[LCM Articles] Soul of Hamra Street (Washington Post)

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Searching for The Soul of Hamra Street
In Lebanon's Capital, Faint Echoes of a Singular Pluralism
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 3, 2006; C01
BEIRUT
Nidal al-Ashkar's arms rarely rest. At one moment, they're flailing. At
another, they circle in the air. Her hands jab, then turn upward in a plea.
Often they point forward. The cacophony of motion suggests her background in
drama -- as a Lebanese director, actress and theater maven. But these days
she is an activist, too, and her body language implies a hint of
desperation.
For more than a year now, Ashkar has struggled to revive a theater known as
Masrah al-Madina, housed in the city's old Saroulla cinema. She brings
determination, defiance and not a little faith to the task, inspired by
nostalgia. By saving the theater, she insists, she can save the avenue that
hosts it, Beirut's storied Hamra Street, the remnants of what was perhaps
the most cosmopolitan mile or so in the Arab world.
"What makes Hamra important is that it still carries our memories," Ashkar
said. "It still carries the hopes that people had, dreams, political dreams
of change, real democratization -- real democratization, not what is
happening now."
"When I started looking for a place, I didn't even hesitate," she added. "It
had to be Hamra."
There are some places in the Middle East whose names suggest more an idea
than a locale: Mutanabi Street in Baghdad, once steeped in books and trends,
or Abu Nawas and its rollicking Iraqi nightlife. Cairo's downtown -- Groppi
cafe and cinemas like Rivoli -- is redolent of a liberal era and its end
with a fire in 1952 and a revolution that followed. But only Hamra, nestled
in the neighborhood of Ras Beirut, could claim to have represented the most
sophisticated, open and pluralistic space in the Arab world. From the 1960s
until the civil war that erupted in 1975, Hamra's theaters and restaurants
dominated Beirut's nightlife, the nearby American University propelled its
ferment, and its cafes -- hosting Arab dissidents, Palestinian exiles and
Lebanese of all sects and tendencies -- shaped an intellectual sanctuary
that delivered a cadence to Arab politics.
Hamra is faded now, a repository of memory, its cafes and cinemas long
shuttered. To some here, its demise defines the perils of the day, where
politics are more and more reflected through an often unyielding religious
discourse or primordial affiliations that break along sect and ethnicity.
That complexity is infused with a depoliticized materialism that can serve
as an opiate. Ashkar's critics ask: How can Hamra exist when its environment
no longer does?
"This is a good question to pose," said Mohamed Soueid, a filmmaker and
critic who began his career along Hamra Street. "In a world where no one
trusts anyone, talking about being cosmopolitan and open, it's a losing -- "
His words trailed off. For a moment, he reflected on Beirut, Lebanon and the
rest of the Arab world. "It just seems out of place," he said.
Ashkar would not necessarily disagree; she, too, is grim about the future.
She believes that within the past is a way forward, her theater's success
the first step.
"We renovated the whole place," she said, as her arms swept forward to open
the doors to the main theater, lined with 450 red velvet chairs, the
cinema's originals, "but we always kept the spirit of the 1960s and 1970s."
Her hands leading the way, Ashkar glided past a coffee bar, plated with
polished chrome, past green leather chairs a generation old, past faded
pictures of Egyptian and Lebanese actors and a long-gone Beirut. She
barreled into each remodeled room.
"We had rubbish up to here," Ashkar said, passing through a newly painted
hallway, her hand held to her head.
"Come see!" she shouted, pointing to a rehearsal room. "This was
disgusting."
"I want to make an oasis in the middle of Beirut," Ashkar said as she
finally entered her office, a former projection room. "It's important for
the young people to come to a place that has free speech, that is liberal,
open, and really free from any restrictions."
Near her office was a poster for a forum on civil society, another for a
talk on diversity. Alongside was an announcement for a lecture on
globalization and the outline of a novel about an Arab world "weighed down
by old traditions, taboos, unspoken and prohibited words." In the open-air
lobby were old projectors as decor, their film reels empty, dusty lenses
facing the street.
"Lebanon doesn't have a heart anymore," she said. "There is only Hamra."
A Two-Way Street
The taxis jockeyed along Hamra, its street of newly laid brick congested
with traffic. One driver, his chin in his hand, tried to read the newspaper
headlines of a crowded kiosk. Another lay on his horn. Another driver
shouted a question, in the direction of a gaggle sipping tea, about
directions to the Antoine bookstore.
Watching the traffic was poet Essam Abdullah, dragging on a cigarette in a
clear plastic filter, and the assorted artists, writers and journalists who
make up his salon, which convenes every day under the blue awning of the
venerable Cafe de Paris.
"People pass by, look and see us here," he said. "They think we've been
sitting here since yesterday."
Abdullah's hair is a little long. His jacket, frayed and ill-fitting, suits
an intellectual beyond world-weary. The 65-year-old is exhausted. But like
those in his salon, he retains a wit, iconoclasm and irreverence that color
the hours-long conversation each day at the cafe, one of the last to survive
from Hamra's golden age. The same resilience goes for his salon, a rare
instance in Beirut where sect -- Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Sunni
and Shiite Muslim, and Druze -- means less than the ideas debated. In the
street's rebirth or twilight, the salon represents Ashkar's ideal: a Hamra
that greets diversity of opinion with respect rather than fear.
