Beirut Graffiti.

Most of these pieces can be found in Al-Hamra, the area of West Beirut that I stay in.

Beirut Graffiti.

Most of these pieces are from the wall outside of the Beirut Art Center. I was headed to the center to check out their exhibit called “America.” The exhibit was fair. All of the artists are Americans, so I guess the purpose was for the Lebanese to see a picture of America from the perspective of some American artists. Among the artists are Kara Walker and Jenny Holzer. Walker had a haunting silent shadow puppet film of an enslaved woman, who is freed by her master & becomes enamored with her new power.

At any rate, I find that I’m becoming more and more enchanted with public art. Soon I’ll post pictures of the stenciling around the city that has sprung up over the past couple years.

My Walk to the Madrassa (31-40).

I mentioned in the first post in this series that I walk from West Beirut to East Beirut. The most outstanding marker of crossing from West to East is the Beit al-Kitaeb (literally, “House of the Phalange”).

This is Amine Gemayel, related to Bashir Gemayel, who was assassinated (by whom?) in 1982. The Phalange are a Maronite Christian Militia, whose ideology is based on Italian Fascism. They are responsible for the massacre of unarmed Palestinian Refugees in Sabra & Chatila Camps, just days after the PLO, as well as the International Peacekeeping force left Beirut in 1982. They are still armed and hold seats in Lebanon’s Parliament.This is Robert Fisk’s description of Chatila, the morning after the massacre:

…there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies—blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition—tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army medical equipment and empty bottles of whiskey.

So, when Israel and the US talk about terrorists, about Hezballah, about Iran, I think of the Phalange.

My Walk to the Madrassa (21-30, of 40).

As I mentioned in the last set, the differences are sharp here, & they present themselves abruptly. The Holiday Inn, for example, is a landmark. For some reason it has not been torn down, possibly to serve as a reminder of the terrible consequences of barbaric behavior. Possibly because it’s inconvenient to bring it down. There are a number of banks and 5 star hotels that border it. I’ll post a photo set just on the Holiday Inn at another time.

The other thing I want to point out is the “Green Line Real Estate Group.” The Green Line is/was the street that separated West Beirut (where the PLO were headquartered. Basically Muslim, but not entirely) from East Beirut (where the Maronite Christians were based. These Maronites have an insatiable hatred for Palestinians, and cozied up to Israel during the war, only to be used & abandoned by the Israelis later. More on them later.) The cynicism it takes to call a real estate group that is developing high rise hotels & offices “The Green Line” sickens me.

They build their highrises on the bones of young men and women who fought and died for something entirely different.

My Walk to the Madrassa. (11-20, of 40).

You are just now starting to get a picture of the sharp differences in status, in experience, in priorities that Beirut represents. Often, these differences can be felt by simply crossing from one side of a street to another.

My Walk to the Madrassa (Pictures 1-10, of 40)

I stay in the Al-Hamra section of West Beirut. This section is where the PLO was based in the 70’s, before they were expelled from Lebanon. In western media, it’s generally accepted that West Beirut is Muslim, where as East Beirut is Christian. This is not exactly the case anymore, but during the 15-year internal war the division sharp.

Here are some of the sights from walk from my apartment in West Beirut to my Arabic Madrassa in East Beirut.