Distance, Perception, and the Beginning of a Sound

“How are you doing, man?” Mark Speer asks me.

A simple, genuine question — the kind that people ask when they already expect a complicated answer.

“My heart goes out to the people I know who live out there,” he says, speaking about Lebanon and its current situation. I ask about them.

“I have had Lebanese friends since I was very, very young.”

The conversation moves between concern and curiosity, between the immediacy of the present and the slower work of memory.

“Dance of Maria” is the starting point of the discussion. It’s a piece that Elias Rahbani — the Lebanese composer and arranger known for his richly orchestrated instrumental work and part of the broader Rahbani musical legacy — composed in the early 1970s and features on his album, Mosaic of the Orient. Khruangbin later covered it in the 2010s as part of their repertoire. But before they became a band that built a global audience over the past decade, their music was already being formed in fragments, long before it had a name.

Before “Dance of Maria,” before the touring cycles and the records, Speer’s relationship to music was already taking shape in bits — unlabeled tracks, half-remembered melodies, and sounds that would only return with meaning much later.

So, does he remember how he first came across the track?

“That’s actually a longer question. I had to go, like, remind myself actually when we did this because, you know... in my career, things just start to get kinda blurry as far as timelines… So I looked, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we did this like ten years ago. But I kinda have to flash back about twenty-plus years.’”

The Warehouse and Shifts in Listening

In the early 2000s, somewhere between 2000 and 2001, Speer was living in a warehouse with friends — a space that doubled as rehearsal room, performance area, and something like a cultural crossroads. Among the people moving through it was Tamara, a Lebanese dancer who taught belly dancing classes there, and her future husband Charlie Perez, a close collaborator who would later contribute percussion to Khruangbin recordings.

“I kind of helped her set up this class area,” he recalls. “There was always music happening.”

On some days, the space would shift entirely — band rehearsals overlapping with dance sessions, the room constantly in motion.

At first, it registered as background.

“You know… ‘belly dance music.’ Sometimes it felt like wallpaper.”

But not always.

“Sometimes she’d play something — like Omar Khorshid — and I’d be like, ‘Oh man, what is this?’ It made me snap out of that idea that it’s just background… and actually dig a little deeper.”

But digging at the time was not always easy.

“Because, you know, maybe you like a CD that your friend’s dad has that he plays every time you go to their house and your friend, who’s like your age, is like, ‘Geez, Dad, this is, this music’s so corny. Why do you always play it?’ And you’re like, ‘What is this?’ The response would be, ‘this is corny,’ and I’m also like, ‘Man, this is actually really amazing.’ So you ask him what it is, and it’s this CD that you definitely cannot find anywhere. And you don’t have a CD burner ‘cause those aren’t really accessible yet.”

Also, tracks were mislabeled, downloaded from early file-sharing platforms, or burned onto CDs without context — if you had access to a burner at all.

“You’d download something and it’d just be called something like ‘Belly Dance Music #1,’” he says. “You ask what it is, and it’s just… ‘it’s from this CD I found.’”

Even access itself was limited. Recording it meant negotiating access to a home stereo, or settling for a cassette dub, if that was even possible.

For the dance classes, that was enough — the music served the movement. For Speer, the sound lingered without explanation. It was probably also here that he first heard Fairuz —the definitive Lebanese voice whose collaborations with the Rahbani Brothers blended regional folk traditions with Western classical and jazz arrangements to shape the sound of modern Arabic music.

“You know, she’s got some gorgeous songs.”

Though he would only put a name to the voice later.

Finding Music Before the Internet Found It For You

If today’s listening culture is defined by immediacy, Speer’s was sometimes defined by delay.

He recalls hearing a particular track during a cab chase scene in The Fifth Element as a teenager — something that stayed with him long after the film ended.

“I was like, ‘This is amazing. I need to get this soundtrack.’”

He bought it, but the track wasn’t there.

It was just the score by Éric Serra, “which is incredible… But I was like, “What the heck? My favorite song isn’t on here.”

What followed was a kind of analog detective work: rewinding VHS tapes, scanning credits on a tiny television, trying to decipher names that remained just out of reach.

“It took a couple decades,” he says, laughing, “to actually find that song.”

When he finally did, it led him to Alech Taadi by Cheb Khaled — and into a broader world of sound shaped by fusion, diaspora, and production styles that blurred geographic boundaries. Along the way, he began to notice the producers behind the sound as much as the performers themselves — figures like Don Was, whose work bridged post-disco, dub, and global pop.

Sound, Feeling, and the Era of Fusion

When I ask about what draws him to music from outside his own cultural background, Speer answers simply:

“It’s generally the sound… which, to me, is tied in with the feeling.”

He returns often to a specific era — roughly 1977 to the late 1980s.

“Things were cleaned up, but not overly digital yet. There’s this analog-digital crossover… everything’s tight, but it still feels human.”

What’s interesting is how that sound traveled.

“You hear producers from other countries using Western techniques… but with music that is not Western at all.”

He points to artists like Cheb Khaled, where drum machines, sequencers, and regional instrumentation coexist — not as a contradiction, but as synthesis.

“I know people don’t like the term ‘world beat,’” he adds, laughing, “but I kinda love that to describe exactly what was happening at that time, because it wasn’t purely one thing. It was literally a fusion of all these different things together.”

Houston, Laura Lee, and Shared Discoveries

If those sounds were encountered in fragments, Houston is where they cohered.

Houston, Texas?

“Oh, yeah. Houston, Texas, for sure. It’s a major oil hub… Oil and energy is all based there, and medicine. And so many people come to study medicine. There’s an Indian district, a West African district, a massive Vietnamese population… Brazilian bars… and you can’t discount the fact that it’s essentially Northern Mexico.”

It is this environment that made Khruangbin possible.

“We wouldn’t have formed if it wasn’t for the influence of growing up in that metropolitan area, for sure,” he says. “I’m essentially trying to like, pay homage and tip my hat to the people that I grew up with and around in the city that I’m from, you know?”

Within the band, that instinct quickly found common ground.

“Me and LL connected on music from Afghanistan,” he says, referring to bassist Laura Lee Ochoa. He pauses, briefly trying to recall the name of a singer often referred to as the “Afghan Elvis” — Ahmad Zahir, an influential figure whose music became part of their shared listening, even if the name momentarily escapes him.

“I’m definitely more of a nerd about it,” he adds, laughing, “but we all dig for things that we like in our own ways.”

Speer tends to disappear into “rabbit holes” — tracing sounds across regions and histories before bringing them back into the band’s language.

“I’ll get really into something kind of esoteric… so that I can bring it back and then put it into what we do, and then morph it, and then shift it and then move it into something else. You know?”

Years before Khruangbin, that instinct had already taken him abroad.

“I had been to Afghanistan… we did Kyrgyzstan, Kabul, Qatar, Bahrain…”

The experience was not touristic but functional — performing on military bases as part of an entertainment program. It added another layer to the musical journey: music not just heard, but lived.

Rabbit Holes That Lead Back to Lebanon

Years later, while touring and searching for material to expand their live set, Speer began tracing those earlier impressions more deliberately.

“I had just started using Spotify… and I was like — this is crazy. There’s so much here I could never find in a record shop.”

Record digging had its limits — rare records were either unavailable or opportunistically expensive.

“I’m just trying to listen to music,” he says, laughing, “not win the lottery.”

At that point, he decided to try and find some of these older songs that he had heard earlier in his life.

“I found a song by Madonna,” he says. “Not the Western Madonna — the one Elias Rahbani produced — called “Behlam Behlam” which I was like, “Oh, this is beautiful.”

From there, the connections unfolded: Elias Rahbani, his sister-in-law Fairuz, and others — names aligning with sounds he had heard years earlier.

“I was like, ‘Oh yeah — I remember this.’”

Building a Set, Finding “Dance of Maria”

At the time, Khruangbin had only one album under their belt, The Universe Smiles Upon You, but touring demanded more.

“We couldn’t just play for 40 minutes,” he says.

Covers became both necessity and strategy — a way of sustaining a full set, but also of keeping audiences engaged. At the time, the band was often perceived as a “chill-out” act, and maintaining energy required careful shifts in tempo and familiarity.

“If we’re in Baltimore, we play something from there. In France, we play Serge [Gainsbourg]. In Thailand, we play Thai cuts.”

Earlier sets included a wide range: “Firecracker” by Yellow Magic Orchestra, Thai funk tracks, selections inspired by James Brown, and even extended hip-hop medleys built from regionally specific references — songs chosen based on the city they were playing in, a subtle way of connecting with local audiences.

Within that process, “Dance of Maria” emerged.

“I came across it on Mosaic of the Orient… and I thought, melodically, this is incredible. I thought, how if we just treated it like a breakdance type cover, right? Like combine “Dance of Maria” with “Apache.” So that was kind of our approach. Like, we want that sort of energy, but with this melodic style.”

And then, the magic bullet:

“A lot of times, our blueprint is tough drums and bass, you know? And then just heartbreakingly beautiful melody guitar on top. That’s where it’s at, this combination of those two things.”

Interpretation as Practice

For Khruangbin, covering a song is not reproduction. So how exactly do they approach a cover like “Dance of Maria,” as opposed to an original composition like “White Gloves”?

“If we just do it exactly like the original, there’s no conversation there.”

Instead, it is interpretation.

“I look at it like this. Like, think about Frank Sinatra, or Elvis Presley. Like, those guys didn’t write music. But they’re famous, so they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s a Frank Sinatra song. That’s an Elvis song.’ You know? But what they are, are incredible interpreters of material.”

This idea extends outward into a broader lineage. He describes how a composition can move across cultures and decades — from mid-century American exotica composers like Martin Denny, to Japanese reinterpretations by Yellow Magic Orchestra, and onward into Khruangbin’s own adaptations.

With “Dance of Maria,” the challenge was translating a layered arrangement into a three-piece format.

The original recording included multiple elements — organ, woodwinds, rhythmic guitar, and additional textures — all of which had to be condensed without loss.

“I had to take all those parts… and make it into an arrangement that I can pull off and play live — and not lose anything, right?”

By the fall of 2016, it was fully part of their set.

The Guitar as a Voice Between Worlds

“I’m really trying to emulate singers,” Speer says, referring to his guitar playing.

At one point, that meant studying the phrasing of Googoosh in detail — not just her melodies, but the way she moves around them, stretching and bending notes with precision. And then, another memory:

“I saw her back in… maybe 2019, 2018, something like that. She played at the Hollywood Bowl. And it was like all of Los Tehrangeles had come out, you know? The Hollywood Bowl never smelled so good! They had us dressed to the nines. She just crushed.”

Rather than modifying the guitar itself, he works against its limitations.

Some players refret their instruments entirely — adding microtonal divisions that resemble instruments like the saz, where frets can be adjusted. Speer prefers another approach.

“If you get good at bending, you’re not bound by the fret.”

That approach is rooted not only in global listening, but in blues — a constant presence in his upbringing.

I mention that I can hear some of Dick Dale’s influence in his playing.

“We love Dick Dale. You know, who doesn’t love Dick Dale? I mean, just like, what a legend… Growing up, you hear blues all the time,” he says. “And you don’t realize that that third — that’s not quite major and not quite minor — is very specific.”

In Western music, those tonal deviations are familiar, but limited.

“We’re used to hearing the blue third… maybe a blue seven,” he explains. “But aside from that, things start to get a little funny.”

What is often presented today as something new — microtonality — is anything but.

“You see people now talking about ‘microtonal music,’” he says, laughing. “And I’m like — folks in the East have been doing this forever. Thousands of years… When you toss in something like a blue second… it’s not on equal temperament. It’s that slightly flat note that really skilled singers can just hit.”

And not just singers.

“Really skilled oud players just knock it out — no problem.”

Covers, Lineage, and the Ongoing Conversation

“The covers we pick, we try to kind of pick slightly obscure, you know? But not necessarily weird for the sake of weird. It’s more like, hey, this is an undiscovered gem that I think that you guys would really enjoy, you know?”

Covers as invitations.

“We’re not trying to fool people into thinking it’s our song,” Speer says. “The point is that they hear it and go, ‘What is this?’”

In that sense, the cover becomes less an endpoint than a prompt — redirecting attention back toward its source.

From there, the listener moves outward — toward Elias Rahbani, toward Fairuz, toward entire other musical traditions.

