4.8 KiB
| date | title | author | hero_image |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-02-01T20:40:38.000+00:00 | To the Cannibals of Mar Mikhael | Sally Émerzian | marmikhael-village-copy.jpg |
Dear Lebanon,
"Where is [your] mind? Oh where is [your] mind..."
It seems it's time for another love letter... Deep down, you must know they're love letters.
So, I see that you're boasting a new residential building in Mar Mikhael. Every day, someone pays Facebook to inform me that Bernard Khoury's latest post-apocalyptic structure "Mar Mikhael Village" is the newest addition to Beirut's "most charming" neighborhood.
For about a million American Dollars, (because the amount in Lebanese pounds would eat up my screen and my brain's ability to quantify), any one of us Almond-Milk-sipping hipsters can own a prestigious flat completely devoid of walls and tiles.
All windows. Just endless stretches of glass panes and concrete slabs. The Emperor's New Flat.
Have you seen this building, Beirut? Is it just me?
Does it not remind you even a little bit of the ravaged buildings you had to tear down not long ago? The ones hollowed out and partially collapsed by your 25 years of civil war?
It stands there, a post-modern mangled façade with missing teeth and gaping holes... In a neighborhood that in any other self-respecting nation, would be protected by Urban Planning regulations.
Do you recall what attracted you to the neighborhood of Mar Mikhael in the first place? It was barely a decade ago that your hip and trendy began to flock to it to become hip and trendy.
You don't have to look very far. It's in the ad campaign for the development. It's everything the project is not.
You came to it looking for the last crumbs of your aesthetic identity, the last lines of your national memory. It was Mar Mikhael's characteristic Lebanese architecture that drew you, its old inhabitants, its humble shopkeepers, its quaint residential buildings with ornate little balconies, plain staircases, arched windows and doors...
How did you fall in love with the charm of Mar Mikhael for what it is, only to slowly try to turn it into downtown Blade Runner?
How have you become a society built on top of the vestiges of what it once was, both a lover and a destroyer of the faded glory of your golden age? How is it sane to tear down your heritage, to use the space to build something new in which you proceed to hang photos of the old and marvel at how nice it used to be before you tore it down. So you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars celebrating weddings and events in the ruins of your retired train stations while your SUV's herd each other on potholed roads and your sidewalks end before they begin.
Then you buy into this olive oil, pottery jar, ex-ZaatarWZeit version of yourself and you sell it to the world as your national image, only to progressively turn it into a fast-food joint everywhere it is not owned by the malevolent ghost of Solidere.
What has happened to you as a Nation, as a Society, that has led you to become a walking, breathing contradiction, your heart in one place and your choices in another? A Cannibal of your own civilization.
You find a neighborhood "authentic" and a charming reminder of your roots, you tear it down, you build structures that look nothing like what you like about it, and then you proceed to advertise the thing you built using images of what the neighborhood used to be. I am not sure what the medical word for this condition is. Something between schizophrenia and dementia?
Tell you what... Let's start over one step at a time. I will begin with myself. Let's restore sanity one brick at a time.
We can start healing by making peace with walls again.
Yes walls... Nothing too ambitions. Not talking about big changes, like cleaning up the shores, recycling, not voting for evil baboons. Just simple walls. Let's celebrate walls. Next time a developer tries to sell you a project or a new flat, next time you build a home, expect to see some walls. Just enough to help you locate the windows from amongst other windows. What do you say we make walls trendy again... Think about it, it might even be "avant-garde" and a good business venture. Soon enough, walls will have become so rare that people might begin to miss them.
After all, our homes were supposed to be regular shelters from regular elements.
Remember if you can...
Before parents tucked their children to sleep between the walls of narrow corridors because someone told them it was the safest place to hide from shells. Before street war and shrapnel forced a generation to steer clear of windows. Our walls were just walls and our windows just windows.
Our souls and our memories cannot possibly subsist on the occasional watercolor painting or boutique hotel repackaging of all that we once called home.
Yours always for better or worse,
Sally