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Lebanon Still Overshadowed by Oblivion As Port Blast Aftermath Enters Fourth Year

Art has played an influential role in making sense of the loss felt after the August 4 explosion. Tom Young’s “Strong Angels” and other paintings show a human dimension of the tragedy and its civilian heroes, who “join forces to lift the city’s grief,” writes Darine Houmani of Diffah Three (The New Arab). “Despite all its devastation, the August 4 explosion brought greater impetus to preserve our heritage and brought about a database of our historical buildings that hadn’t been done before,” states Mona Hallak, an architect, heritage activist, and director of the American University of Beirut’s Neighborhood Initiative, as cited in The New Arab. Several weighed in on the rebuilding efforts, including Lebanese architect Jad Tabet, who proposed “rehabilitation” rather than “reconstruction,” focusing on preserving the city’s existing social fabric and inhabitants alongside the architecture (for further reading on Jad Tabet and architectural heritage, see Al Jadid, Vol. 4, No, 25, Fall 1998; Vol. 5, No. 26, Winter 1999; and Vol. 24, No. 79, 2020). As art historian and gallery owner Andrée Sfeir-Semler says, “You need to nourish people with art and culture because that is what feeds their souls.”

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Our Current Issue

A Syrian Surgeon and Novelist Returns to a 'Country Once Called Syria'

Khalil al-Neimi Exposes What Tyranny Has Done to His Homeland
By Elie Chalala
 
I feel an affinity with Khalil al-Neimi, the author and novelist. Like him, I left my country, Lebanon, in 1972, and often thought about what I left behind. I gradually lost the desire to return, and later, after making a short visit back, I gave up on the idea altogether after being away for 38 years. Neimi and I differ on why it took us a long time to return (for me, 38 years, and for him, 50 years). It has been 53 years now since I departed Lebanon.
Essays and Features

Life Suspended Between Sorrow and Loss:

Nesrine Akram Khoury on the Trauma of Displacement in ‘A Room Between Two Massacres’
By Naomi Pham
 
“We were surprised by the other, the room, and me. I took a small space from it, just enough to open my laptop and resume the life I had left behind, hungry and afraid. The room, in turn, took two years of my life.” In this poetic portrait of life caught between war, displacement, and cyclical violence, Nesrine Akram Khoury’s “A Room Between Two Massacres”* dredges up painful memories that may resonate with many despite their intensely personal nature. 
Essays and Features

Waciny Laredj Reflects on the Ambiguous Nature of Nationalism and Algerian Literature in French

By Elie Chalala
 
Language is not just a means of expression; it shapes identity and offers a broader, more complex connection to culture. In his essay “Arabic Literature in French: A Confusing Classification,”* published in Al Quds Al Arabi, Algerian novelist Waciny Laredj unravels the complex relationship between Arab writers, the French language, and identity. Language, he writes, is not merely a tool of expression — for many, it is a “home” and a determinant of cultural and intellectual vision, especially among writers who adopted French, whether by necessity or strategic choice, whose Arab identities were erased and sidelined in the literary world. 
Essays and Features

Syrian Novelist Reflects on Exile, Alienation, and War Devastation:

Syria Strips Away Symbols of the Old Regime to Reveal the Layers of Hell Beneath Damascus
By Elie Chalala
 
Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek recently returned to Syria and has written and given interviews on exile, displacement, fear, alienation, and the devastation of war. Having lived in displacement for nearly a decade, the thought of returning frequently occupied her mind. Her essay, “In Damascus, a Steep Road Leads to Hell,”* published in the New Arab newspaper, covers her experience as a returnee.
Essays and Features

Prison Becomes a City: Separating the Unspeakable Legacy of Assad’s Sednaya and Tadmur from the Fabric of Syrian Souls and Cities

By Elie Chalala
 
Suppose we must encapsulate the essence of Abeer Dagher Esber’s message for Syrians to remember, now and in the future. In that case, it should be the words she leaves at the end of her essay in Al Modon newspaper: “Our detention centers and the shame they represent — something we hope never to endure again — are woven into the fabric of our souls and cities, the stains on our brows that generations strive to erase and forgive. Our detention centers reflect a complex relationship with a collective memory we hesitate to confront, fearing we might be accused of mere rhetoric and shedding sentimental tears in unfamiliar cities.”
Essays and Features

Can a Nation Plagued by Mass Corruption, Decaying Institutions, and Rabid Sectarianism Deliver Justice For those Lost and Victimized by the August Explosion?