“It’s a conversation. Someone takes something, reinterprets it… and we keep it going… That’s how cultures change and evolve,” he says. “Through exchange.”

Returning to Distance

“My goal is to take everything that I’ve heard and put it into what we do. And at this point, because of the way the world has gotten so interconnected, that getting material to be inspired by, is not hard.”

By the time Khruangbin gained wider recognition, Speer was already considered a late bloomer.

“I had thirty years of input before this band happened.”

That accumulation, he suggests, is essential.

“I couldn’t have done this at twenty.”

Now, after years of constant touring and recording, he finds himself returning to something familiar: the need for distance again.

“I’m taking some time away from that project only so that I can be inspired and come back with some new stuff. Now I wanna learn more stuff and reinterpret it, and I just need time to do that.”

After years of releasing music at a steady pace — often every couple of years — he describes a growing need to step back.

“That doesn’t give you a whole lot of time to absorb and reinterpret,” he says. “At a certain point, you feel like you’re repeating yourself.”

The future remains open. So what’s next for Khruangbin?

“Only time will tell. As far as like what’s coming next, I really don’t know. I’m interested to see what happens when I get back in the room with my bandmates and start messing around and see what we come up with. But I’m hoping that it’s something familiar but fresh.”

Coda: The Everyday

At the end of the conversation, things drift back toward the everyday.

Family. Comfort. Cedars. Hummus comes up. Mutual wishes for health and safety. I invite him to visit Lebanon.

“Oh, I would love to.”

Maybe when things quiet down.

But music never really quiets down. “Dance of Maria” begins in the 1970s, with Elias Rahbani — arranged, recorded, released into a world where it had a name, a place, a context. Years later, it surfaces again in a warehouse in Houston, half-heard, misfiled, folded into tapes and burned CDs, passed around without attribution. Then it moves through Mark Speer, into Khruangbin, onto stages across continents, and picked up by audiences who hear it as something new. And now, back again — named, traced, and written into this conversation.

Each time music travels, it carries something different with it — a new context, a new listener, a new understanding, a new meaning. What begins as a composition becomes a fragment, then a reference, then a reinterpretation — briefly recognized before it moves on again.

By the time it reaches you, it’s already gone.

A Mountain Endemic

Among the rocky slopes of Mount Lebanon grows one of the country’s most remarkable botanical treasures: Iris sofarana. This striking flower is endemic to Lebanon, meaning it occurs naturally nowhere else in the world. It thrives in mountainous landscapes where sparse herbaceous vegetation covers rocky ground, typically at elevations between about 1300 and 1700 meters above sea level.

Each spring, this rare iris appears briefly across these highland slopes, adding a distinctive touch to Lebanon’s rich natural heritage.

Discovery and Botanical History

The species was first described in the late nineteenth century by the English physiologist and botanist Sir Michael Foster. His description was based on plant specimens collected in the area surrounding the village of Sofar, from which the species takes its name.

Botanical studies over the years have noted variations within the species. Some researchers described different forms, such as forma kasruwana, while closely related irises in Lebanon, including Iris westii, have sometimes been discussed in relation to Iris sofarana. The taxonomy of these mountain irises has been the subject of ongoing scientific discussion, reflecting the complexity of the group.

A Rare and Localized Species

Despite its beauty, Iris sofarana remains a rare plant with a limited distribution. It has been recorded in only a small number of locations across the Lebanese mountains, including areas around Ehmej, Ehden, Faraya, Dahr el-Baidar, and Sofar.

Because its populations are scattered and relatively small, the species is particularly sensitive to changes in its natural environment.

Threats to Its Habitat

Like many elements of Lebanon’s natural landscape, Iris sofarana faces increasing pressure from human activity. Urban development — especially the construction of roads and residential buildings — can destroy or fragment the plant’s habitat. When habitats become divided into isolated patches, the movement of pollinators between populations becomes more difficult, which may limit the exchange of pollen.

Agricultural practices also present risks. The use of pesticides can harm bees and other insects that play a crucial role in pollinating wild plants. Together, these pressures make the species vulnerable and highlight the importance of conservation efforts.

The Creation of the El Dichar Natural Site

An important step toward protecting this unique flower was taken in May 2015 with the establishment of the natural site of El Dichar in the village of Ehmej. More than 62 hectares of public land were designated to form a protected natural area dedicated to conserving local biodiversity.

Scientific studies and ecological surveys of the site were carried out by Saint Joseph University in collaboration with the municipality of Ehmej. The project received financial support from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF), an international initiative that works to safeguard biodiversity hotspots around the world.

A Plant Micro-Reserve

The El Dichar site functions as a plant micro-reserve. Its primary goal is to protect one of the remaining populations of Iris sofarana and to preserve the natural habitat in which the species grows. By safeguarding this environment, the reserve also supports the broader ecosystem of plants, insects, and wildlife that inhabit the same mountainous landscape.

The Location of El Dichar

El Dichar lies near the villages of Laqlouq and Tannourine in the Mount Lebanon range. Although situated close to these communities, the site remains tucked behind the mountain slopes and is still known mainly to local residents. Its selection as a protected area was motivated by the presence of one of the few remaining populations of Iris sofarana.

A Flower that Reflects Lebanon’s Natural Heritage

More than a rare botanical species, Iris sofarana represents a living symbol of Lebanon’s unique mountain ecosystems. Its presence reminds us that the country’s landscapes hold natural treasures found nowhere else on Earth.

Protecting these fragile habitats ensures that future generations will continue to witness this remarkable iris blooming on the rocky slopes of Mount Lebanon — a small yet powerful testament to the richness of Lebanon’s natural heritage.

Fixed Geography, Fixed Imagery

When somebody mentions kung fu, certain images tend to surface immediately: stylized combat, disciplined bodies, animal forms, highly codified movement. The geography feels just as fixed — Hong Kong, southern China, temple courtyards, misty mountains.

The genre also carries a strong association with the 1990s, when films starring Jet Li, Jackie Chan, and Donnie Yen circulated widely, establishing a visual language that traveled far beyond its points of origin.

A Kung Fu Plot in a Post-War Landscape

Lebanon rarely figures into that picture. And yet, in the mid-1990s, a kung fu action film was shot there. It moved through Beirut, along the coast, and staged its final confrontation among the Roman ruins of Baalbek. The film was called Operation Golden Phoenix.

The premise follows familiar genre logic. A set of sacred medallions, scattered across borders, promises access to hidden riches. Rival figures pursue them through a sequence of confrontations that move between Beirut, Toronto, and back again, with shifting alliances and predictable violence along the way. What distinguishes the film is not the story, but the environment in which it unfolds.

Shot only a few years after the end of the civil war, Lebanon appears as a place still visibly unsettled. Urban spaces remain unfinished, coastlines exposed, and signs of damage linger in the background. These conditions are never addressed by the film. The camera moves through them without comment, treating them as ordinary.

Genre Logic, Local Friction

The film leans heavily on genre convention, with broad characterization and simplified cultural references. Certain scenes linger less because of their narrative importance than because of their odd specificity — a holding cell improbably large enough for extended choreography, a professor translating ancient inscriptions under inexplicable circumstances. And then there is Baalbek.

Before it’s all over, we get the inevitable final showdown, staged among the Roman ruins, in what clearly echoes the Bruce Lee–Chuck Norris fight in The Way of the Dragon. Columns loom, stone fills the frame, and the film leans fully into spectacle.

An Artifact of a Moment

What matters more, though, isn’t whether the homage works, it is the fact that this film exists at all.

Operation Golden Phoenix is a small artifact of a particular moment in Lebanon’s history. In the 1990s, the country was emerging from war and absorbing almost anything that passed through it — foreign productions, imported tapes, borrowed genres, half-finished ideas. For a brief moment, Hong Kong–style martial arts choreography unfolded among post-war rubble and Roman columns, the camera moving as if this unlikely setting required no explanation.

At dawn, before the mountain air has fully warmed and before the village stirs awake, a furnace is already burning in Beit Chabeb. Inside a spacious but timeworn workshop, metal begins its slow transformation into something far more enduring than its raw form. Here, in this quiet corner of Mount Lebanon, Naffah Naffah continues a craft that has defined his family for more than three centuries: bell making.

He owns the only factory in the region that makes them. The bells he creates will one day ring across valleys, call the faithful to prayer, toll in mourning, or peal in celebration. Yet before they become voices of churches, they begin as molten bronze poured carefully by the hands of a man widely regarded as Lebanon’s last traditional bell maker.

Craft Rooted in Migration and Memory

The story of the Naffah family’s craft stretches back to the early 1700s, when Russian bell founders settled in Beit Chabeb. Drawn by Lebanon’s growing Christian communities and the need for church bells across Mount Lebanon and beyond, these craftsmen brought with them specialized knowledge of casting techniques that were rare in the region.

Among their apprentices was a young local man named Youssef Gabriel, an ancestor of Naffah. Under Russian mentorship, Gabriel learned to shape clay molds, calculate alloy mixtures, and tune bells to precise tonal frequencies. According to family history, when he cast his first bell successfully, his mentors were so impressed that they bestowed upon him the name “Naffah,” meaning “accomplished” or “successful” in Arabic.

The name endured, becoming a surname and, more importantly, a responsibility. Generations of Naffahs would dedicate themselves to preserving the integrity of that craft, transforming Beit Chabeb into a regional center for bell production.

Inside the Workshop

Today, the workshop feels suspended in time. Wooden tables carry decades of burn marks. Rows of heavy molds rest against the walls. Tools — some inherited, others handmade — hang in deliberate order. The scent of heated metal mingles with dust and oil.

Bell making is both science and art. The alloy, primarily bronze, must be mixed in exact proportions. The clay molds must be shaped with meticulous precision, forming the inner core and outer shell between which molten metal will be poured. Once cast, the bell must cool slowly to prevent cracks. Only then begins the painstaking process of tuning — removing minute amounts of metal from inside the bell to achieve the desired pitch.

When Naffah strikes a finished bell for the first time, the deep and resonant sound fills the workshop — vibrations shaped by centuries of accumulated knowledge.

The historical significance of this craft has been formally recognized, with records preserved in the archives of Holy Spirit University of Kaslik. Yet beyond documentation, the workshop itself is a living archive.

A Regional Legacy

Over time, Beit Chabeb earned a reputation that extended far beyond Lebanon’s borders. Bells can weigh between 60 and 250 kilos. Churches across the country — and in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine — sought bells cast by the Naffah family. Each bell bore not only a distinct tonal identity but also the mark of a workshop known for precision and durability.

In a region where church bells mark the rhythms of daily life, a bell was not simply an object; it was a long-term companion to a community. It would outlive priests, parishioners, and often even the buildings that housed it.

More Than Metal

In Lebanon, where history is layered and identity is complex, crafts like bell making carry symbolic weight. They represent continuity in a country often marked by rupture. They embody patience in a society frequently tested by crisis. A handmade bell resists disposability, it demands time, requires listening, and is meant to last for generations.

The Weight of Being the Last

Today, however, the craft stands at a crossroads. Naffah works alone. He produces approximately thirty to thirty-five bells per year, each one requiring weeks of labor. His day begins at five in the morning and often stretches until early evening, interrupted only by a brief pause to collect his children from school.

There are no apprentices currently learning at his side. Industrial production has made imported bells cheaper and faster to obtain. Lebanon’s ongoing economic challenges have made it increasingly difficult for traditional artisans to survive solely on heritage crafts.

To be called “Lebanon’s last bell maker” is both an honor and a burden. It carries pride in mastery, but also the awareness that an unbroken chain stretching back three centuries may soon depend on whether someone chooses to continue it.

In Season 54 of Sesame Street, Yasmine, a Lebanese-American character, stepped onto children’s television’s most famous block and quietly made history. In Episode 5402, she taught Grover how her family makes “khebez” — the Arabic word for bread. She later returned in Episode 5509, continuing to weave her heritage into the fabric of the show. At first glance, it was a simple cooking lesson. A fleeting segment, easily overlooked. Yet within it lived centuries of culture.

Bread as Memory, Bread as Homeland

In Lebanon and the Levant, bread is never just bread. Khebez — the round, soft flatbread known in English as pita — anchors daily life. It wraps zaatar sandwiches before school, cradles falafel pulled from hot oil, scoops hummus at the family table, and accompanies lentil soup in Ramadan. It is torn, rarely cut. Shared, never individualized. In many homes, if it falls to the floor, it is lifted and kissed — a gesture of gratitude for what sustains.

