[LCM Articles] [Leb4ever] After War, Lebanon Turns to Art, Asking: Who Are We? (NYTimes)

[Loai Naamani]

 <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times

 

December 1, 2006

Beirut Journal


After War, Lebanon Turns to Art, Asking: Who Are We? 


By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/michael_slackm
an/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 30 - The searing events of war, of spilled blood and
shattered innocence, can provoke introspection and, when the guns have been
laid down and the bodies buried, it can inspire art, too. 

Lebanon has been tied up with bloody postwar politics. It has been paralyzed
by a tense standoff between political rivals and by the assassination of a
young government minister, which threatens to provoke more violence.

But after Hezbollah's war with Israel, Beirut got busy with art, too.

There was a surge of music, video, sculpture, poetry and theater. Each
artist sought to examine the issues raised by the 34-day war and the ensuing
political clash among Lebanese leaders. Each set out a position, and each in
its own way asked of the Lebanese: Who are we?

It was a question that cut to the core of much that troubles Lebanon, the
most pluralistic society in the Middle East, not always comfortable in its
own multisectarian skin.

"My own identity was put at risk in many ways by this war," said Ziad
Abillama, whose lifelong exploration of an Arab-Christian intellectual
identity has infused his work. Mr. Abillama likes to say he was reborn in
1991, the year of the Persian Gulf war, when despite his Christianity, his
Western orientation, his fluency in French and his Jewish friends, he
realized that no matter what, he was an Arab and would always be seen that
way by the West. How did that feel?

His piece stood in the entrance of the Espace SD gallery, and it represented
what Mr. Abillama was feeling about himself and, to some extent, his
Lebanon. It was a metal signpost with arrows pointing in multiple
directions. Each sign pointed the way to "Arabes," French for Arabs.

Who are we? Some Lebanese insist they are descendants of the Phoenicians,
not Arabs at all. 

In the gallery exhibit, there was a sound installation that harmonized bombs
falling with a jazz trumpet. There was a sculpture of personal belongings,
books, papers and pictures, covered in the pulverized dust that was
someone's home. There was the pink Warhol-style portrait of Hezbollah's
leader, Sheik Hassan Nsssralla.

"Regardless of my political opinions, his voice was the one I waited to
hear," wrote Zena Khalil, the artist who painted the portrait, called
"Superstar." "I find that by painting him, perhaps I can break past the
media pop star and try to get to know the human being who has come to have
such an overwhelming presence in my life."

Nearly everyone here speaks of wanting a united country, unity of purpose
and a clear national identity. But all of the main actors, leaders of
parties defined primarily by confessional communities (Christian, Sunni,
Shiite, Druse), want a Lebanon united by their definition of what Lebanon
should be. 

Allegiance is sometimes regional, sometimes ideological, sometimes
opportunistic, but always divisive. The war with Israel did not unearth
these feelings, but it deepened what already ailed this place. 

After the war, people were divided by a sense of victimization and triumph.
Many Shiites bristled when they heard some Christian and Sunni leaders
complain of the cost they bore from the war when the damage was mostly
restricted to Shiite regions. Many Christian and Sunni leaders bristled at
Hezbollah's claims of victory, when whole swaths of the nation's
infrastructure were devastated.

But the war also recalibrated the balance of power, or the perceived balance
of power, and so a struggle ensued, with Hezbollah feeling it emerged
stronger, and the governing coalition weaker.

A lot of people just felt numb.

"The more I live wars, the more my memory and emotion shows no interest,"
wrote Rowina Bou Harb, in a note posted beside her piece in the Espace
gallery. Ms. Bou Harb wrapped a white board in a piece of ripped plastic.

She called it, "Don't Feel Like Talking Anymore, I Almost Forgot What I
Felt."

Art can transcend politics, but also can work perfectly as a tool of
politics, taking sides and promoting causes. One of Lebanon's more famous
singers, Julia Boutros, adapted a speech by Mr. Nasrallah into a potent
tribute called "Ahibaii," or "My Beloved Ones."

She accompanied her music with a video that honored the Hezbollah fighters
who had battled Israel in the south. After a sold-out performance in Beirut
she is scheduled to perform around the region, all the while promoting
Hezbollah and a Lebanon united under her notion of Lebanon.

The night of her benefit performance, thousands of people poured into a
forum here. They waved the flag of Hezbollah and chanted "God, Nasrallah and
the suburbs," a reference to the crowded Shiite neighborhood bombarded by
Israel during the war.

This was Ms. Boutros's Lebanon, minus the other half that wants no part of
her half. 

There is plenty of anger too. A small troupe of actors, college-age men and
women, have for weeks performed a show called "UNacceptable." The messages
were not subtle: the United Nations is a tool of the United States;
international institutions are bloated, useless and focused on themselves;
Israel is the enemy; the government is weak; the United States is evil. 

When the war was still raging, Ritta Baddoura started posting her poetry on
a blog as a form of "resistance and an act of survival," she said. Ms.
Baddoura likes to shock, to poke around places her neighbors wish to leave
alone. Lebanon, she says, is a land of denial, of unresolved conflicts
between groups of people who killed one another during a 15-year civil war,
then chose never to acknowledge the past. Militia leaders - men who ordered
their neighbors and adversaries killed - became political leaders.

The war and its aftermath brought that home and inspired more poetry,
another journey into society's forbidden territory. In her view, Ms.
Baddoura says, the painful truth for this country is that there is no sense
of unity. "We need Israel to stay united," she said with an air of
exhaustion. "We cannot agree on anything."



Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

The singer Julia Boutros, whose work features a video honoring Hezbollah,
performed in Beirut on Nov. 10.

 



Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

An actor with a fake gun performed Nov. 12 in a play called "UNacceptable,"
which suggests the United Nations is a tool of the United States.

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