By 
Elie Chalala

One cannot miss the irony of the Lebanese officials allegedly responsible for what is possibly the third or fourth largest non-nuclear explosion in the world hiding behind “immunity” from a crime that claimed over 207 people and injured 6,000, while devastating large parts of the Lebanese capital. The Beirut Port explosion in August 2020 measured about one-twentieth the size of Hiroshima’s atomic bomb, according to the BBC. As its one-year anniversary approaches, many Lebanese are still struggling to hold accountable those responsible for the blast.

Important, Sometimes Controversial Iraqi Poet Saadi Youssef (1934 - 2021) Requests a ‘Funeral Without Mourners’

By 
Elie Chalala
 
The legendary and controversial Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef died at 87 in his Harefield home outside of London on June 12 from lung cancer. The poet, whose multitude of works encompassed poetry, prose, literary criticism, translation, and memoir, leaves decades’ worth of work penned in exile and translated into several languages, among them English, French, German, and Italian.

Controversy Over Mohammad Shukri’s Literary Legacy Outlives the Author

By 
Al Jadid Staff
Many students and scholars of Arabic literature would recall the debates on the books of Mohammad Shukri (1935-2003) late last century and a part of the early 21st century. The debates centered primarily on Shukri’s picaresque approach, which included harsh depictions of repression, marginalization, deprivation, morality, breaching taboos and censorship, and of course, the banning of his books in most Arab countries. We can categorize many of his books as autobiographical, and the opposition was not to this type of literature but to the language and details he used. His spontaneity violated all technical and artistic norms in both Moroccan and Arab literature, especially in “The Bare Bread,” “Age of Mistakes,” and “Faces,” his autobiographical trilogy.
 

The Judiciary, Latest Indicator of Lebanon’s Impending Collapse:

A Judge Runs Amok
By 
Elie Chalala
The collapse of the Lebanese state grows imminent as news of different sectors unraveling emerges every day. The latest crisis reached the judiciary, which — though already known for its politicization and sectarianism — currently deals with a judge whose erratic, politicized personality violates all the norms of judicial behaviors and traditions. This controversial judge is Mount Lebanon state prosecutor, Ghada Aoun.
 

In a Statistical Vacuum, Speculating on the Arab-American Vote, 2016 vs. 2020

By 
Elie Chalala
 
While much of the country — and even the world — focused on the last U.S. election and remained engrossed even after its results and consequences, the picture of this historic event in the Arab world was unlike anything that was happening here. Regrettably, the distorted analysis and coverage by Arab media influenced to some extent the attitudes and electoral choices of many Arab immigrants in the U.S.

Beirut’s People Still Waiting: The Government That Left a Bomb on Their Doorstep Now Leaves Them Out in the Cold

By 
Al Jadid Staff
 
The never-ending reports from Lebanon on its social and economic crises are perplexing. Despite the gravity of the situation, officials sitting at the top refuse to relinquish or even reform the system. Recent news reports reveal a collapsing banking sector, a threatened educational system, and an impoverished and broken health system, all while the country watches a judiciary circus played daily on TV and social media, demolishing whatever legitimacy the courts still hold.

German Reinvention: Do a Million Syrian Refugees Bring Down the Curtain on WWII Legacy?

The devastating combination of the Syrian war, the failure of the Arab Spring, and the worsening state of refugee camps in the Middle East culminated in an influx of migrants across Europe. Between 2015-2016, two million migrants fled Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, and Eritrea to European countries. This mass migration produced a crisis across the continent, as several countries refused to undertake the moral and economic responsibilities of housing and feeding newcomers. According to the Pew Research Center, 45% of refugees came to Germany, among whom over 1.2 million were Syrians.

 
The devastating combination of the Syrian war, the failure of the Arab Spring, and the worsening state of refugee camps in the Middle East culminated in an influx of migrant

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