By bringing khebez to Sesame Street, Yasmine normalized the Arab kitchen within the American childhood imagination. In a media landscape where Arab identities are often politicized or flattened, a child joyfully explaining how she bakes bread with her family offers another narrative: warmth, continuity, belonging.

Food is among the most durable forms of cultural memory. For Lebanese families across the diaspora — in Detroit, Montreal, Sydney, São Paulo, and across West Africa — bread-making is not simply culinary practice but ritual remembrance. It carries the scent of Beirut kitchens and mountain villages. It carries the rhythm of dough stretched into circles before puffing in a scorching oven. Yasmine’s lesson was not just instructional, it was ancestral.

Ancient Loaf

Flatbread predates written history. In the Levant, bread-making stretches back thousands of years, shaped by civilizations that moved through the region — Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, Arab. Lebanon’s khebez belongs to a broader Eastern Mediterranean family of pocketed breads, baked at high heat so steam forms its characteristic hollow center.

Traditionally, it was made in communal ovens — the furn — where women gathered with trays of dough, exchanging news as they waited. Bread as sustenance, but also social architecture.

In rural areas, the convex saj produced thinner breads like markouk. In cities, thicker khebez was stacked in bakeries and carried home under the arm. Affordable and universal, it crossed class lines. In Arabic, to “eat bread and salt” with someone signifies trust. Bread is covenant.

Representation in the Everyday

Since 1969, Sesame Street has taught letters and numbers alongside empathy and diversity. Yasmine’s appearance fits that mission, but it also meets a particular moment. Arab identities in Western media have often been filtered through geopolitics. Here, a Lebanese-American child appeared not as headline or stereotype, but simply as herself — excited to share bread. Representation matters most when it feels ordinary.

Diasporic Threads

Lebanon’s history is marked by migration. Waves of emigration have created one of the world’s most far-reaching diasporas. In that dispersal, food becomes anchor — a portable homeland.

A recipe requires no passport. Dough can be kneaded in Brooklyn as easily as in Beirut. Flour, water, yeast, salt — universal ingredients. Yet the gestures, the technique, the pronunciation of its name carry lineage.

When Yasmine teaches Grover to make khebez, she embodies a hyphenated identity that does not divide but expands. Lebanese-American can mean fully both.

Small Circle, Wide Reach

A round of bread is modest in size. Its symbolic reach is not. It connects ancient ovens to modern studios. Beirut to New York. Grandparents to grandchildren. Memory to modernity.

When Yasmine spoke about khebez, she was not just describing a recipe. She was extending a lineage thousands of years old, carried forward in flour and fire. Cultural heritage does not survive only in monuments or manuscripts. It lives at the table, in the hands that knead, in the stories children tell about what their families cook, and sometimes, it lives on Sesame Street.

There are figures in Lebanese history who belong to a sect, a party, or a fleeting political moment. And then there is Imam Moussa al-Sadr — a man who seemed to belong to the idea of Lebanon itself: wounded, plural, aspiring, and unfinished.

Nearly half a century after his disappearance in Libya in 1978, al-Sadr remains less a memory than a presence. His absence is political; his voice, contemporary. In a country accustomed to the recycling of leaders and the erosion of institutions, he endures as something rarer: a moral reference point and institution builder.

Cleric Beyond the Pulpit

Born in 1928 in Qom to a distinguished clerical family of Lebanese origin, al-Sadr arrived in Tyre in 1959 at a time when Lebanon’s Shi‘a community lived on the margins of the state — economically deprived, politically underrepresented, and socially neglected. The South and the Beqaa were not only peripheral geographically; they were peripheral in the national imagination.

What he encountered was not just poverty, but structural abandonment. Roads were unpaved, schools underfunded, hospitals scarce. The promise of the Lebanese state — so vibrant in Beirut and its suburbs — was dimmed at the country’s edges. Al-Sadr understood that sermons alone could not address such realities.

He responded not only as a religious scholar, but as an institution-builder. He founded schools, vocational centers, charitable associations, and social networks that sought to restore both material stability and collective dignity.

In 1969, he became the first head of the Supreme Islamic Shi‘ite Council, formalizing Shi‘a representation within Lebanon’s confessional framework. This was not a withdrawal into sectarianism; it was an insistence that all citizens required recognition.

Yet even as he consolidated communal leadership, he resisted the language of grievance as destiny. He insisted that dignity for one community could not come at the expense of another. His was a language of empowerment without isolation — a rare dialect in Lebanon’s political grammar.

Movement of the Deprived

In 1974, al-Sadr launched the Movement of the Deprived (Harakat al-Mahrumin), a socio-political initiative aimed at confronting structural inequality across sectarian lines. The name itself was deliberate: it framed injustice as a national, not exclusively Shi‘a, condition. From this movement emerged the Amal Movement, which would later become a central actor in Lebanese politics. But at its inception, Amal was conceived less as a militia than as an instrument of communal self-defense and social organization.

Al-Sadr’s rhetoric during this period was both urgent and measured. He condemned sectarianism even as he maneuvered within its constraints. He defended Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation while warning against Lebanon becoming a substitute battlefield for regional conflicts. He called for reform of the state — equitable development, stronger institutions, national unity — not its disintegration.

In one of his most cited declarations, he affirmed: “Lebanon is a final homeland for all its sons.” At a time when ideological currents — Arab nationalism, Palestinian armed struggle, rising Islamism — were pulling the country in competing directions, al-Sadr articulated a vision that was simultaneously rooted and reconciliatory. Lebanon, for him, was not a temporary arrangement nor an arena; it was a covenant.

Theology of Coexistence

What distinguished al-Sadr most was not only his political activism, but his theological imagination. He cultivated close relations with Christian leaders, and frequently appeared in churches as well as mosques. In a gesture that still resonates symbolically, he delivered addresses during Christian commemorations, framing Islam and Christianity as co-guardians of Lebanon’s pluralism.

He spoke of coexistence not as tolerance — a word that implies hierarchy — but as partnership. Sect, in his vocabulary, was not a fortress to defend against others, but a living tradition capable of contributing to a shared civic horizon.

At a time when communal anxieties were intensifying, al-Sadr’s discourse challenged both Muslim-Christian suspicions and intra-Muslim tensions. He did not deny difference; but he sought to discipline it within a national ethic. His sermons often invoked justice as a divine imperative that transcended faction. Religion, in his hands, became an argument against fragmentation. In retrospect, his language appears almost revelatory; Lebanon would soon descend into civil war.

Militias would proliferate. Foreign interventions would multiply. The grammar of coexistence would be replaced by the logic of survival. And then, in August 1978, during an official visit to Libya, he vanished.

The Disappearance That Became a Symbol

Al-Sadr’s disappearance under the regime of Muammar Gaddafi transformed him into something more than a political leader. He became a symbol — of injustice unresolved, of truth deferred, of a leadership interrupted at the threshold of catastrophe.

For the Shi‘a community, he was an absent father figure. For many Lebanese across sectarian lines, he was the lost mediator — a figure whose moral authority might have tempered the descent into total war. His disappearance froze him in a moment of possibility. Unlike other leaders whose legacies were reshaped by wartime compromises, al-Sadr remained suspended in promise.

The Lebanese state has periodically revived investigations into his fate, and his case remains officially open. Yet beyond legal proceedings lies a deeper inquiry: what political culture might have emerged had he remained present? Would his insistence on state reform have survived the centrifugal forces of war? Or was his very moderation destined to be eclipsed by the militancy of the era? These unanswered questions have become part of his mythos.

The Unfinished Project

To revisit al-Sadr today is not to indulge nostalgia, but to confront the incompleteness of the Lebanese experiment. He sought social justice without revolutionary nihilism, sectarian representation without sectarian supremacy, resistance without state fragmentation, and faith without fanaticism.

These formulations remain strikingly relevant in a Lebanon grappling with economic collapse, institutional paralysis, and renewed sectarian anxieties. The margins he championed have expanded; deprivation has become national. His language of “the deprived” now echoes beyond any single community.

Yet his legacy is not immune to contestation. Like all political founders, he has been appropriated, reinterpreted, and sometimes simplified. His thought was more complex than the slogans later associated with his name. He navigated contradictions — between clerical authority and civic nationalism, between communal defense and national unity — with a pragmatism that defies easy categorization.

Perhaps that complexity is precisely why he endures. He did not offer Lebanon a utopia. He offered it a disciplined hope — one anchored in institutions, dialogue, and moral accountability.

Imam Moussa al-Sadr was not free of political compromise; no Lebanese leader is. But his legacy persists because it gestures toward a possibility Lebanon has yet to realize: a state that protects its margins, a society that transcends its fractures, and a political class that understands leadership as stewardship rather than inheritance.

His disappearance remains a national wound. His vision remains an open question. And in a country where history is often cyclical and futures provisional, that question — of justice, coexistence, and national dignity — may still be the most urgent inheritance he left behind.

Early Life and Education

Born on March 23, 1900, in Alexandria, Fathy studied architecture at King Fuad University in Cairo, graduating in 1926. Early in his career, he grew concerned about the widespread adoption of concrete and Western construction styles that ignored Egypt’s climate and cultural context. This concern guided him toward adobe (mudbrick) building techniques, which he found not only more sustainable but also more meaningful to the communities they served. By the late 1930s, he began developing an architectural philosophy rooted in vernacular materials, passive cooling, and community participation.

Architectural Philosophy and Vision

Fathy believed that architecture should serve people first — especially the poor and rural populations who had been left behind by industrialized building trends. He rejected the idea that progress required abandoning tradition, advocating instead for designs that honored local culture while meeting modern needs. His use of mudbrick, vaulted ceilings, domes, courtyards, and natural ventilation demonstrated that ancient techniques were not relics of the past but viable, efficient solutions for contemporary society. He later articulated these views in his landmark 1973 book Architecture for the Poor, where he described earth as one of the most affordable, climate-appropriate building materials and called for a more humane, inclusive architectural practice. One project was particularly noteworthy.

New Gourna — Building a Model Village

Fathy’s most influential project was the New Gourna Village, commissioned in the 1940s to rehouse families living near the Theban Necropolis on the west bank of Luxor. The government sought the relocation partly to protect archaeological sites, including the Valley of the Kings, from tomb raiding and settlement-related damage. Built between 1946 and 1952, New Gourna showcased Fathy’s vision for community-centered design: houses constructed of mudbrick, public gathering spaces, a mosque, a theatre, and shaded courtyards all worked together to create a socially connected and climatically comfortable village. The passive cooling provided by vaulted roofs and thick earthen walls reduced the need for artificial climate control, proving the practicality of traditional materials in Egypt’s harsh environment.

Challenges and Reception

Despite its architectural brilliance, New Gourna faced several challenges. Some residents resisted leaving their old homes, and others viewed mudbrick structures as outdated in comparison to concrete. Political barriers and limited government support further restricted the project’s completion. Over time, parts of the village deteriorated or were altered, though significant efforts have recently been made to preserve what remains. Even so, New Gourna stands today as one of the earliest modern experiments in sustainable and socially responsible building — and one of the most studied examples of vernacular revival. He went on to design nearly 160 other projects, from rural housing to entire planned communities.

Enduring Legacy

Globally, Hassan Fathy’s influence has only grown since his passing in November 1989. His work demonstrated that sustainability is not a trend, but a return to common-sense building rooted in place, culture, and climate. Architects worldwide continue to draw lessons from his designs, which illustrate how traditional knowledge can meet contemporary needs in a cost-effective and environmentally conscious way.

His emphasis on community empowerment, local craftsmanship, and ecological sensitivity has made him a continuing reference in discussions about affordable housing and sustainable development. Today, preservation efforts and renewed interest in earthen architecture highlight the lasting value of his ideas.

Sheikh Abou Hassan Aref Halawi remains one of Lebanon’s most revered spiritual leaders. His legacy, however, extends beyond Druze moral authority. Rooted in the inner discipline of the muwaḥḥidūn (Unitarians), his vision of leadership offers an introspective model of authority with profound relevance for Lebanon’s persistent fragmentation, sectarianism, and quest for unity. In a country where authority is often measured in volume, spectacle, and force, Sheikh Abou Hassan Aref Halawi represented something rarer: restraint.

Early Life

Born in Barouk in the Shouf mountains in 1899, Halawi grew up in a landscape where spiritual tradition and communal responsibility were inseparable from daily life. The mountainous terrain that shaped Druze history would also shape his temperament: contemplative, steadfast, and inwardly anchored.

