It was the summer of 1992. While my father drove on Route 5 from Santiago, heading north to Chile’s wine country through La Serena on a beautiful summer morning, my mother pressed play to Fairuz’s latest album into the cassette player. We had received the cassette a couple of weeks earlier, along with others that included recorded letters from relatives, and other compilations of the latest music from Beirut. For a Lebanese family then living in the so-called end of the world, when phones were unreliable and the internet was still the stuff of science fiction, this was as interactive and coveted as the communication and connection to the homeland could ever be.
Continue reading “Ziad Rahbani: The comrade who left us something “good””“Between Amnesty and Amnesia”: Remembering the 50th Anniversary of Lebanon’s Civil War
How much more is there left for us, not the history books, to say about the Lebanese civil war? Quite a lot, apparently.
Earlier this year, Lebanon-based “Agenda Culturel” launched its “Between Amnesty and Amnesia, where is the Memory of the Civil War?” series, gathering testimonies through seven questions centered on personal experiences and how memories of the war are still reflected in our lives, identity, traumas and aspirations for this country’s future. I really did not think I had more to say about the war, any more than I already have, nor even wanted to. But these questions made me realize that there were still things I wanted to share. So long as we, as a country – as we are far from being a nation – fail to remember in order to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, we will all still have much to say about what erupted on April 13, 1975.
Continue reading ““Between Amnesty and Amnesia”: Remembering the 50th Anniversary of Lebanon’s Civil War”The Good Old Days – أيام الزمن الجميل
“This living room used to be wider; this balcony used to be more spacious. Of course your love, ya habibi, was as big as the whole wide world.” – Fairuz, “It Wasn’t Like This.”
In one of many songs written and composed by her son Ziad, Fairuz laments how different things around her once were. The living room, the lemons, the olives…even the soap was different! ‘Different’ undoubtedly implying ‘better’, and applying to everything from inanimate objects to the love of a dear one. Apparently, that someone’s love ended up as sour as the lemons…
Continue reading “The Good Old Days – أيام الزمن الجميل”To a Lebanon that is slowly drifting away…
In less than a week, two giants of Lebanese and Arabic music and literature are no more. Sabah will no longer charm us with her eternal smile and enchanting voice nor warm our hearts with her simplicity and modesty. Said Akl will no longer speak to us in his characteristically intense and lyrically robust voice nor provoke us with his radicalism and idealism. Continue reading “To a Lebanon that is slowly drifting away…”
And Yet Again, Bigger Isn’t Always Better
It wasn’t long ago when Lebanon seemed absolutely obsessed with setting world records. We had the biggest hummous dish, the biggest tabboule, the longest kebab and largest glass of wine. There also was the largest ceramic plate, largest dabke and largest national flag. I remember seeing a young bride desperately trying to surround her entire village with her dress to set the world record for the longest bridal train, but I’m not sure if that made it to the book… Continue reading “And Yet Again, Bigger Isn’t Always Better”
Eye on the East 