"Wherever you are, you'll never be as free as you are in a cafe," he
declared. "You can be silent or talk, you can walk or sit, you can laugh or
not laugh, read or not read, write or not write. You're responsible to no
one."
He paused for dramatic effect and continued. "The cafe table is an arena,
but the competition is with words!"
People around him smiled, and the conversation went on, across tables strewn
with cigarettes, coffee and newspapers.
The topic this day was Lebanese politics, a staple of talk here, and to many
a feature emblematic of Hamra's demise.
Some made jokes about Michel Aoun, a former general and Christian leader.
Skewered as well was Hezbollah, the country's main Shiite Muslim group,
which poet Ghassan Jawad said had turned his village near the Israeli
border, with Taliban-like zeal, into the "Kandahar of the south." There were
jabs and digs at other largely sectarian politicians, many of whom fought
the 1975-90 civil war and still lord over the country. One person bitterly
complained that people in Lebanon see it as their right to steal electricity
and water, avoid taxes and try to cheat on their phone bills.
"They think the state is their enemy," answered Badia Baydoun, a former
journalist.
She grew agitated. What hope was there for civil society, much less Hamra,
she asked, when no one saw beyond his own interests or that of the
community? "There is a horrible absence of citizenship in Lebanon," she
said, shaking her head.
A few moments later, Abdullah's brother, Emad, began a song by the legendary
Lebanese singer Fairouz.
"To Beirut, a salute from my heart, to Beirut," it went. A few verses in,
and Emad shook his head and squinted.
"I can't remember all the words," he said.
Goodbye, Kurosawa
Two images greet someone strolling past Cafe de Paris and down Hamra. The
first is a banner, under which traffic passes. "Lebanon first," it reads, a
startling slogan for a street that once imported almost every ideological
battle of the Arab world. The other is a rickety stand of postcards, circa
1970, showing its landmarks: the Al Hamra cinema and cafes like Horseshoe
and Modca.
Soueid, the 47-year-old filmmaker and critic, called the Hamra of those days
"the Arabs' Champs-Elysees."
"I still remember if you wanted to make a career as an intellectual or get
involved in film, the Hamra cafes were the best place to meet people and
discuss," he said. "It was a meeting ground between the West and the Arab
world."
Like Hamra itself, the cafes' names spoke to an idea: L'Express was highbrow
for, as Soueid put it, "those who found the most complicated words to form a
phrase." After shows at the Piccadilly theater, performers like Fairouz
stopped in at Wimpy, where their black-and-white photos still hang. The
Horseshoe drew poets and Arab exiles; Modca self-made intellectuals. The
Strand catered to Palestinians, whose cause intersected headily with other
Third World liberation movements of the time.
Soueid remembered the inspiration of seeing the films of Andrzej Wajda,
Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman at cinemas that began
with Al Hamra in 1958 and proliferated in the decade that followed.
Through those years, the neighborhood around it, Ras Beirut, emerged as the
city's most diverse, where Sunni Muslim and Greek Orthodox, Druze and
Protestant lived together. The American University of Beirut, founded in
1866, fed that pluralism. The city itself suffered deep inequality -- a ring
of misery on its outskirts, populated by disenfranchised Shiites -- and at
times the heavy hand of Lebanese intelligence, but Hamra and Ras Beirut
emerged as a sanctuary of ideology and lifestyle. "Everybody who felt out of
place in the Arab world felt at home in Ras Beirut," said Samir Khalaf, a
professor at the university who lived in the neighborhood.
The civil war ended that, and in time Hamra's intersection was subsumed in
Beirut's anarchy. Its Christian population dwindled, and businesses fled.
Squatters and migrants surged in, many bringing the traditional mores of the
countryside. To survive, theaters went from showing Kurosawa to pornography.
"The idea of it," Soueid recalled, grimacing. The owner of the Horseshoe
sold the iconic cafe in 1979. "It was a dagger in the heart of Hamra," said
Assem Salam, 80, a prominent architect.
Some of the street's resilience has survived. Recently the writer Noam
Chomsky delivered a lecture at Masrah al-Madina, an occasion imbued with its
own symbolism: an American Jew speaking in predominantly Muslim West Beirut
at a theater run by Ashkar, who is from a Maronite Christian family. The
neighborhood around it retains more diversity, however diminished, than the
rest of city, and the American University is enjoying a revival. The street
is freshly paved, and trees are planted along the new shops, among them
Starbucks. Property remains some of the city's most expensive. "It's as if
the invisible hand of Adam Smith is smarter than the Lebanese," Khalaf said.
"Your future is in mixed areas."