From early youth, Halawi dedicated himself to religious study and spiritual discipline. Biographical accounts describe his immersion in sacred texts and his pursuit of contemplative retreat in the hills surrounding Barouk. Such practices were not unusual within Druze spiritual formation, yet in Halawi’s case they deepened into a lifelong path of ascetic devotion. By his mid-thirties, he was invested with the white turban symbolizing spiritual maturity and piety within the Druze tradition. This elevation marked recognition not of institutional power but of inner refinement.

Throughout the twentieth century, as Lebanon moved from Ottoman rule to French Mandate and eventually to independence, Halawi’s presence matured into that of a moral reference for the Druze community. He was a highly respected Druze spiritual guide whose authority extended beyond Lebanon to Druze communities across the region.

Beyond Ritual to Inner Purity

At the heart of Halawi’s leadership was a deep understanding of divine unity, a core tenet of Druze theology. The faith, esoteric in nature, reserves sacred knowledge for the initiated ʿuqqāl (“the knowledgeable”), while the majority, the juhhāl (“the uninitiated”), engage primarily through communal rituals. Halawi embodied this principle: his moral clarity and restraint arose not from outward showmanship but from an interior journey toward understanding the divine.

This emphasis on self-restraint and personal purity contrasts sharply with Lebanon’s often theatrical and factional politics. While Druze leadership, like other communities, has been periodically drawn into political struggle, Halawi’s reputation rested on inner discipline rather than alignment with external power — a rare quality in a society shaped by force and spectacle.

Moral Authority in a Fractured Republic

Lebanon’s spiritual leaders often operate in the shadow of political spectacle. Halawi’s influence, however, transcended partisan divides. He did not align with community leaders during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), instead mediating crises within the Druze community and providing a moral compass in moments of upheaval.

This stance was not without tension. Though he avoided direct political engagement, his insistence on unity and restraint contrasted with the military factionalism of the era, raising the question of whether a leadership rooted in inner discipline can endure in a society that rewards external power.

The Israeli Druze Edict

Halawi’s authority extended beyond Lebanon. In the 1990s, he issued a religious edict forbidding Israeli Druze from serving in the Israeli military, reflecting his commitment to spiritual unity over political division. For Halawi, participation in military conflict against neighboring Arab societies, including Lebanon, contradicted communal solidarity.

Gentleness as Strength, Leadership of Presence

Halawi’s leadership was defined not by speeches or displays of power but by presence. Visitors described his austere life, detached from material ambition yet suffused with inner peace. He unified through example, a subtle yet compelling presence in a landscape dominated by political spectacle.

This approach, however, raises questions about relevance in modern Lebanon, where material success and visible power are often prioritized. In the postwar era, Halawi’s restraint contrasts sharply with the bombastic style of contemporary leaders, challenging society to reconsider what true leadership entails.

In an era also defined by rapid economic and social change, Halawi’s emphasis on interior discipline and moral steadiness resonates differently across generations. For some, it represents continuity and rootedness; for others, it raises broader questions about the evolving role of religious authority in public life.

A Model of Leadership for a Fragmented Society

On 26 November 2003, Sheikh Abou Hassan Aref Halawi passed away in Barouk at the age of approximately 103. His death marked the completion of a century-long journey of spiritual service. Tens of thousands mourned him, underscoring the breadth of his impact.

Halawi’s legacy invites reflection on an interior mode of leadership in a fractured society. His authority emerged from moral gravity rather than institutional power.

As Lebanon navigates the tension between tradition and modernity, unity and division, Halawi’s life remains a quiet yet compelling reminder: Can a leadership rooted in restraint guide a nation captivated by the theater of brute power?

Rising above the wooded slopes of Broummana, Saint George Orthodox Church — known locally as Mar Jirjis — stands as one of the most compelling expressions of Lebanese sacred modernism. Rebuilt in 1962 on the foundations of an 1880 church, the structure reflects a moment when Lebanon was confidently participating in global architectural experimentation.

Designed by architect Samir Khairallah, the church departs radically from traditional ecclesiastical typologies. Instead of the basilica or conventional dome, it adopts a folded, octagonal concrete shell that rises like a vast tent over the hilltop. The gesture is both structural and symbolic.

Star Cast in Concrete

The roof forms an eight-pointed star — a folded octagonal dome articulated through reinforced concrete planes. Eight external columns connect to the roof through iron joints, absorbing expansion, contraction, and seismic movement. Structurally expressive, the design eliminates interior supports, creating an unobstructed nave that enhances both visibility and acoustics.

The columns are pushed outward, allowing the sanctuary to unfold as a unified volume. Upon entering, the entire spatial composition is immediately legible, the eye drawn upward to the dome’s axis where Christ Pantocrator presides.

Light filters through the faceted geometry and large glazed façades, causing the star overhead to reflect onto the floor as a luminous cross. Structure, symbol, and theology converge in a single architectural gesture.

Echoes of Félix Candela

The church’s daring concrete geometry invites comparison with the work of Félix Candela, the Spanish-Mexican master of thin-shell structures whose churches and civic buildings transformed mid-century concrete design.

Like Candela’s experimental shells — particularly the dynamic forms of Los Manantiales—the Broummana church expresses structure as geometry. Its faceted roof recalls the folded surfaces and tent-like ecclesiastical spaces seen in Candela’s Mexican churches.

While Khairallah’s design does not employ pure hyperbolic paraboloids, it shares Candela’s core principles. Concrete becomes sculptural surface. Structural daring is rendered visually light. Geometry functions as spiritual metaphor. An economy of material achieves unexpected spatial grandeur.

The resemblance suggests that Lebanon in the 1960s was not architecturally peripheral but actively dialoguing with international modernism. The Broummana church stands as local evidence of a global structural revolution translated into a Lebanese idiom.

Byzantine Cosmos, Modern Shell

If the exterior speaks the language of mid-century engineering, the interior returns to Byzantine cosmology. The dome’s iconographic program follows the traditional Orthodox hierarchy: angels, prophets, apostles, and saints orbiting Christ.

Painted in the 1980s by Romanian priest-artist Sofian Boghiu and collaborators, the murals unfold the divine economy of salvation — from Abraham’s theophany to the Resurrection and Pentecost — culminating in the promise of the heavenly banquet.

The result is a rare synthesis: modernist structure, Byzantine theology, and Lebanese landscape brought into harmonious coexistence.

The Old and the New

The 1962 church replaced an earlier structure known as “Al-Maskoubiya,” financed in part by Tsarist Russia. Its marble iconostasis dating to 1883 was preserved and expanded to suit the larger modern sanctuary.

This stratification of eras embodies echoes of Lebanon’s layered history itself: Ottoman echoes, Russian patronage, post-independence modernism, and global artistic collaboration converging in a single sacred space.

Tent on the Hill

Seen from below, the church resembles a vast pavilion anchored to the earth yet poised to lift. The 40-meter bell tower, composed of three parallel vertical beams, reinforces the upward thrust and gives the complex a striking vertical counterpoint to the horizontal spread of the roof.

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More than a parish accommodating 500 worshippers, Saint George Church is an architectural statement — a Lebanese interpretation of sacred modernism that remains largely undocumented in international architectural discourse.

In the geometry of its star-shaped roof, Broummana holds one of Lebanon’s most understated modernist treasures.

The Palestine sunbird (Cinnyris osea) is one of the most dazzling birds of the Levant. Small in size but radiant in appearance, it flashes metallic colors as it darts between flowers in gardens, forests, and rocky hillsides. Beyond its ecological importance, this remarkable bird holds a deep cultural meaning: it is the national bird of Palestine, symbolizing resilience, beauty, and a strong connection to the land.

Though measuring only about 11–13 centimeters in length, the Palestine sunbird leaves a lasting impression on anyone fortunate enough to see it.

Striking Appearance and Adaptations

The male Palestine Sunbird is especially eye-catching during the breeding season. In good light, his plumage shimmers with iridescent shades of emerald green, deep blue, and violet, highlighted by a vivid reddish-orange patch on his chest. These brilliant colors are created not only by pigments but also by microscopic feather structures that reflect and refract light, causing the bird to appear to change color as it moves.

Females are more subtly colored. Their brownish-grey plumage, sometimes tinged with faint green, provides effective camouflage while nesting. This difference between males and females is common among nectar-feeding birds.

The sunbird’s long, curved bill and brush-tipped tongue are perfectly designed for feeding on nectar. Unlike hummingbirds of the Americas, which hover frequently, Palestine sunbirds often perch while feeding, though they can hover briefly when needed. Their slender bodies and agile wings allow them to maneuver quickly and precisely among blossoms.

Habitat and Geographic Range

The Palestine sunbird is widely distributed across the eastern Mediterranean and surrounding regions. Its range extends from southeastern Turkey through the Levant, and into Egypt, with populations also present in parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

It thrives in a variety of environments, including Mediterranean scrublands, open woodlands, rocky hillsides, agricultural landscapes, and urban gardens. One of the species’ greatest strengths is its adaptability. As cities expand, the Palestine sunbird has learned to make use of ornamental plants and flowering trees, becoming a familiar sight in towns and villages.

Some northern populations move southward during colder months in search of flowering plants, though the species is not strongly migratory throughout its entire range.

Feeding Behavior and Ecological Role

Primarily nectarivorous, the Palestine sunbird plays a vital ecological role as a pollinator. As it feeds, pollen adheres to its head and bill and is transferred from flower to flower, supporting the reproduction of many native plant species.

Its curved bill allows it to access nectar deep within tubular blossoms that other birds may struggle to reach. In doing so, it helps maintain plant diversity across its habitats. The bird feeds on both wildflowers and cultivated ornamental plants, linking natural ecosystems with human-shaped environments.

Nectar alone, however, is not sufficient — especially during breeding season. The Palestine sunbird also consumes small insects and spiders, which provide essential protein for growing chicks. It may catch insects mid-air or pick them from leaves and branches. This mixed diet strengthens its ecological importance, as it contributes to both pollination and insect population balance.

Courtship, Nesting, and Reproduction

Breeding typically takes place in spring and early summer, when flowers and insects are abundant. During this period, males become more vocal and energetic. They perform animated courtship displays that include rapid flights, hovering movements, and persistent singing to attract females.

The female constructs a small, oval nest woven from plant fibers, grasses, and spider silk. Often suspended from a branch or hidden within dense foliage, the nest is carefully positioned to reduce exposure to predators and harsh weather. A small side entrance provides additional protection.

She lays two to three eggs, incubating them for about 12 to 14 days. After hatching, the chicks are fed a combination of nectar and insects. Within roughly two weeks, they fledge and begin exploring their surroundings, continuing the species’ close relationship with flowering plants.

A Symbol of Resilience and Heritage

As the national bird of Palestine, the sunbird carries symbolic weight beyond its biological role. Its vivid colors and lively movements are often seen as reflections of vitality and endurance. Closely associated with flowers and renewal, it represents growth, continuity, and a deep-rooted bond with the land.

The bird’s designation as a national symbol also underscores the importance of environmental stewardship. It serves as a reminder that cultural identity and natural heritage are closely intertwined, and that protecting wildlife is part of preserving collective memory and pride.

Conservation and Future Outlook

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Palestine sunbird is currently classified as “Least Concern,” thanks to its broad distribution and adaptability. Nevertheless, it faces ongoing pressures from habitat loss, urban expansion, pesticide use, and climate change, all of which can affect flowering patterns and insect availability.

Although the species has shown resilience, its long-term well-being depends on healthy ecosystems. Preserving native vegetation, encouraging pollinator-friendly gardens, and reducing chemical use in agriculture can help sustain its populations.

Bird, Pollinator, & Enduring Symbol

The Palestine sunbird is far more than a small nectar-feeding bird. It is a dynamic pollinator, an adaptable urban resident, and a cherished national emblem. With iridescent feathers flashing in the sunlight and swift movements among blossoms, it embodies ecological vitality and cultural pride.

By safeguarding the environments that sustain it, we ensure that this brilliant bird — both a species and a symbol — continues to brighten the landscapes of the region for generations to come.

Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, Timgad provides valuable insights into the architectural principles, public spaces, and civic life of a Roman colonial town. Its preservation allows contemporary audiences to observe how urban order, monumentality, and daily life were integrated into a coherent spatial system.

