaza or district, and is renowned for being populated by Armenians escaping genocide from the early twentieth century. The Aremnians are a significant part of the Lebanese fabric, most of the second generation Armenians speak Arabic, French, English and of course Armenian. They hold strongly to their heritage, which is a plus for Lebanon as it encourages the Lebanese to learn to be tolerant of Others. They are not discriminated against as much as the Kurds or the Ethopians/Migrant workers in the country, but are not exactly embraced either. They pretty much live on the cusps of Lebanon, in in between spaces, and as in between figures, not here nor there.

One of the largest Armenian political parities in Lebanon is Tash Nak, they are supporters of the March 8th movement (pro Hizballah). There rivals are Hizb al Henchag or the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, and Ramgavar.

As usual these pictures are my own!

check out the Armenian, French, Arabic, and English-LOL

Constructing Urban Places: An Essay

Being an urban subject is not an easy task, nor is it a definite one. The difficulty of resolving the reality that one is a subject is complicated enough as is. Who am I? What do I want to become? Where is my life taking me? The question of our solitude and the place of other people in it is mind boggling. But it is not limited to the theoretical frame. The implications of all these ideas and questions pour out into the political and into the social. We live as members of a community defined by relations that shape our understanding of solitude and that determine our interactions with one another. As each cultures reliance on the communal exaggerates and stretches the scope of one's understanding of the individual.

Jean-Luc Nancy places community at the center of his study of political dimensions. He identifies the importance of reconciling individuality with the communal and further recognizes that the places we inhabit make these relations possible. With the increased onslaught of a privatized world, we are emerging into times where individuality is taking precedent over the communal. This is further complicated in cultures that laud their traditions as being communally oriented, such as Arab cultures.


Community building, according to Nancy is a contradictory process. The places we inhabit foster the means for engaging in these contradictions and further reconciling the tensions that arise from them, while encouraging newer ways of interacting. I would add that as is the case in most post-colonial nations they can aggravate existing tensions. Which is why the importance of exploring and facilitating places of safe and positive communal interaction is so vital.

Harirism is a term commonly used to refer to the increased privatization of Beirut's urban space. The drive behind privatizing Beirut was to improve the economy by increasing investment in the country while increasing tourism. The danger is that now Beirut has very few places for public interaction and communal building. Furthermore, our communal boundaries and traditions are being modified to accommodate to the individualistic sentiments that come with privatization. Each sect is increasingly polarized from the others around issues of class, political action, international affairs, and money. Who is given access to what resources, why, how, and who is providing these resources, all become integral questions of concern aggravating our communal differences?

After a recent discussion about Solidere and Hizballah with a few friends of mine, I have some insight on the importance and devastation that comes with a lack of public places for relation building. One friend said "Beirut Souk is a high class imitation of a once popular market that was one of the main traits of Beirut", adding "the way it is done, and the shops that opened are meant to drive ordinary people out. The Souk of Beirut was like the one of Tripoli, every alley of it contains traders of one specialization like the jewelry makers, small merchants, and now there are no places for gathering anymore".

Gathering is the most important part of forging a community. Thus with the increased isolation of Beirut's spaces there is a dramatic form of stagnation being imposed by the very urban center. A stifling of the history, and a prevention of future mobility.  Ras Beirut is becoming far to uniform, the presence of contradiction is vital to encouraging growth. There is further shame in the fact that communities outside of Ras Beirut are not integrating with the ones in Ras Beirut. One reason for this is because of the lack of places for public interaction.

I am not emphasizing the importance of nationalizing everything, nor I am necessarily promoting Socialism. But cities like London and Paris have public parks, public Museums, even Public Art Galleries. Where is this in Lebanon?

4e Ras Beirut Hamra

Hamra Cafe has a new slogan that goes "Then. Now." with pictures of Piccadilly (a street perpendicular to the center of Hamra Street)! There was an artist when downtown was first renovated who had taken mass pictures of the downtown area before it was reconstructed and placed them exactly parallel to the new ones. I saw an art exhibit at the Tate Modern when I was living in London of an Arab Artists renditions of the Lebanese civil war with pictures of car explosions on the streets compiled from 1975 to date.

Lebanon's history is not a sympathetic one to the ears. It is as bloody as any history should be, and there is no surviving winner, so it is not as concise. Hamra in so many ways epitomizes the Lebanese experience as it is one of the few areas (though this is changing as the area is being gradually gentrified) that is for everyone.

