Issue 3/2014 - Arab Summer


How Did We Survive? … Did We?

Portrait of a neglected sensibility

Fadi Toufiq


The Prologue

When one looks attentively at the dominant discourse regarding the representation of contemporary Beirut, one could easily detect that the city of Beirut is not conceived nor presented in these representations for what it is, but for what it is not.

Defining through negation, through counting the absences. That is the latent motto of various representations and discourses touching upon the status quo of Beirut nowadays. Otherwise the city is invisible. It is a blind spot, unseen from the perception of the mourner subject.

As if the inhabitants of Beirut, the survivors of 15 years civil war, after managing to survive, and precisely because of that have lost the language to speak their own world, except from the state of mourning the old one1.

Thus, almost 20 years after the end of civil war, the spectre of old Beirut, the destroyed one, still haunts our perception of the city nowadays. This leaves many of us in a continuous state of mourning, which never seems to reach a closure, or set up the basis for reconciliation with the contemporaneous.

Whenever touching upon Beirut nowadays, few can resist the temptation of comparing the city with its prewar version, the lost city with its most fantasised elements2.

Here, both the prewar and postwar city become two different cities, rather than two historical periods of the same city, that of Beirut. Here, the contemporary Beirut couldn’t be seen but as a reminder of the lost one.

Looking at the constant process of analogy between pre and post war Beirut, one will realise that what is more neglected and missed here, is the civil war era of Beirut. As the civil war in this discourse is denied its historical status and its time period (15 years), and presented as a merely tragic event that occurred out of our control and beyond our will. Just like an earthquake.

Surely it would have been better if what happened was an earthquake, for the natural disaster however cruel will be, in the end frees its associated survivors from any kind of responsibility, or the burden of guilt. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an earthquake but a civil war. A complex event, that as it occurs and continues does nothing but keep blurring the borders between all presupposed binaries; soldier and civilian, victim and slaughterer. A realm of melting boundaries that made it hard for survivors to position themselves and speak of a definitive identity. Where to place oneself and when? Who to speak of?

When speaking of civil war one should stay alert not to confuse two distinct forms of war; the classical war and the civil war. The latter couldn’t be made possible just by the will / power / capacity of the fighter / army / head of commands to fight, but more with the acceptance and collaboration and involvement of the „public.“ Not to mention the fact that fighters in the Lebanese civil war at the end, in every case, were husband, brother, sister, nephew, uncle, cousin, of many of us.

To voice the complexity of civil war, I can't think of a better example than a scene that was quite repetitive during the years of civil war; a scene that usually occurs outdoors where groups of civilian women holding food pots march together in the neighbourhood.Moving from one military point to another, these women offer the fighters here and there a hot meal. I once dedicated a whole project to this scene, called: Hospitality; 1st scene / take # 1 / outdoor - daylight / Fighters served hot meal by local resident. I happened to witness it randomly during my years of civil war. But besides my personal experience, I always felt that this scene speaks authentically of the civil war, its complexity, its melting boundaries between presupposed binary such as „civilians“ and „fighters“.

No wonder, when facing the complexity of their positions within such a realm, a realm of melting boundaries, survivors tend to disguise their experience of surviving the civil war as if it was a mere experience of surviving a natural disaster. Just as in the realm of natural disaster, i.e. out of history, one can claim pure innocence in surviving. Otherwise, accepting the complexity of one’s experience surviving the civil war, one should embrace her/his fate lacking purity.

Precisely when surviving was, in one way or another, the fruit of our steady extreme will to melt, to adapt to one of the strangest and cruelest situations ever. Here, it seems no one wants to recall his 15 years of doing nothing, but what was needed to survive with all the embarrassment / humiliation / degradation of one’s self that comes with it. Can the way we survived speak of who we are? It took a long 15 years; isn’t possible that much of what happened to us during this time, shaped and conditioned what and who are now?

Here, neglecting the civil war becomes the precondition of (re)gaining an ‚innocent’ status, a homemade recipe for tranquil virtue. And yyet it is a costly one.

At this exact point comes my conflict with such discourse. Surely, not because one is angry and outraged and wants to point the finger left and right at survivors and hold them responsible for what happened during this period, not at all. No judgment needed here, what is more needed is to free this historical period, the civil war’s period of Beirut from judgment, any kind of judgment. If not at all, at least to postpone any presupposed judgment as long as one can, even the very common idea that civil war is bad. The challenge is to cease to suppose anything in advance, if not, at least to stay aware of how decisive is such a presupposing. Yes, it is a quite challenging exercise, one should try without fear of failing, and when failed, try again. It's worth trying to recapture a state of mind that one had once and has been lost.

I’m speaking of a radically different nature of gazing on civil war, definitely, not the journalistic gaze, but the cold gaze, my gaze. The gaze of a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 years old boy who happened to be born just a few months before the war started. He has no memory of old Beirut nor any idea what life there looked like before the war. When he became conscious he opened his eyes on the ruins, but ruin in his case triggered nothing, no memory, no nostalgic feeling, no longing, and this is what differentiates his gaze from the gaze of the mourner.

He once felt nostalgic when they moved the ruins from the site and rebuilt the building that was demolished by an air strike during the Israeli invasion in 1982. Maybe he had his first kiss there, he played with his peers surrounded by ruins and it seems nothing of what he saw makes him sad, as for him the ruin was there before he was. And this is mainly what differentiates his gaze from the gaze of the mourner.

The choral