A Grid for Life and Function

Timgad stands out among ancient cities for being planned “ex nihilo” — built on a previously unoccupied site rather than developing gradually over centuries. This deliberate foundation reflects broader Roman ideals of rationality, organization, and civic structure.

The city’s layout follows a rigid orthogonal grid structured around two principal axes: the cardo maximus running north–south and the decumanus maximus running east–west. These main streets intersected at the forum, dividing the settlement into regular blocks that structured movement, commerce, and residential life. The clarity of this design still makes Timgad a reference point in discussions of Roman town planning.

The grid system was not purely technical. It represented a spatial expression of Roman administrative and civic ideals. Streets were proportioned for circulation and access, while public institutions were positioned at prominent intersections, ensuring visibility and accessibility. In this way, the city’s design reveals how architecture and urban planning were instruments of social organization.

Public Space and Structures of Civic Life

At the western end of the decumanus maximus stands the Arch of Trajan, a monumental triple-arched gateway approximately 12 meters high. Constructed in sandstone and decorated with Corinthian columns, the arch functioned as a ceremonial entrance and as a marker of imperial authority within the urban landscape.

At the center of the city lies the forum, the principal civic space of Timgad. Surrounded by administrative buildings and temples, it served as the location for public assemblies, commercial exchange, and official ceremonies. Its position at the intersection of the two main streets demonstrates how civic and spatial organization were closely aligned.

Nearby, the theatre illustrates the cultural dimension of Roman urban life. Built into the natural slope of the terrain, it accommodated several thousand spectators and functioned as a venue for drama, public events, and communal gatherings. The theatre highlights the importance of performance and shared experience within the civic framework of the city.

Timgad also included public baths, temples, basilicas, and a library. The presence of a public library is particularly notable, as it indicates the role of literary culture and education within the community. Inscriptions discovered at the site reference benefactors who financed such civic amenities, reflecting the Roman practice of local patronage and public philanthropy.

Art and Material Culture

Archaeological research has documented mosaics, inscriptions, and architectural decoration that shed light on artistic production in Timgad. Mosaic floors discovered in private houses and bath complexes demonstrate the diffusion of Mediterranean decorative traditions into North Africa. These works often combined geometric patterns with figurative motifs, revealing both technical skill and regional adaptation.

Inscriptions found throughout the city provide additional insight into civic identity and social structure. They record dedications, public donations, and administrative functions, offering a detailed picture of how architecture and art were embedded within broader social systems. Through these material traces, Timgad emerges not only as a military colony but as a functioning urban community with cultural and intellectual dimensions.

Transformation and Decline

Although initially established as a veteran colony, Timgad expanded beyond its original walls as its population grew. Over the centuries, the city adapted to political and religious change. By the 4th century CE, it had become an important center of Christian activity, reflecting the wider transformation of the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity.

The city’s decline followed a series of regional upheavals. The Vandal invasions of the 5th century disrupted urban life, and although Byzantine forces later regained control and constructed defensive works nearby, Timgad never fully recovered its earlier prominence. Following the Arab conquests of North Africa in the 7th and early 8th centuries, the settlement was gradually abandoned. Covered by sand and largely untouched by later construction, its remains were preserved in unusual clarity.

Preservation and Contemporary Relevance

Systematic excavations began in the late 19th century, revealing an exceptionally well-preserved Roman grid and architectural ensemble. Because Timgad was not significantly reoccupied after antiquity, its original layout and many structural elements survived without the layering typical of continuously inhabited cities.

Today, Timgad remains a valuable case study for scholars of architecture, archaeology, and heritage conservation. It illustrates how urban form reflects cultural values, how monumental and everyday architecture coexist within a single system, and how material remains continue to inform contemporary discussions about preservation and identity. In the broader Mediterranean context, Timgad underscores the interconnected histories of North Africa and the Roman world, offering a tangible reminder of how architecture can serve both practical needs and cultural expression across centuries.

In the golden age of Beirut — when the city pulsed with music, glamour, and an effortless cosmopolitan charm — artists from across the world found a stage and a home. Among them was Italian musician Angelo Galvani, a performer whose journey through the great hotels and piano bars of Europe and the West Asia mirrors the story of the era.

Born in Italy in 1943, Galvani trained seriously in music and voice at the conservatories of Bologna and Ferrara. A multi-instrumentalist, he mastered both the piano and the contrabass, but it was the piano that would carry him across continents. By the 1960s, he was already on the move, performing with his band “Angelo e i Loris” before evolving into a solo entertainer with a large, multilingual repertoire.

Beirut, 1965: A City Alive with Music

Galvani arrived in Beirut in 1965, drawn by a contract at the famed Coral Beach Hotel. What was meant to be a professional stop quickly became something more permanent. “At the end I stayed in Beirut because I got married to a Lebanese woman,” he recalls. “My son was born in Beirut.”

At the time, Beirut stood as one of the Mediterranean’s most vibrant cultural capitals. “It was a fantastic place to stay and live,” Galvani says. “Full of restaurants, bars with live music, many tourists — very cosmopolitan and lots of fun.”

His days were simple yet idyllic: swimming in the hotel pool, enjoying long meals, and preparing for his nightly performances. “My show was nightly at 9 o’clock,” he says — a rhythm that defined his life in a city that came alive after dark.

Music, Memory, and the Beachcomber Sessions

One of the more intriguing moments of his Beirut years was the recording of an album at the Beachcomber venue — an artifact of the city’s thriving live music scene. The project came together spontaneously. “The company who produced the album got in touch with me and asked to do this album live one night,” he explains. Some of the tracks on the album include songs popular at the time such as “And I Love You So,” “For The Good Times,” “Tie A Yellow Ribbon,” and “Karoun Karoune.”

Influenced by artists like Frank Sinatra, Galvani’s style blended international pop standards with the intimate, conversational tone of piano bar performance. It was music designed not just to be heard, but to accompany life — conversations, romance, celebration.

Departure and Displacement

That life came to an abrupt end in 1976, when the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War forced Galvani to leave. Like many who had built lives in Beirut, his departure was less of a choice than a necessity.

From Lebanon, his journey continued to Istanbul, then to Berlin in 1978 — a city that would become his second home. There, in the early 1980s, he opened his own piano bar, “Pianoforte,” near Wittenbergplatz. For years, it attracted an international clientele, echoing, in some ways, the cosmopolitan spirit he had known in Beirut.

A Life in Music

Today, he no longer performs publicly. “I am not playing anymore,” he says, “just at home for myself.” Yet his story remains intertwined with a particular moment in Beirut’s cultural history — one where a pianist could build a life, a family, and a nightly ritual of music by the sea there.

Born in Bmekkine on September 8, 1891, he belonged to a Greek Catholic family whose prominence within the Antiochene Church extended back to the eighteenth century.

He was the long-awaited son after six daughters. His father, Antoine Chiha, co-founder of the Pharaon and Chiha Bank in 1876, died in 1903, leaving behind a financial institution that embodied commerce, continuity, and international engagement. For Michel Chiha, inheritance was never just material, it was moral and intellectual as well — a transmission of habits, standards, and obligations that he would later reference throughout his life.

Commerce and Memory

Chiha’s evocation of his forebears offers a revealing portrait of the world that formed him. Writing in 1942, he recalled his father and grandfather moving confidently through global networks of trade — selling silk, buying coal, receiving gold and letters of credit — animated by a love of life as much as by commerce (Chiha, “Le vieux passage,” Le Jour, December 25, 1942). These men were neither adventurers nor ideologues, but traders in a classical sense: prudent, worldly, and anchored in reputation.

This environment fostered in Chiha an early understanding of confidence as a social currency. Trade depended not on force but on credibility, on the accumulation of trust across borders, confessions, and cultures. This lesson would later migrate from the realm of banking into Chiha’s conception of politics, where confidence — between communities and institutions — would become a central principle.

Education and Temperament

Chiha received his formal education at the Jesuit Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, graduating in 1906. His intellectual formation, however, was shaped as much by travel as by study. Of delicate health, he accompanied his mother on frequent journeys to Europe and spent extended periods in England, particularly in Manchester, where he lived with an uncle.

These early experiences introduced him to a culture markedly different from the French intellectual tradition in which he was otherwise steeped. Chiha developed a lasting admiration for English pragmatism, and skepticism toward abstraction. Looking back decades later, he recalled his student years not with nostalgia but with a sense of continuity, emphasizing moderation, temperament, and proportion (Chiha, “À propos d’un sujet de concours,” Le Jour, June 14, 1946).

At sixteen, he entered the family bank after gaining experience in an English commercial firm. Commerce, for Chiha, was not an impediment to intellectual life, it was a school of realism — one that trained judgment and discouraged illusion.

Exile and Awakening

The First World War interrupted this early trajectory. Like many Lebanese, Chiha went into exile to escape Ottoman repression between 1914 and 1918, settling in Egypt. Cairo, Helouan, Alexandria, and Ras-el-Bar became the geography of his formative displacement.

During these years, Chiha studied law and obtained his degree, while immersing himself in the cultural and political life of the Levantine diaspora. Anticipating the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the reconfiguration of the region, he joined a small group of similarly minded intellectuals, such as Charles Corm and Petro Trad, and determined to prepare the intellectual groundwork for a future Lebanese state.

One of their efforts culminated in Ébauches, a French-language journal defined by its non-partisan ethos and its deliberate refusal of dogma. Its motto — “take me as you find me” — captured Chiha’s instinctive mistrust of ideological rigidity (Chiha, letter to Hector Khlat, wartime correspondence). Politics, he believed even then, had to remain provisional, attentive to circumstance rather than abstract principle.

Exile also deepened Chiha’s cultural pursuits. His correspondence reveals sustained engagement with music, literature, archaeology, and art. These interests were not ornamental, they reflected a belief that civilization could not be reduced to politics alone, and that cultural continuity was as vital to nation-building as institutional design.

Return to Ruins

Chiha returned to Beirut in 1919 to a country devastated by famine and war. Nearly a quarter of the population had perished, and much of the built environment lay in ruins. Writing shortly after his return, he contributed to La Revue Phénicienne which was established by Charles Corm in Beirut. In this period, he described Beirut as “a ghost town; ruins, sadness, and silence everywhere” (Chiha, letter to Hector Khlat, Beirut, March 28, 1919).

Despite exhaustion and disillusionment, Chiha assumed responsibility for the Pharaon and Chiha Bank at one of the most difficult moments in Lebanon’s history. Economic reconstruction, he understood, was inseparable from political stabilization. Credit, confidence, and institutional reliability were not secondary concerns; they were foundational.

His personal letters from this period reveal a sober appraisal of public life. Writing in 1920, he lamented the stagnation of administration and the mechanical invocation of laissez-faire principles, while affirming a cautious optimism grounded in effort and responsibility: “being optimists by principle, we are a few to react against the malaise and to keep our confidence” (Chiha, letter to Dr. Mahfoud, Beirut, November 12, 1920). This combination of critique and restraint would become characteristic of his public interventions.

Greater Lebanon

The proclamation of Greater Lebanon on September 1, 1920, following the Treaty of Versailles, marked a decisive moment. For Chiha, this was neither a romantic culmination nor an abstract fulfillment of nationalist aspiration. Statehood was a fragile construction — one that required careful calibration between geography, demography, economy, and culture.

Chiha did not conceive Lebanon as a homogeneous nation modeled on European precedents. His formative experiences — family mediation, exile, commerce, and cultural plurality — had taught him that Lebanon could exist only as a negotiated entity. Diversity was not an obstacle to be erased but a condition to be managed through balance, guarantees, and restraint.

In the years that followed, Chiha would play a central role in shaping the intellectual framework of the Lebanese state.

His innate reluctance to engage in active politics was reflected in the long hesitation before he finally declared himself a candidate for the minority seat. Although he eventually agreed to stand — largely due to pressure from his friends Omar Beyhum and Omar Daouk, who were eager to include him on their joint electoral list — he was deeply appalled by the unscrupulous tactics commonly employed during election campaigns. At one point, his revulsion was so strong that he nearly withdrew his candidacy midway through the election. Only a sense of loyalty to his fellow candidates kept him from stepping aside altogether.

Despite eventually being elected in 1925 as a Deputy of Beirut for religious minorities in parliament, his contribution to nation-building lay less in political office than in constitutional sensibility: the insistence that power be limited, authority dispersed, and coexistence institutionalized rather than assumed.

