After decades of conflict and economic turmoil in Beirut, we hear how a community of artists are determined to reshape their city. Interviews by Killian Fox.
Can you imagine what it meant to grow up in Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s? If a shell didn’t kill you, hopelessness surely would. And death by despair is a thousand times worse, and more final, than death by a missile. But something kept me hopeful and alive, day after day, despite all the misery and desolation surrounding me. Something almighty, intensely transformative – something magical: it was literature.
I didn’t read to learn (the latter was a mere collateral benefit); I read to unlearn. To unlearn hate and fear and distress and despair. To unlearn closed doors and clipped wings and tunnels without a light at the end of them. I read to forget everything and everyone that was trying to kill me, outside as well as inside.
Then, from reading, I moved on to writing. It wasn’t a choice; it wasn’t a decision; it wasn’t a luxury: it was a ferocious and vital necessity. I composed poems and invented stories in order to survive; just like my cousin Fouad played the piano in order to survive; just like my friend Leila sketched dresses and our neighbour Sylvia painted, in order to survive. It would come as no surprise that Fouad is now an accomplished pianist, Leila a successful fashion designer, and Sylvia a well-known painter. The likes of them can be found in each and every Lebanese household...Keep reading on The Guardian.
Can you imagine what it meant to grow up in Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s? If a shell didn’t kill you, hopelessness surely would. And death by despair is a thousand times worse, and more final, than death by a missile. But something kept me hopeful and alive, day after day, despite all the misery and desolation surrounding me. Something almighty, intensely transformative – something magical: it was literature.
I didn’t read to learn (the latter was a mere collateral benefit); I read to unlearn. To unlearn hate and fear and distress and despair. To unlearn closed doors and clipped wings and tunnels without a light at the end of them. I read to forget everything and everyone that was trying to kill me, outside as well as inside.
Then, from reading, I moved on to writing. It wasn’t a choice; it wasn’t a decision; it wasn’t a luxury: it was a ferocious and vital necessity. I composed poems and invented stories in order to survive; just like my cousin Fouad played the piano in order to survive; just like my friend Leila sketched dresses and our neighbour Sylvia painted, in order to survive. It would come as no surprise that Fouad is now an accomplished pianist, Leila a successful fashion designer, and Sylvia a well-known painter. The likes of them can be found in each and every Lebanese household...Keep reading on The Guardian.