Gulf Life: Gulf Air in-flight magazine » The city of stories
1 of 4
http://www.gulf-life.com/2009/09/01/the-city-of-stories-2/
ABOUT GULF LIFE
CONTACT GULF LIFE
ADVERTISING
ARCHIVES
The city of stories
"I
am writing to leave you. I cannot love you
that much. I praised you, defended you,
carried you, inhabited you and adored you. I
fought to keep you free. I lied to keep you
pretty. I defended your choices. And when
you betrayed me… I looked away.”
The subject of this impassioned admonition?
The city of Beirut.
Letters To Beirut is a project launched by the
French Embassy in Lebanon this summer that
encourages people to write to the city. Not to
write about themselves or their experiences in
Beirut, but to write to the city itself. Beirut,
as the French have recognised, has become
an object of literary affection in its own right.
“I hope you will excuse my honesty: beside
other cities of the Mediterranean, you are not
the most pretty. There are other places that
are better preserved, more attractive. But you
are the most endearing with your diversity,
your courage and your exuberance,” reads
one of the first letters of the project, penned
by Lebanese author Alexandre Najjar.
Opened in June, Papercup (Pharaoh Street,
Mar Mikhael, +961 (0)1 443 083) is a
specialist bookstore focusing on art and
design. It has small tables at which to sit and
have coffee and homemade cake
“Beirut is not a city like others, and everyone
can speak to her with as much familiarity as if
they were speaking to a person,” says French
cultural attaché Denis Gaillard.
A selection of the letters will be presented as
public readings in parts of the city not usually
associated with literature: a disused train
station; a set of steps off a main street in
Gemmayzeh; a street corner by the post
office.
Café Younes (facing Hamra Centre, +961 (0)1
347 531) has the best fresh coffee in town and
open-mic poetry on the first Wednesday of
each month
The readings take place as part of the city’s
22/10/2009 10:49
Gulf Life: Gulf Air in-flight magazine » The city of stories
2 of 4
http://www.gulf-life.com/2009/09/01/the-city-of-stories-2/
tenure as World Book Capital 2009. World
Book Capital is a title bestowed by UNESCO
in recognition of the quality of a city’s
programmes to promote books and reading.
Beirut is the ninth city to be so honoured
since the launch of the scheme with Madrid
in 2001. The Lebanese Ministry of Culture
has teamed up with UNESCO to curate a
formidable schedule of activities, running
well into next year. It makes for some
daunting reading, with a massive menu of
book groups being held in cafés across the
city, book fairs bursting from cultural centres,
and conventions and workshops galore. Poets
and writers, living and dead, will be
honoured. Unknown manuscripts will be
reclaimed. Texts will be dramatised and
poetry declaimed in front of live audiences.
“I’ve got US$8m for one year, but I could use
more,” says Dr Leila Barakat, coordinator of
the UNESCO project. “It’s all about
encouraging youth literature. That’s why
there’s such a focus on schools. If we want a
new generation of readers, we have to start
from a strong base.”
Whereas Gibran Khalil, previously Lebanon’s
best known literary export, found his
inspiration in the mountains and valleys of the
country’s natural geography, the voices of the
new writers echo from the urban wasteland
left to them after their city went to war on
itself.
“The experience of war is precious to any
writer,” noted Ernest Hemingway, “in the
sense that people learn a lot from wartime
conditions and are invariably changed
because of this.” A city at war transforms
from a place of routine into an urgent mental
landscape throwing up all sorts of challenges.
Can I get home? Will my neighbourhood be
safe? If the electricity has gone, will my
battery last? And there are other questions,
harder to answer: Why did that happen?
What did it mean?
The Youth And Culture Centre (Zouq Mikael,
09 213 217) is a new library that provides a
place to encourage young people to read, write
and study
The tragedy of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war
gave rise to a distinct literary voice among a
new generation of Lebanese writers. In Elias
Khoury’s White Widad, the narrator finds
that the conflict makes a coherent narrative
impossible. “We find stories tossed in the
streets of our memory and the alleys of our
imagination,” the narrator says. “How can we
bring them together to impose order on a land
in which all order has been smashed to
pieces?”
22/10/2009 10:49
Gulf Life: Gulf Air in-flight magazine » The city of stories
3 of 4
http://www.gulf-life.com/2009/09/01/the-city-of-stories-2/
Nearly three decades after the war’s end, the
same questions inspire and unite the next
generation of Lebanese writers. Having
grabbed the attention of the world with her
blog Beirut Update, written during 2006’s
July War, Zena Al-Khalil used those
memories as the basis of her novel Beirut, I
Love You, published last year (also an artist,
Al-Khalil simultaneously exhibited her
graphic work under the witty title Maybe One
Day Beirut Will Love Me Back). When
violence erupted on Beirut’s streets last May,
Al-Khalil was in Norway but longed to be
home. “How was it that in this beautiful
place, tranquil and serene, all I could think
about was being thrown into an insecure and
violent place?” she wrote. “When I could
have calm waters and rolling green hills, I
wanted stress and concrete. But was it really
that? Beirut had to be more than that. It is a
lot more than that.”
Further cementing Beirut’s newly awarded
status as a literary capital, Britain’s Hay
Festival recently launched the Beirut 39
competition to select and celebrate 39 of the
best new Arab writers (fiction or poetry)
under the age of 39. Hay organiser Peter
Florence talks of a “golden generation”
emerging from the 350 or so entries already
received. The unveiling of the 39 takes place
next month.
“Any city that conduits so many peoples and
languages and tastes will offer its writers the
richest possible material,” says Florence.
“Add to that the turbulent politics and
history, and you have that rarest thing – a
place where writers are actually necessary.”
For World Book Capital organiser Leila
Barakat, as with so many Lebanese, the
feeling their capital evokes is a simple
expression that masks an infinitely complex
emotion: “I’m in love with Beirut!”
Words Hugh Macleod Photography Bryan
Denton
5 ESSENTIAL BEIRUT BOOKS
BEIRUT, I LOVE YOU Zena
AlKhalil The story of a young woman
and the city that threatens to engulf her
in war, grief and love. “My work is like
taking a walk down Hamra Street,”
says Al-Khalil.
22/10/2009 10:49
Gulf Life: Gulf Air in-flight magazine » The city of stories
4 of 4
http://www.gulf-life.com/2009/09/01/the-city-of-stories-2/
LITTLE MOUNTAIN Elias Khoury
Published during Lebanon’s civil war, a
novel praised as “revealing areas of
uncertainty and perturbation
un-thought of before”.
DE NIRO’S GAME Rawi Hage
Another civil war novel, but told in
jump-cut cinematic imagery. Read our
interview with Hage on p52.
MORE LIGHT THAN DEATH
COULD BEAR Hind Shoufani Poetic
laments to love and loss. “Memory of
our life in Beirut is important to
record,” says Shoufani, “so that wars
are not repeated endlessly without
consequences.”
ROCK OF TANIOS Amin Maalouf
A novel marked by the author’s
experience of being “poised between
two countries, two or three languages
and several cultural traditions”.
Go back to previous page
© 2009 Ink. All rights reserved
9=<;:4‫ ا‬98764‫ ا‬54‫ ا‬32‫ار‬
Top | Contact | Home
22/10/2009 10:49