Banking on the Ethics of Trust

Chiha’s reflections on banking illuminate his broader political philosophy. He helped establish the Beirut Stock Exchange in 1941 and, in a 1945 essay, he rejected prevailing caricatures of financiers as either plutocrats or mere technicians. Banking, he argued, originated as an act of common faith. A banker was above all a man of credence — one entrusted with collective confidence (Chiha, “Carrières,” La Revue des Deux Mondes, 1945).

This conception extended beyond finance. Trust, once broken, was difficult to restore; authority, once abused, lost legitimacy. For Chiha, the same principles governed pluralistic societies. Political systems, like financial ones, depended on credibility, restraint, and the careful management of risk.

It was this logic that underpinned his approach to Lebanon’s institutional architecture. Confessional balance, economic liberalism, and limited state power were not ideological commitments but practical safeguards — mechanisms designed with the intent to prevent domination and reassure communities in a volatile regional environment.

Fragile Conditions

Michel Chiha’s nation-building project was neither utopian nor meant to be static. It assumed fragility as a permanent condition. Lebanon, he believed, could survive only as a country of moderation and a carefully negotiated coexistence.

This vision has often been criticized for entrenching sectarianism or privileging economic elites — such critiques cannot be dismissed. Yet they overlook the historical wager at the heart of Chiha’s thought: that in a deeply plural society, stability could not be imposed by force or ideology, but only cultivated through confidence, restraint and equitable representation.

Chiha did not seek to invent a new society. He sought to preserve an existing one by giving it institutional form. His contribution to modern Lebanon lay precisely in this effort to translate lived plurality into political structure, but the political ethos of his time wasn’t so different:

“It’s always the same old story. In Lebanon political concessions usually mean rushing backwards into self-protecting policies. What poor thinking! A strong President would follow the Constitution and not seek re-election…Lebanon’s best hopes lie not in the might of an individual but in that individual’s integrity.”

• Michel Chiha told Le Jour on July 24th, 1952. The attainment of Independence in 1943 and the election of his brother-in-law Béchara El Khoury as President of the Republic, established Chiha as the Administration’s main advisor, a role which he would fulfil until May 1949 when Khoury decided to extend his presidential mandate for a further six years, against Chiha’s will.

Michel Chiha never saw Lebanon’s fragility as failure. He understood its pluralism, volatility, and vulnerability to regional forces as structural, not temporary flaws. However, he didn’t anticipate how these conditions would evolve once power left the hands of those he trusted to manage it.

Confidence; Betrayed and Misjudged

Chiha passed away in 1954, and over seventy years later, Lebanon’s tragedy lies not in its peculiarities, but in how they were exploited and hollowed out. The trust his system relied on — between communities, institutions, and the economy — was squandered.

Chiha’s vision wasn’t just betrayed; it may have also been misjudged despite his best intentions. He was right about much: Geography mattered, some form of power-sharing was inevitable, and pluralism couldn’t be denied without catastrophic cost.

But Chiha overestimated the integrity of elites, imagining that communal leaders would act as guardians, not self-serving opportunists. He created institutions that were inherited by warlords and political machines. He also treated sects as stable, ignoring class divisions and social change. By embedding sectarianism in state institutions, he transformed it into a permanent organizing force, incentivizing, rather than containing, sectarianism.

His faith in economic interdependence proved to be equally misplaced. Economic growth was uneven, and when the economy stalled, the absence of strong social welfare institutions left citizens relying on sectarian structures for protection.

Chiha’s vision of neutrality also rested on unrealized conditions — regional restraint and external guarantees Lebanon never had. In a region driven by hard power, Lebanon’s openness invited external intervention and conflict.

The question is: Was Chiha’s approach inevitable? Almost certainly, but not entirely.

Lebanon emerged from imperial design and communal bargaining, not revolution. In this context, Chiha’s pluralism was defensive realism, not idealism. However, where inevitability ends, choice begins. Pluralism may have been unavoidable, but its institutional entrenchment wasn’t. Chiha prioritized stability over evolution, and what should have been temporary became permanent. Time, which he thought would soften identities, only hardened them.

Ironically, his system worked just enough to delay reform — stabilizing without transforming, reassuring without integrating. When collapse came, it was total. But it wouldn’t be fair to blame him entirely for that; rather, his system was as a starting point which should have evolved.

Chiha’s legacy is vital — not necessarily as a model to restore, but as a warning which was heeded too briefly and trusted for too long.

As parliamentary elections approach, the question is no longer what Lebanon’s leaders promise — as they have long spent that currency — but what its voters continue to reward. In Thomas Jefferson’s words, “the government you elect is the government you deserve.”

Lebanon will recover not through empty promises, but when confidence is reclaimed from those who trade it for themselves.

When Kenneth Khouri bought a disc-recording machine in Miami in the late 1940s — almost on a whim — he did not imagine that the decision would alter the cultural destiny of Jamaica. Yet from that accidental purchase emerged the island’s first recording studio, its first pressing plant, and the industrial foundations of ska, rocksteady, and reggae. Long before Jamaican music conquered the world, it had to be pressed somewhere. It had to be believed in. Khouri was the one who did both.

Born in 1917 in St. Mary, Jamaica, and raised between rural Highgate and Kingston, Khouri was the child of layered migrations. His father arrived from Lebanon at the age of twelve, fleeing war with his parents, and would remain in Jamaica for most of his life, returning only once, at seventy-one. His mother was Jamaican-born of Cuban descent. Khouri himself rarely romanticized these journeys, but he understood them instinctively.

“They were running away from the wars, I guess… this is just where they ended up.”

• Kenneth Khouri as told to David Katz

That phrase — this is just where they ended up — could serve as a thesis for much of the Lebanese diaspora in the Caribbean. It also frames Khouri’s own life, shaped less by grand design than by decisive responses to circumstance.

As a young man, Khouri worked in his father’s dry goods and furniture businesses in Kingston, and later with Joseph Issa, part of the Lebanese-Syrian commercial networks that underpinned much of Jamaica’s retail economy. Issa’s company distributed jukeboxes across the island, exposing Khouri to popular music not just as abstraction, but as circulation — sound moving through space, shops, bars, and bodies.

“I didn’t like the furniture business. I was born musically inclined.”

That inclination found its opening when Khouri traveled to Miami to seek medical treatment for his father. While there, he overheard a conversation about a disc-recording machine. He bought it, along with a hundred blank discs, for $350. An instinctive purchase. As soon as he returned, he began recording voices on the machine.

“People were so fascinated with it, I couldn’t find enough time to do them.”

Back in Kingston, Khouri built his first studio. It was a small wooden building with a zinc roof, where recordings were mainly done at night to avoid the daily noise of the traffic. He began recording voices, then calypso performances in nightclubs. He mailed his discs to Decca Records in London, asking if they could be pressed. They said yes. The first song he recorded — Lord Flea’s “Naughty Little Flea (Where Did the Little Flea Go)” — became a modest hit and a milestone: the dawn of Jamaica’s modern recording industry.

By 1947, working out of 129 King Street with his wife Gloria, Khouri had built the island’s first true recording studio, Records Limited. One microphone. One track. No precedent.

“Nobody else had recording facilities in Jamaica at that time… so I am the complete pioneer of everything.”

For the first time, Jamaicans could hear their own voices played back through machines — unchanged, unfiltered, and unmistakably their own. In partnership with Alec Durie of Times Variety Store in Downtown Kingston, Khouri launched Times Records, whose calypso releases sold out quickly.

Unsatisfied with relying on overseas pressing, he traveled to California, acquired record-manufacturing equipment — and after an initial learning curve — taught himself the trade. Jamaica’s first pressing plant followed.

Khouri was part of a small group of early industry builders — including Stanley Motta of Motta’s Recording Studio — who helped ensure Jamaican music could be recorded, preserved, and circulated locally.

By the mid-1950s, Khouri was producing mento, jazz, and international releases under franchise agreements with American labels like Mercury. In 1957, he relocated operations to Marcus Garvey Drive, founding Federal Records and transforming Records Limited into its subsidiary. Federal would become the beating industrial heart of Jamaican music. Artists and producers gravitated toward him because there was nowhere else to go.

“Everybody that was in the record business passed through my hands.”

Among those who passed through were Prince Buster, Hopeton Lewis, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, Duke Reid, and a young Chris Blackwell — who once asked Khouri to help launch Island Records in London. Khouri declined, choosing Jamaica over the metropole despite allowing Island to use Federal Records as the hub for early Island Records productions. His studio became a crucible where ska hardened into rocksteady, and rocksteady gestured toward reggae.

When a fire damaged part of Federal in the 1960s, Khouri rebuilt — this time as a world-class studio that drew international artists, including Paul Anka. Federal Records released hit after hit, embedding Jamaican sound into global circulation.

The 1970s brought political violence, illness, and eventual migration to the United States. In 1981, Khouri sold Federal Records to Rita Marley, Bob Marley’s wife, who renamed it Tuff Gong. It was an ending, but also a confirmation: the infrastructure Khouri built was strong enough to be inherited.

Kenneth Khouri’s son, Paul, explained in 2003 that his father began recording mento musicians who were performing in hotels, motivated not by financial gain or recognition, but by a genuine interest in music.

Paul also mentioned that even in his old age, his father continued to enjoy playing his records loudly, testing the limits of his mother’s patience. Kenneth often joked that music was his first love, and that his wife of 67 years came second. He passed away at the age of 87 and his sons continued aspects of the business abroad, while his imprint remained indelible at home.

Shortly before his death, Kenneth Khouri was awarded Jamaica’s Silver Musgrave Medal — an honor that, while significant, understated the scale of his contribution.

In Jamaica, he created the conditions for a nation to hear itself: pressing sound into permanence before it dissipated into the air.

▶ Hear a 1960 recording by the Federal Singers, written and composed by Kenneth Khouri: “You’d Better Marry Me”

When most countries select a national animal, they choose creatures associated with power or elegance — lions, eagles, or stallions. Lebanon’s national animal, the striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena), stands apart. Often misunderstood and rarely seen, this nocturnal scavenger may seem an unusual choice, yet it reflects the country’s landscape, history, and enduring character.

Levantine Survivor

The striped hyena is native to the Middle East, North and East Africa, and parts of Asia, and has inhabited the Levant for thousands of years. Medium-sized and identifiable by its striped coat and erect mane, it thrives in rocky hills, scrublands, and semi-arid regions — habitats common across Lebanon. Today, the species is listed as ‘Near Threatened,’ largely due to habitat loss and human persecution.

Ecological Importance

Primarily a scavenger, the striped hyena feeds on carrion, small animals, insects, and fruit. Its powerful jaws allow it to consume bones and tough remains, helping prevent the spread of disease and returning nutrients to the ecosystem. Though solitary by nature, its role is essential, making it one of the region’s most important natural recyclers.

Folklore and Cultural Memory

For centuries, the striped hyena has featured in Levantine folklore and rural storytelling. Ancient references from the region describe animals believed to be hyenas, while later village myths portrayed them as mysterious or even supernatural beings, inspired by their night calls and rare appearances.

Choosing the Striped Hyena

Lebanon’s adoption of the striped hyena as its national animal emphasizes authenticity over spectacle. Rather than selecting an idealized symbol, the country chose a native species rooted in its environment. The hyena’s ability to adapt, endure scarcity, and survive alongside human settlements mirrors Lebanon’s own history of resilience amid political, social, and environmental challenges. Its national status also draws attention to conservation efforts aimed at protecting one of the country’s last large wild mammals — who now only number in the few hundreds.

A Symbol That Endures

The striped hyena is not a symbol of dominance or grandeur, but of survival and balance. In embracing this animal, Lebanon highlights a form of strength defined not by force, but by persistence — a feature aligned with the nation’s past and present, and with the land it calls home.

In the heart of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city, lies one of the most ambitious architectural projects of the twentieth century in the Middle East: Tripoli’s Rachid Karami International Fair, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1962. Conceived at the height of Lebanon’s post-independence optimism, the fair was intended to embody progress, openness, and national unity. Yet more than half a century later, it remains unfinished — an immense modernist landscape frozen in time, often described as a cemetery of modernity. The abandoned structures stand as witnesses to a political vision interrupted, a society fractured, and a modernity left unrealised.