Though this may be a biased perspective,  I do believe most people will agree that Ras Beirut is more diversified than Greater Beirut and that Hamra is the most diversified area in Ras Beirut. I say this carefully because it can be really difficult to measure the way the city is cut up and what area belongs to what sect especially in Ras Beirut, here there tends to be an assumption that the whole area is very Sunni, (city spaces in Lebanon usually are) but the area: is a shopping district, is filled with schools, is residential and buisness oriented at the same time. It caters to everyone's demands and needs, thus i will walk on egg shells and say the area is not purely Sunni.

I am afraid there are not enough statistics to validate my claim, and if there were their reliability would be questioned! If I am right about Hamra, I hope this is the outcome of the rest of Beirut by the time I pass.

(Hamra means Red in Arabic, and on a street parallel to Hamra is a cafe called Le Rouge, which means the Red in French, perpendicular to it on a corner is Olio, a pizza place designed and surrounded by green paint and trees, I find the mesh mash to be highly witty)

:)

4d Ras Beirut Bliss

The Comparison is so worth it! I am so surprised that in fact not as much has changed since the 70's until now as I have would have thought. There is usually more traffic, but I did my best to avoid taking pictures of cars (UGLY)!

4c Beriut Down Town Continued

Though I don't think I need to explain or justify myself, I am doing so because I don't want people to get the wrong impression. For one, the Down Town pictures of what was and what is are a representation of how Lebanon has changed since its glory days (sarcasm). The response to my post is a representation of how it hasn't changed.

I received some comments about how biased I may be to the Sunni Lead Hariri government who have supported and sponsored Solidere, the corporation responsible for reconstructing the downtown area.

Solidere is mostly a private corporation, though its origins were created for public purposes (and are still of public concern), it gradually evolved into a more privatized business. One that Hariri and his people encouraged via the laws governing Solidere. Ohrstrom writes in the Daily Star,

Solidere was established by the government through CDR [the Council for Development and Reconstruction] and is regulated by two public statute laws but has taken the shape of a commercial company. It has been supported by the government and given about $1 billion in exemptions, and half of the area of Solidere is municipal property. 

Since its relatively none humble beginnings, Solidere has evolved into stock oriented business, those who owned land in downtown area received stocks in Solidere as compensation for their deeds. Many of these people were forced into selling their stocks for prices less than the value of their land, which created much controversy around Solidere. Not to exclude the fact that many people living/squatting in the area at the time were forced out of their homes. 

Hence the critics began to reign down on the renovation of the downtown area. The criticism ranges from corruption charges, perpetuating historic civil war amnesia charges, increasing debt charges, destroying archeological sites charges, excessively commercializing Beirut charges, and increasing the class and sectarian divide charges. All are valid. 

Hariri had the largest amount of stocks invested in Solidere. Thus clearly indicating a bias in his political status as his financial interests are implicated in the countries renovation. People saw this bias and commented, calling him

Ammar hajar wa dammar basher – he who built the stones and destroyed the people. (Craig Larkin)

Now that he has passed,  the car explosion that took him, and the cedar revolution that has followed make him a symbol of sorts. A symbol of freedom and of liberalism. His name and status is untouchable, people do not accept criticism of the Man anymore. Though he was as fallible and as human as any of the current politicians to date.

Regardless of this, Solidere still persists on and is still renovating the region from what it once was. The area is undoubted beautiful with cobble stone roads, four story buildings, a clock tower, several Souks (Markets) ranging from the really absurdly expensive to the moderately expensive, and gorgeous mosques and churches laden with chandeliers and bells and prayer calls alike.  It is a distinct indication of Lebanon's Commercial oriented history. While representing Lebanon's multifaceted camilion like quality. All of which is topped off with Roman ruins. I personally find the area mesmerizing, and a tribute to what shit loads of money can do to any country. 

WHAT I believe is that we have to face the fact that it's far too late to criticize Solidere (though they still need to be held accountable and responsible, and the laws need to be made clear about what its regulations and policies are!) The face of Lebanon is changing, as is the world, and though it is becoming more and more materialistic and divided by class; it is also shrinking and breaking down barriers that once existed. Everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt, regardless of its weaknesses or strengths. 

4c Beriut Down Town

THE PICTURES SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

Building Being Renovated Till Now

Church and Mosque

Beirut Now

Beirut Then

Beirut Now

Church and Mosque

Beirut Then

BEIRUT NOW