Beirut 2020: Diary of the Collapse
Beirut 2020: Diary of the Collapse

Author: Charif Majdalani

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1635421799

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World Literature Today: Notable Translation of the Year PopMatters: Best Book of the Year Told in elegant, evocative prose, a devastating and necessary testament to the August explosion that thoughtfully examines the crises that preceded it and its aftermath. At the start of the summer of 2020, in a Lebanon ruined by economic crisis and political corruption, in an exhausted Beirut still rising up for true democracy while the world was paralyzed by the coronavirus, Charif Majdalani set about writing a journal. He intended to bear witness to this terrible, confusing time, and perhaps endure it by putting it into words. Using small, everyday interactions—with fellow restaurant patrons, repairmen, the father of his wife’s patient, a young Syrian refugee—as openings to address larger systemic problems, he explains how events in Lebanon’s recent history led to this point. Then, on August 4, the explosion of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in the port of Beirut devastated the city and the country. Majdalani’s chronicle suddenly became a record of the catastrophe, which left more than two hundred dead and thousands injured, and the massive public outcry that followed. In the midst of the senseless chaos and grief, however, he continues to find cause for hope in the kindness and resilience of those determined to stay and rebuild.

Disruptive Situations
Disruptive Situations

Author: Ghassan Moussawi

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2020-06-22

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1439918503

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Disruptive Situations challenges representations of contemporary Beirut as an exceptional space for LGBTQ people by highlighting everyday life in a city where violence is the norm. Ghassan Moussawi, a Beirut native, seeks to uncover the underlying processes of what he calls “fractal orientalism,” a relational understanding of modernity and cosmopolitanism that illustrates how transnational discourses of national and sexual exceptionalism operate on multiple scales in the Arab world. Moussawi’s intrepid ethnography features the voices of women, gay men and genderqueers in Beirut to examine how queer individuals negotiate life in this uncertain region. He examines “al-wad’,” or “the situation,” to understand the practices that form these strategies and to raise questions about queer-friendly spaces in and beyond Beirut. Disruptive Situations alsoshows how LGBTQ Beirutis resist reconciliation narratives and position their identities and visibility at different times as ways of simultaneously managing their multiple positionalities and al-wad’. Moussawi argues that the daily survival strategies in Beirut are queer—and not only enacted by LGBTQ people—since Beirutis are living amidst an already queer situation of ongoing precarity.

Beirut 1958
Beirut 1958

Author: Bruce Riedel

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2019-10-19

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 0815737351

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Find out about the 1958 U.S. intervention that succeeded and apply those lessons to today's conflicts in the Middle East In July 1958, U.S. Marines stormed the beach in Beirut, Lebanon, ready for combat. They were greeted by vendors and sunbathers. Fortunately, the rest of their mission—helping to end Lebanon's first civil war—went nearly as smoothly and successfully, thanks in large part to the skillful work of American diplomats who helped arrange a compromise solution. Future American interventions in the region would not work out quite as well. Bruce Riedel's new book tells the now-forgotten story (forgotten, that is, in the United States) of the first U.S. combat operation in the Middle East. President Eisenhower sent the Marines in the wake of a bloody coup in Iraq, a seismic event that altered politics not only of that country but eventually of the entire region. Eisenhower feared that the coup, along with other conspiracies and events that seemed mysterious back in Washington, threatened American interests in the Middle East. His action, and those of others, were driven in large part by a cast of fascinating characters whose espionage and covert actions could be grist for a movie. Although Eisenhower's intervention in Lebanon was unique, certainly in its relatively benign outcome, it does hold important lessons for today's policymakers as they seek to deal with the always unexpected challenges in the Middle East. Veteran analyst Bruce Reidel describes the scene as it emerged six decades ago, and he suggests that some of the lessons learned then are still valid today. A key lesson? Not to rush to judgment when surprised by the unexpected. And don't assume the worst.

The For the War Yet to Come
The For the War Yet to Come

Author: Hiba Bou Akar

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2018-09-11

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1503605612

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“Through elegant ethnography and nuanced theorization . . . gives us a new way of thinking about violence, development, modernity, and ultimately, the city.” —Ananya Roy, University of California, Los Angeles Beirut is a city divided. Following the Green Line of the civil war, dividing the Christian east and the Muslim west, today hundreds of such lines dissect the city. For the residents of Beirut, urban planning could hold promise: a new spatial order could bring a peaceful future. But with unclear state structures and outsourced public processes, urban planning has instead become a contest between religious-political organizations and profit-seeking developers. Neighborhoods reproduce poverty, displacement, and urban violence. For the War Yet to Come examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut’s southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Hiba Bou Akar argues these neighborhoods are arranged, not in the expectation of a bright future, but according to the logic of “the war yet to come”: urban planning plays on fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. As she shows, war in times of peace is not fought with tanks, artillery, and rifles, but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land and apartment sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects. Winner of the Anthony Leeds Prize “Upends our conventional notions of center and periphery, of local and transnational, even of war and peace.” —AbdouMaliq Simone, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity “Fascinating, theoretically astute, and empirically rich.” —Asef Bayat, University of Illinois — Urbana-Champaign “An important contribution.” —Christine Mady, International Journal of Middle East Studies