Tripoli and Lebanon’s “Golden Age”

Tripoli occupies a paradoxical position within Lebanon. Located in the north of the country and historically connected to Syria through trade, culture, and geography, the city has long struggled to define its place within the Lebanese nation-state. After Lebanon gained independence in 1943, Tripoli was gradually forced to reduce its economic and commercial ties with Syria. The closure of once-open traditional trade routes in 1948 dealt a severe blow to the city’s already fragile economy. This marginalisation was compounded by the Lebanese state’s relative neglect of Tripoli, while Beirut emerged as the political, financial, and cultural centre of the country.

During the 1950s, Lebanon experienced rapid economic growth fuelled by liberal economic policies and an influx of foreign capital. Infrastructure expanded, institutions developed, and the country gained a reputation as a regional hub of modernity. Yet this prosperity was unevenly distributed. Beirut absorbed the majority of investment, deepening the gap between the capital and peripheral cities such as Tripoli. Despite being only 80 kilometres from Beirut, Tripoli became one of the poorest cities in Lebanon, suffering from high unemployment, insufficient infrastructure, and uncontrolled urban expansion driven by demographic growth.

Tripoli’s relatively homogeneous social fabric reinforced a strong sense of local belonging, sometimes at odds with the young Lebanese state, which struggled to impose a shared national identity. As inequalities between regions intensified, the legitimacy of the state itself came into question. It was within this context that a policy of decentralisation began to take shape — one that sought to rebalance economic, social, and cultural development across the country. Addressing territorial inequalities was seen not only as an economic necessity, but also as a political strategy to strengthen national unity.

Modernisation as Political Strategy

Tripoli was directly affected by this new modernisation agenda. Ambitious projects were launched to transform the city into a dynamic economic and tourist centre capable of rivaling Beirut. Following severe floods in January 1955, large-scale engineering works were undertaken to consolidate the banks of the Kadisha River, which runs through the historic city. While these interventions were justified in the name of progress and sanitation, they resulted in the destruction of hundreds of traditional houses, the partial covering of the river, and new problems related to pollution and public health. In the process, much of Tripoli’s architectural heritage and cultural identity was irreversibly altered.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the port of El Mina was expanded in an attempt to revive Tripoli’s maritime economy. Yet even modernised, the port could not compete with Beirut’s dominance, further reinforcing the city’s sense of economic decline. It was against this backdrop of frustrated ambition, regional imbalance, and political decentralisation that the idea of an international fair emerged.

Across the Arab world, newly independent states were adopting international fairs as symbols of openness, industrial development, and participation in global trade networks. The Baghdad International Fair (1954) and the Damascus International Fair (1955) served as precedents, while similar projects later appeared in West Africa, notably in Senegal. In Lebanon, the international fair was imagined as both an economic catalyst and a cultural showcase — an architectural statement of modern nationhood.

Oscar Niemeyer and the Vision for Tripoli

The idea of a permanent international fair was first proposed in 1958, initially to be located in Beirut. However, in 1960, President Fouad Chehab, a key figure in Lebanon’s modernising project, made the strategic decision to relocate the fair to Tripoli in the name of regional balance. Two years later, the Lebanese government commissioned Oscar Niemeyer, already world-famous for his work in Brasília, to design the complex.

Niemeyer envisioned the fair as a new urban pole situated between Tripoli’s historic centre and the port of El Mina, along the Mediterranean coast. His proposal aimed to reconnect the city to the sea and create a third urban core — Tripoli as a city of “three cities.” Through bold modernist forms and a carefully planned urban layout, the fair was meant to project an image of confidence and progress, positioning Tripoli as a modern gateway between Lebanon and the wider world.

The original masterplan extended far beyond the fair itself. It proposed coastal development, residential and commercial districts, tourist infrastructure, and major road connections linking Tripoli to Beirut and northern Syria. The fairground was conceived as the heart of this new district, a crossroads between the old city, the port, and the sea.

Stripped of Its Ambition

Very quickly, however, Niemeyer’s vision was curtailed. Political compromises and financial constraints led the Lebanese government to abandon most of the broader urban project. Only the fair itself was retained, and even then, it was disconnected from the seafront and reoriented toward the old city — directly contradicting the original goal of opening Tripoli to the Mediterranean. The highway infrastructure was rerouted, further isolating the site from its surroundings.

The project was reduced to a 70-hectare elliptical plot, cut off from both the city and the coast. Construction was delayed by the expropriation of agricultural land, particularly Tripoli’s famous orange orchards, once a defining feature of the city’s identity. Work finally began in 1964, with the inauguration initially planned for 1967, then postponed to 1969 due to funding shortages and political instability.

By 1975, the fair was close to completion when the Lebanese civil war erupted. Construction stopped abruptly, and the site was later occupied by Syrian military forces. Although efforts were made in the early 1980s to revive the project, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 definitively ended any realistic prospect of completion. Renamed the Rachid Karami International Fair in 1995, the site hosted a few minor events before being fully evacuated by military forces in 1998. It was never officially inaugurated, nor fully used.

Architecture as Unfinished Manifesto

Despite its failure, the Tripoli International Fair remains one of the most remarkable modernist complexes in the region. Niemeyer conceived it as a “museum of modernism,” concentrating architectural experimentation within a single site. Rejecting the traditional model of scattered pavilions, he designed a single, monumental exhibition building: a boomerang-shaped structure 750 metres long, covered by a vast reinforced-concrete roof known as the Great Canopy. Beneath this continuous surface, all exhibitors were to be housed, reinforcing the idea of unity and collective progress.

Around fifteen independent structures populate the site, many echoing forms Niemeyer explored elsewhere. The experimental dome theatre recalls his work in Brasília, while the Lebanese Pavilion adapts modernist principles to local architectural references. Other elements include an open-air theatre accessed by a monumental ramp crowned by a concrete arch, a heliport integrated with a space museum, a water tower topped by a panoramic restaurant, a children’s pavilion shaped like a pleated pyramid, and experimental housing prototypes.

Landscape design played a crucial role, with reflecting pools intended to mirror the buildings and create dialogue between architecture, water, and vegetation. Yet today, the pools are dry, the parks deserted, and the structures stand as empty concrete shells — powerful, but mute.

Ruins of a Society in Limbo

The Tripoli International Fair ultimately failed in its political, economic, and social ambitions. Isolated by infrastructure, disconnected from the city and the sea, it became a vast enclosed void rather than a catalyst for development. The civil war brought a definitive end to the modernist dream that had inspired both Niemeyer and the Lebanese state.

Today, the fair exists as a landscape of abandonment — a symbol of lost possibilities and interrupted histories. Its ruins reflect not only the failure of a single project, but the fragility of a national vision unable to withstand conflict and division. In these skeletal structures, one can read the story of a society in limbo: a city where modernity remains suspended between ruin and promise.

Behind the Label

Few communities in the Middle East have been as misunderstood as the Alawites. Often invoked as a political shorthand or reduced to a sectarian marker, they are more accurately understood as the bearers of a complex religious tradition and a collective memory shaped by centuries of marginalization.

The Alawites — who call themselves ʿAlawiyyūn — are an Arabic-speaking community numbering between two and three million people, concentrated primarily along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, particularly in the Latakia and Tartus regions, with smaller populations in Lebanon and southern Turkey. Their name derives from ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad.

Origins in an Esoteric Age

Alawism emerged during the ninth and tenth centuries, a formative period when early Islamic theology had not yet hardened into fixed orthodoxies. The tradition coalesced around teachings attributed to Muhammad ibn Nusayr, from whom outsiders long referred to the community as “Nusayris” — a term now rejected by Alawites themselves. This was an era of intense intellectual experimentation, when Shi’a mysticism, Greek philosophy, Gnostic symbolism, and local religious customs mingled freely.

From this mix arose a theology that privileged hidden meaning over literal interpretation. Alawite doctrine was never codified in written scripture accessible to all believers; instead, it developed as an initiatory tradition, transmitted orally and selectively. This esotericism would become both a defining feature of Alawite identity and a source of suspicion from surrounding religious authorities.

A Hidden Cosmology

At the heart of Alawite belief lies a symbolic understanding of the divine, often articulated through a triadic framework: maʿna (meaning or essence), ism (name), and bab (gate). In this schema, ʿAli is seen not only as a manifestation of divine essence but as a central figure embodying both divine and human aspects. The Prophet Muhammad is considered the veil or name through which the divine essence is revealed, while Salman al-Farisi, a companion of the Prophet, serves as the gate to esoteric wisdom and knowledge.

Alawite religious practice emphasizes symbolic interpretation over legalistic observance. Rituals like prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage are understood metaphorically, reflecting an inner spirituality rather than formal obligations. The community also holds beliefs such as the transmigration of souls, a concept that places it outside both Sunni and Shi’a orthodoxy. For centuries, these distinctive doctrines led to accusations of heresy, which was used in both the social marginalization and persecution of Alawites.

Secrecy as Survival

Secrecy is not incidental to Alawite tradition; it is foundational. Religious knowledge has historically been disclosed only to initiated men, and even then gradually. This guardedness was not a theological preference, but a response to danger. From the medieval Abbasid period through the long centuries of Ottoman rule, Alawites faced repeated campaigns of repression, heavy taxation, and social ostracism.

The result was a community that learned to conceal its inner life from the outside world. Outward conformity — presenting as generic Muslims — became a strategy of survival. Inwardly, shared rituals and narratives fostered cohesion and resilience. The Alawites endured not by proselytizing or asserting themselves, but by retreating, remembering, and adapting.

Mountain Life

Geography reinforced this social pattern. For generations, Alawites lived in the rugged coastal mountain ranges of western Syria, regions poorly integrated into imperial economies and largely neglected by central authorities. Life there was harsh, agrarian, and communal. Clan ties mattered more than formal hierarchies, and religious authority was diffuse rather than centralized.

This marginal existence further insulated Alawite belief from external influence, but it also entrenched poverty. By the late Ottoman period, Alawites were among the most economically disadvantaged populations in Syria — isolated from cities, education, and political power.

Colonialism and the Reversal of Fortune

The twentieth century marked a dramatic rupture. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Syria came under French Mandate rule. Pursuing a strategy of divide and rule, French authorities cultivated minority communities as a counterweight to Sunni Arab nationalism. An autonomous Alawite state was briefly established along the coast, and minorities were heavily recruited into colonial military forces.

For many Alawites, military service provided unprecedented access to education, income, and social mobility. This pathway would prove decisive after independence, when the army became a key avenue of political power. Over time, Alawite officers rose through the ranks, culminating in the ascent of Hafez al-Assad, who seized control of the Syrian state in 1970.

Power Without Protection

The association between Alawites and political power is recent — and misleading. While the Assad family and many senior military figures were Alawite, the majority of Alawites remained rural, working-class, and distant from the levers of authority. Yet in the logic of modern sectarianism, collective identity eclipsed social reality.

During the Syrian civil war and recent conflicts, Alawites were widely perceived as synonymous with the regime itself, making entire communities targets of retribution. For many Alawites, this resurrected ancestral fears of annihilation, reinforcing communal solidarity forged through centuries of vulnerability.

Like any society, Alawite communities have contained internal disagreements, dissenting voices, and divergent political choices — realities too often erased when an entire population is flattened into a single narrative of loyalty or blame. Acknowledging the historical formation of Alawite fears does not diminish the suffering of other Syrians, whose losses and traumas during recent decades are no less real and profound.

Yet historical vulnerability does not fully explain how Alawite identity became entangled with the machinery of domination in modern Syria. The rise of Alawite officers within the military and security services did not occur in a vacuum of fear alone, but within a system that rewarded loyalty, silence, and the consolidation of power through kinship and regional networks. For some, especially those who ascended into the officer corps or party-state institutions, survival gradually blurred into privilege, and protection into control. These dynamics fractured Alawite society itself, producing sharp divisions between rural communities that bore the human costs of war and urbanized elites who benefited from proximity to the state. Acknowledging this history does not justify collective punishment, nor does it reduce Alawite identity to regime allegiance; it instead recognizes that communities shaped by exclusion can, under certain conditions, become participants in new hierarchies — even as many of their members remain marginal, fearful, and constrained by choices not of their making.

Faith, Identity, and Public Silence

Today, Alawite identity exists in a delicate balance between visibility and discretion. Publicly, many Alawites emphasize their Islamic credentials, often aligning themselves with Shi’ism. Privately, distinctive beliefs and rituals persist, largely unspoken and carefully guarded.

This duality is not hypocrisy but historical memory. The Alawite experience has taught that survival often depends on knowing what not to say, when not to explain, and how to remain legible enough to belong without revealing too much.