But like a faded postcard, Hamra reflects its times. While still diverse,
fashion reflects a growing Islamic conservatism, the veil its most visible
if cliched manifestation. Bootleg DVDs of "King Kong" are hawked along the
sidewalk of a decidedly downscale street. Theaters remain closed, cinemas
relocating to more segregated neighborhoods; on one still hangs a tattered
poster of the 1989 movie "See No Evil, Hear No Evil," with Gene Wilder and
Richard Pryor. Farther away, near the American University, a McDonald's
stands where the fabled Faisal restaurant entertained exiles, dissidents,
conspirators and students. Newspapers like an-Nahar have moved elsewhere;
Modca, the intellectual haunt, made way in 2003 for Vero Moda, a clothing
store.
"Can you imagine New York living only on buying clothing?" asked Soueid.
At a cafe off Hamra, with a hint of bitterness, he considered the fate of
the street and his country.
"True nations never lose their naivete," he said. "Naivete means you're
still ready to believe in something, to grasp life's promise, to accept what
comes from life. The Lebanese have stopped being naive."
Soueid thought about the naivete of Hamra Street.
"It is nostalgia to me, but even nostalgia has lost its meaning," he said.
"I get bored of remembering this street."
Directions
Behind the stone walls that encircle the red-tiled roofs of the American
University, six Lebanese students gathered after a seminar. They don't
remember the street. But they remember what it represented.
"We're going backward, not forward," said Fouad Debs, a 19-year-old
sophomore.
More than a year after protests helped end a 29-year Syrian military
presence -- hailed as a democratic success by the Bush administration -- the
country is today gridlocked by fighting between factions nominally pro- and
anti-Syrian, but really fractured by sect. In political talks that have
stretched for weeks, the leaders chummily converse, while the sectarian
tensions among their followers are as pronounced as perhaps any time since
the civil war. It reaches down as far as the affiliations of local sports
teams.
The six students are largely secular; two are born of mixed marriages. And
in this milieu, they find no one representing them in a country and region
where Islam or communal interests tend to be the sole axis around which
politics revolve.
In student elections last year, sectarian and religious parties swept the
vote, a reversal of 2002, when secular groups did well. Several noted it was
students who organized protests in 2003 to try to keep Modca open, and they
lamented a seeming contradiction that is familiar elsewhere in the Arab
world: a growing social conservatism, grounded in a religious revival,
colliding, coexisting and sometimes intersecting with the crass materialism
that relentlessly washes over Beirut.
"The Syrians left, and we went back to this polarization," said Rami
Estephan, a 21-year-old senior.
"Come on," Debs said, scolding. "We were already polarized before that."
As Beirut's geography has transformed, new centers have emerged, at Hamra's
expense. The rebuilt downtown, with a plethora of sleek restaurants and
offices straddling the civil war-era Green Line, brings crowds day and
night, but lacks a cultural or intellectual air. Critics complain it is
soulless. Nightlife has blossomed in east Beirut, but it remains an
explicitly Christian realm. "There is nowhere in Lebanon now where people of
all communities and all classes meet," Salam said.
In the rest of the Arab world, only Dubai can claim the diversity Hamra and
Ras Beirut once had, but it's more commercial than cosmopolitan. "Dubai?"
asked Khalaf, shrugging his shoulders. "It's a shopping mall."
And at AUB, the students, as one of them put it, are waiting for their "New
York place."
"There's no real bridge," Debs said.
Sara Mourad, a 19-year-old sophomore, interrupted him. There actually are
bridges, she said.
"People stand on each side of them, they wave, and they never meet in the
middle."
Cul-de-Sac
It's the nostalgia of Hamra and the hope for students like Mourad that keeps
Ashkar, the theater director, going.
"This is a place of tomorrow, not yesterday," she said.
A few minutes later, she set out down Hamra Street, past the former an-Nahar
building, water stains streaking its gray stucco. The Ajami cafe underneath,
a haunt of activists and journalists, has long closed. She pointed to the
former site of L'Express and the Horseshoe where she remembered, in her
twenties, meeting Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani and Lebanese writer Laila
Baalbaki.
"Everyone, everyone, everyone was at the Horseshoe," she said.
She walked on, past an older man in a fez on the sidewalk playing the oud, a
string instrument. Next to him, a poster read, "I want to sing to live." She
walked underneath the canopy of Cafe de Paris and greeted Abdullah and his
friends, who on this day, as others, bemoaned the idea that their salon
might remain, but its milieu no longer does. She pointed out Antoine, where
her father bought books. She glanced at a women's clothing store, where her
mother bought a dress for her when she was 9.
"This one was here since we were young," she said. "It never changed."
Then she ventured into a travel agency that opened on Hamra in 1959.
"The Horseshoe is actually older than us, but it was closed a month ago," an
employee told her.
"Closed? Why?" she asked.
"I don't know. They sold it, but I don't know to whom," he answered.
"God destroy their house," she said. "How stupid are they?"
Ashkar said she sees a lot of stupidity these days -- in politics, more than
anything.
"I think it's a very dark period in Lebanon," she said. "We're in a tunnel
now, and I don't know where it leads."
She paused, looked out at the street again, then seamlessly switched
sentiments. "When I walk in Hamra, I feel at home. I feel my youth," she
said. "Hamra has our soul, it has our youth, and it had our hope for
change."
By choice or accident, Ashkar spoke in the past tense. At that moment,
nostalgia was stronger than hope.
 
C 2006 The Washington Post Company
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