Truck Culture

How many times have we come across those branded truck backs with painted symbols and text, but hardly ever wondered where this practice came from… an expressive tradition rooted in superstitions and speaking to our deepest apprehensions. Stuck in traffic behind our truck driver, I thought of him travelling distances to earn a living, carrying painted eyes and seemingly entertaining sayings on his vehicle, to shield it from wicked minds and envious eyes - although collecting more insults than envy on the road, nowadays. Whether in the colorful signs, or the messages, or even in the names given - dallou3ah being my favorite - he is transmitting folklore on his truck back without knowing it: a Truck Culture addressing our deep psychological fears of loosing against the odds; which makes us human - all too human - hence the basic need to protect what we own, and to protect our own by warding off ill will. And so, we reach out to knock on wood, cross our fingers, wish one another to 'break a leg', or paint an open blue eye or a khamsa on a truck back. Just like our truck driver on the ciTy streets, we all carry Truck Culture.

Hope and Dream

Two words: Hope and Dream. Everyone, everywhere, needs to hope and to dream. Isn't that true? There are cities under the sun where it takes one to hope harder and dream stronger; places left to their own devices, and vices... Beirut ciTy is such a place. It takes fortitude to be willing and able to hope and dream when all around us points differently, everyday, in our strange, beautiful, and terrible ciTy. My fellow citizen have fully wrapped their minds around this reality. We must have figured out a long time ago what our survival entails, hence our resilience and willingness to hope beyond our own expectations and dream, everytime. Be it what it may, at this time of the year, I will spare you the cliche greetings of the season. I will wish you instead two words, that someone close to my heart recently offered me in beautiful backlits, now hanging as a ray of light in my hallway, a beaming reminder: to keep the Hope and carry the Dream, always within. And as within, so without; I wish you Hope per chance to Dream, and Dream to always have the will to Hope. Pass it on, it is worth the while.

Time, and again

It has been such a hectic month and time simply flew, again... as it always does, so efficiently. And as we keep wondering where it went, repeatedly, we promise ourselves to get better at managing it, and time again flies, and we keep wondering where it went, so foolishly. But this time, I decided to stop asking myself where time went, or how fast, because time is fundamentally measurable, and constant. However, as exact and unwavering as it is, Time defines us in so many variable ways. Some say Time is the ultimate healer of wounds; I call it forgetfulness, but does it heal?? When painful (or not) conscious becomes subconscious eventually vanishing into oblivion, and we are relieved... we are forgetful creatures on a survival roller coaster and Time is our ally to move on. Time is also the glaring reminder that there is a future which must be planned for, which must be anticipated with all its endless possibilities such that we are prepared and our survival guaranteed, time and again. We can try to ignore Time, in a moment of absolute passion, yet we awaken confined within its ticking boundaries realizing how vain our quest has been. Time is not just quantifiable, it has a real presence in our lives. Isn't it futile to want to manage such vastness? try to tame that all encompassing presence? I take Time on my side as a constant reminder that there is hope, in all the little walks we go on - which become our life journey. Therefore, I shall take all those little walks yet to come, with time on my side.

Deformation is a skill

Asperity, one of those versatile words defined as 'roughness' in a climate, 'harshness' in a tone, 'severity' in a temper, 'ruggedness' in a surface ... surfaces touch at their asperities, those uneven rough edges that deform when pressure is applied, when there is overload. Deformation. We have almost mastered that skill, at every level. At a glance one can see that we are becoming predatory, and growing comfortable in our ways. Beirut, at times, is a city that makes you violent against your will. What is driving the people of this City? Overload- of everyting, and the list is tedious ... so you name it. The good, the bad, and the worse. Not to forget the overload of talent. A talent to astonish the world, and yet we have chosen the road to deformation. It does take talent indeed to master that skill.

Hamra parade

If you really get to know Hamra, you fall in love. It's not just another special part of the ciTy, it's that kind of place that leaves its mark on you. It is an energy, an attitude, the kind of place loaded with past, present, and future. My last date with her was on Friday 10th, but my story with her dates back. I will pause for the sake of rememberance: my Hamra generation is in another time zone, with places that fueld ideals and inspried my youth; places that are no longer, like Modca and Chez Andre - but places come and go, and afterthought, everything shifts, everyone changes, so why do we expect you to stay the same? Just being sentimental, just push play -->

So cheers to my Hamra, to the free and wild at heart, and cheers to everyone else's; to those who love you, to those who love you less, to those who don't know what they are missing, and even to those who simply don't care. Greet the people of the ciTy on your streets, and safeguard your free spirit; do not bail out on us, we need what's left of us in there.

Beirut, lighthouse of the Orient

In the middle of football fever, I would like to raise a different flag: that of our fading collective memory...
What a nation chooses to remember - or not - shapes its identity: the legacy to the coming generations.
We all have personal memories stored in places where they can be retrieved - or not - and then there are public memories that we studied in history class and mostly forgot by the time we graduated. But unlike 'dead' historical facts that we find in books, our collective memory is organic and dynamic. It is the sum of shared and meaningful remembrances that live and evolve through time, and that are entrusted from generation to generation to be nurtured, safeguarded and bequeathed.

Let me tell you where all this started. I had a work day away, and driving through the congested arteries of the City to the meeting venue, I came across the posted sign which reads "Beirut, lighthouse of the Orient". A message that opened many sweet spots in my mind as only Beirut can... and suddenly stroke me harder than the sun. Are we living up to this claim? Are we as a people sustaining the collective memory of Beirut City for its lighthouse to glimmer for generations to come? I was saddened not to find in me a forceful YES as an answer.

What is the collective memory of our nation? What represents it? What monuments do we choose to build, restore, or safeguard to commemorate our legacy... other than malls and rooftop bars. Do not get me wrong. I am a big fan of shopping and rooftop bars, and clubbing in general as underground as it may go. I am an adamant believer that they contribute in meaningful ways to the identity of our City. But I also firmly believe that they are not to be our only legacy. We ought to leave behind what else we stand for.

The Beirut Souks are the latest indicator of the ill-being of our collective memory. There is absolutely nothing wrong in displaying a modern and luxurious facade, especially when we are very good at it. We have the talent, the taste, and the cut for luxury and glam - we were drawn that way - but there is absolutely everything wrong in losing sight of the authentic Beirut - Souks are missing Beirut's authentic soul.

Another alarming indicator of this ill-being is the UNESCO considering the delisting of the Qadisha valley from the international heritage. Besides the historical, religious, and touristic dimensions of the site, it is an authentic location which symbolizes the cultural richness of the region. It is a living national heritage: there lies its infinite value.

The sad truth is that beloved Beirut has been going through a collective memory crisis for much too long. Will the posted sign outlive the meaning of its message? We need a collective memory project.

That being said, I go back to football fever and raise the Spaniard's banner against all odds: La Roja deserves to go down in sports history tomorrow.

Belts

When I took this picture of belts on display during a walk down the ciTy streets, I did not understand what had attracted me to it back then. With retrospective, I realize the similarities with the spirit of our ciTy and its people: crowded, colorful, diverse, overlapping. And like those belts, we're all hanging in there.