Beirut Fragments
Beirut Fragments

Author: Jean Said Makdisi

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 9780892552450

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A new edition of the widely acclaimed account of the civilian experience of fifteen years of war in Beirut- "a profound, heartbreaking book" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), "an impassioned cry against indifference" (New York Times Book Review), "a work ringing with truth and insight" (Arab Book World)-now with an Afterword about the postwar years. A New York Times Book Review Notable Book An intensely personal yet timelessly crafted portrait of life in a worn-torn city, Beirut Fragments spans the years of the civil war in Lebanon, 1975-1990. When thousands fled, Jean Said Makdisi chose to stay. She raised three sons, taught English and Humanities at Beirut University College-and she wrote. She records the breakdown of society and the physical destruction of Beirut, the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, the Israeli Invasion, everyday acts of terrorism, the struggle to maintain ordinary routines amid chaos, and the incredible spirit of a people. A Palestinian, a Christian, a woman who has lived in Jerusalem, Cairo, the United States, and Beirut, Jean Said Makdisi uses the migrations of her own life as a paradigm which helps elucidate many of the conflicts in the region. The new afterword covers the postwars years, from the last ceasefire to the present day.

Between Beirut and the Moon
Between Beirut and the Moon

Author: A. Naji Bakhti

Publisher: Influx Press

Published: 2020-08-20

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1910312568

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'A joyous tale from a fresh new voice.' – Cosmopolitan – Cosmopolitan A young boy comes of age within the confines of post-civil-war Beirut, with conflict, and comedy lurking round every corner. Adam dreams of becoming an astronaut but who has ever heard of an Arab on the moon? He battles with his father, a book-hoarding journalist with a penchant for writing eulogies, his closest friend, Basil, a Druze who is said to worship goats and believe in reincarnation, and a host of other misfits and miscreants in a city attempting recover from years of political and military violence. Adam's youth oscillates from laugh out loud escapades, to near death encounters, as he struggles to understand the turbulent and elusive city he calls home. ''Set amidst the country's sectarian divisions as it attempts to recover from decades of political violence and civil war, Between Beirut and the Moon charts a young boy's near-death encounters, with a colourful cast and comical escapades. A unique debut.' – AnOther Magazine

Cosmopolitan Radicalism
Cosmopolitan Radicalism

Author: Zeina Maasri

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-08-06

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1108487718

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Exploring visual culture, design and politics in 1960s Beirut, this compelling interdisciplinary study examines a critical period in Lebanon's history.

When Reagan Sent In the Marines
When Reagan Sent In the Marines

Author: Patrick J. Sloyan

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

Published: 2019-12-03

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 125011392X

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"In this formidable narrative, the prize-winning and super honest reporter, Patrick Sloyan, adds the depth of a scholar's context to produce a gripping reminder of why we should never forget history. He makes readers feel like they were eye witnesses." —Ralph Nader From a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who reported on the events as they happened, an action-packed account of Reagan's failures in the 1983 Marines barracks bombing in Beirut. On October 23, 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut. 241 Americans were killed in the worst terrorist attack our nation would suffer until 9/11. We’re still feeling the repercussions today. When Reagan Sent In the Marines tells why the Marines were there, how their mission became confused and compromised, and how President Ronald Reagan used another misguided military venture to distract America from the attack and his many mistakes leading up to it. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Patrick J. Sloyan uses his own contemporaneous reporting, his close relationships with the Marines in Beirut, recently declassified documents, and interviews with key players, including Reagan’s top advisers, to shine a new light on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Reagan’s doomed ceasefire in Beirut. Sloyan draws on interviews with key players to explore the actions of Kissinger and Haig, while revealing the courage of Marine Colonel Timothy Geraghty, who foresaw the disaster in Beirut, but whom Reagan would later blame for it. More than thirty-five years later, America continues to wrestle with Lebanon, the Marines with the legacy of the Beirut bombing, and all of us with the threat of Mideast terror that the attack furthered. When Reagan Sent In The Marines is about a historical moment, but one that remains all too present today.

Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon
Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon

Author: Mohamad Hafeda

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-08-22

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1838608893

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Drawing on innovative research into sectarian-political struggle in Beirut, Mohamad Hafeda shows how boundaries in a divided city are much more than simple physical divisions and reveals the ways in which city dwellers both experience them and subvert them in unexpected ways. Through research based on interviews, documentation of various media representations such as maps, visual imagery and gallery installations, Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon exposes the methods through which sectarian narratives are constructed - arguing for the need to question, deconstruct and transform these constructions. Hafeda expands upon the definition of bordering practice by considering artistic research as a critical spatial practice which allows self-reflection and transformation of border positions. This study offers an alternative view to the mainstream narratives of what is meant by a border, and provides insights, methods and lessons that may be applied to other cities around the world affected by conflict and political-sectarian segregation.