Beyond Regime and Sect

In contemporary debates, the Alawites are often discussed almost exclusively through the lens of power, loyalty, or culpability. That framing obscures more than it reveals. Long before their association with the modern Syrian state, Alawite communities developed under conditions of exclusion, economic marginalization, and religious suspicion, shaping patterns of discretion and inwardness that persist today.

Understanding this history does not require endorsing any political authority. It does, however, require separating a community’s inherited religious and social formation from the actions of states, elites, and armed actors who claim to act in its name.

Seen in this light, the Alawites are neither an ahistorical sect nor a monolithic political bloc, but a population whose past helps explain its worldview. Any genuine attempt to understand Syria — its fractures, its alliances, and its mistrusts — is incomplete without that nuance.

The Waterlilies of Basta

Years ago, I first encountered the name ‘Manetti’ while shopping in Basta, one of Lebanon’s famous antique districts. Behind a pile of furniture, a painting peeked out, its blue, green, and silver brushwork shimmering in the corner of a wooden frame. In its corner, two signatures placed side by side read: ‘Manetti-Nammar.’

I negotiated with the dealer and bought the nearly ten-foot long painting on the spot. After receiving the payment, he admitted he was happy to get rid of it — “nobody wanted it because it wouldn’t fit on their living room walls!”

This painting does not belong on a living room wall, I thought, it belongs in a more public space. I arranged for a truck to drop it off at our office’s storage space where it sat quietly for months while I travelled for work. While abroad, I told my father that I had bought a special painting but hadn’t taken a picture of it. When we returned to Beirut, my father and I turned the storage light on and took a closer look at the painting — yes, it was something special indeed. But who were the artists?

There was very little information online about Ferdinando Manetti (also referred to as Fernando or Nando), and even less about Nammar — so I started with his story.

Nicolas Nammar

Nammar, though less well-known than his contemporaries, was a pivotal figure in Lebanon’s artistic evolution. Born in Beirut in 1925, he trained in Europe before returning to his homeland in 1953. His work blended classical techniques with a growing interest in modern art, and he became one of the founding members of Lebanon’s most important art institution, the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA).

His style veered toward classical draftsmanship with a delicate handling of light — a sensibility that likely resonated with Manetti’s structure-driven approach.

Their collaboration on Waterlilies is unusual in the context of the period. Joint signatures were rare among Lebanese painters then, suggesting that the work may have served a specific public commission or pedagogical purpose. Nammar’s participation hints that this painting might have been both a dialogue between teacher and student and a reflection of a friendship shaped by the lively Beirut art circles of the 1940s and 50s.

While it is difficult to distinguish exactly which passages belong to which hand, the more ethereal brushwork in the water’s surface and some of the softer transitions in the lily pads bear similarities to Nammar’s later work. But to better understand the collaboration, I traced the eventful journey of Ferdinando Manetti.

Ferdinando Manetti

After some research, I discovered that Manetti was born in 1899 in San Giminiano, Italy. He began his studies in painting, focusing on fresco techniques, and was entirely self-taught. His father owned a hotel in San Gimignano — still in existence today, though no longer in the family — and expected his son to carry on the family business. Ferdinando, however, always knew he wanted to be a painter and strongly resisted that path. His education came through careful observation and extensive reading, and his artistic vision was largely shaped by the influence of artists such as Modigliani, Cézanne, and Toulouse-Lautrec. By the late 1930s, he had moved to Ain Karem in Palestine to create religious artworks.

Ain Karem is known as the birthplace of John the Baptist and is where the Virgin Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth who lived there. During World War II, Manetti and his family were imprisoned by the British in 1940. This was the fate of all Italian civilians in Palestine at the time — and, likely, German civilians as well — who were considered “enemy” nationals by the Allied forces. Four years later in 1944, he was allowed to return and paint in the Church of the Visitation in the village.

The Madonna of the Prickly Pear Cactus

The apse of the Church of the Visitation unfolds like a triptych, with Manetti’s Madonna of the Magnificat at its center. The Virgin stands in a golden, hilly landscape, flanked by two large prickly pear cactus bushes and surrounded by small desert flowers. At her feet kneel the Franciscan patrons of the church, while a choir of angels hovers above. Dressed in a royal red gown and blue mantle, the Madonna embodies both grace and divinity.

Manetti’s vision feels strikingly modern — a moment of revelation rendered in vivid form. His decision to replace the traditional palms and olive trees of the local environment with the prickly pear cactus is unusual and symbolic. A plant with no tradition in Christian art, the cactus may reflect the desert landscape Manetti knew during his years in a British detention camp. Thus, the mural becomes a personal emblem of endurance, gratitude, and faith.

This dialogue between the sacred and the earthly continues on the north wall, where ten pairs of angels appear to stand on yellow desert sands. Their bright wings and flowing robes evoke heaven, yet they are rooted in the same desert world as the Madonna. In one pair, a guitarist and a trumpeter stand beside a small cactus, both with golden halos that glisten in the light, next to which Manetti signed his name and the date, 1944 — the year of his liberation. The cactus here becomes his symbolic signature, a quiet expression of his own renewal and freedom.

Smaller images of the cactus appear throughout the church — in Biagetti’s façade mosaic of the Madonna arriving at Ain Karem, and in the upper church floor mosaics among animals and plants. This recurring motif, with its red fruit and resilient form, was likely a deliberate choice, expressing both artistic joy and spiritual gratitude.

His Move to Beirut, Lebanon

After completing his work at the Church of the Visitation in Ain Karem in 1946, Manetti moved to Beirut.

In the years following World War II, Beirut’s art scene was at a crossroads. The city had become a meeting point for Levantine, Armenian, and European artists, each bringing their own vision and style. The atmosphere was electric — galleries were sparse, but intellectual circles were thriving, and Beirut was quickly becoming the cultural capital of the region. In this environment, the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) emerged as a key institution for training a new generation of artists, many of whom would go on to define modern Lebanese art. Manetti, with his classical training and emphasis on form, found himself teaching students there who were beginning to explore abstraction and the European avant-garde.

In some ways, he was a bridge between the old and the new, providing a grounding in the fundamentals while also encouraging experimentation. Several Lebanese families acquired his paintings or commissioned pieces, and the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Anges in Badaro features one of his mosaics at its entrance. His teaching culminated in a 1963 exhibition at the Bristol Hotel, and he was preparing another show in Italy when he passed away in Beirut on March 18, 1964.

Known for a poetic realism, Manetti contrasted with fellow Lebanese artist Cesar Gemayel, whose thick, vibrant oils celebrated color and form. Manetti’s work, on the other hand, followed the Italian tradition of subtle painting, seeking order and refined exuberance. This discipline made him a compelling mentor to students such as Shafic Abboud, Huguette Caland, Paul Guiragossian, Yvette Achkar, and Jean Khalifé, many of whom became leading figures in Lebanese art themselves.

The artists he mentored would go on to forge their own paths in Paris and beyond, but they always carried with them Manetti’s disciplined approach to painting.

From Desert Bloom to Waterlily Stillness

Manetti and Nammar’s later Waterlilies continues the visual language Manetti developed in his Madonna of the Magnificat. Like the desert cactuses surrounding the Madonna, the lilies symbolize renewal and quiet strength, thriving in their natural environment while carrying religious symbolism.

The composition reflects Manetti’s love of rhythm and balance, and the size of the painting is reminiscent of wall murals. A colleague of mine suggested that the painting was likely once located at the entrance of a residential building or a public space like a cinema or restaurant — which made sense considering its scale. The evenly spaced lilies echo the structured arrangements of his earlier apse, while the cool blues and greens replace the desert golds without losing harmony or calm. The silver strokes of the water ripples, reminiscent of the golden halos of Ain Karem, reveal a secret feature of the painting — they glisten in the moonlight. Their shapes also echo the outline of the desert rocks of the Madonna of the Prickly Pear Cactus.

Though less overtly religious, the work retains the meditative spirit of his sacred scenes. Nature becomes a language of devotion — whether a cactus rising from sand or a lily floating on water, each image speaks of innocence, faith, and beauty.

Together, these works trace Manetti’s evolution from sacred narrative to reflective meditation. The Madonna of the Prickly Pear Cactus celebrates resilience and devotion, while Waterlilies transforms that same sensibility into quiet contemplation, showing his enduring ability to find the divine in nature.

Mario Manetti, The Artist’s Son

In 2021, I reached out to the artist’s son, Mario Manetti, with a picture of the painting. He shared some of his insights with me:

“We lived for a large part of our life in Lebanon, at that time one of the most pleasant countries to live in. My father taught painting at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts where most Lebanese modern painters learned the art of painting. Nicolas Nammar was one of his students.”

That confirmed the mystery of the second signature — it reflected the hand of Nicolas Nammar, the respected founder and president of the Association for Lebanese Artists and Sculptors. He took a young Aref El Rayess under his wing, and they eventually collaborated to establish the Institute of Fine Arts at the Lebanese University in 1963. He would become a key figure in shaping Lebanon’s postwar art scene, mentoring the next generation of modern painters — but that subject deserves its own article.

Later, Mario expressed appreciation for my sending a picture of the painting that his father had painted over half a century earlier. And in the end, we hung the painting in the center of our Beirut office — it didn’t belong on the living room wall.

Omani traditional arts constitute a living expression of the country’s social life, values, and collective memory. Through poetry, movement, music, and dress, these practices articulate identity, pride, and belonging. Central to many of these performances is traditional attire, which functions as both ornament and symbol, reinforcing the ceremonial and cultural weight of each occasion.

Al Razha

Al Razha is one of the oldest traditional arts in Oman and is practised across much of the Sultanate. It combines swordplay with poetic exchange among skilled poets. Performers appear in full traditional dress, wearing the khanjar and carrying swords and shields, emphasising the art’s martial character and historical depth.

Al Azi

Practised in all governorates, Al Azi is an art of praise, pride, and poetic recitation. Led by a principal poet — also known as the Al Azi — the performance celebrates faith, ancestry, moral values, and leadership. Traditional dress is essential, with the khanjar worn prominently alongside the sword and shield.

Al Tariq

Meaning “the melodious tune,” Al Tariq is a vocal Bedouin art performed without musical instruments. Sung individually and then repeated by others, it is traditionally associated with camel travel. The melody remains constant, while the poetry reflects memory, tribal pride, and admiration for endurance. Performers wear the dishdasha and khanjar as part of the formal presentation.

Al Wanah

Al Wanah is a Bedouin group performance traditionally sung near tents or around fires. Often described as the art of memory, it is marked by introspective gestures and emotional restraint. Verses are sung by a lead performer and echoed by the group, conveying themes of longing, travel, and remembrance.

Al Taghrooda

Al Taghrooda is a Bedouin art associated with horses or camels. In horse Tagrood, energetic chants and poetry encourage riders and celebrate bravery, chivalry, and prized animals. Performers often wear the khanjar to intensify the ceremonial and spirited atmosphere.

Al Habot (Al Medan)

Al Habot is widely performed at weddings, social gatherings, and official celebrations, particularly in southern regions. It is performed without musical instruments and relies on poetic exchange. Performers wear formal attire, carrying swords and sticks, with the khanjar serving as a key visual and symbolic element.

Al Rabobah

Al Rabobah is a musical ensemble performance involving both men and women. It features dancers, a lead singer, chorus vocals, and percussion, alongside the rababah, a bowed string instrument with deep resonant tones. Traditional dress and jewellery play an essential role, with male performers wearing the khanjar during the dance.

Al Madar

Al Madar is traditionally performed in Dhofar and appears in two main forms. In one, large groups process together, led by men wearing khanjars and carrying swords and sticks, followed by women adorned with jewellery and accompanied by percussion. In the other, men and women stand in opposing lines framed by musicians.

Al Bara’a

Al Bara’a is practised in Dhofar and parts of eastern Oman. It features one or two dancers at a time, accompanied by repeated vocal lines and percussion. Unlike many other southern arts, Al Bara’a emphasises movement rather than poetry, with choreography defining the structure of the performance.

Al Razfah

Al Razfah is performed by Bedouin men across Oman. Two facing lines exchange poetic verses in rhythmic repetition. Musical instruments are generally absent, except in Musandam, where leather drums are used. The performance highlights unity, discipline, and collective voice.

Al Hambal (Al Maserah)

Al Hambal is performed on horseback or camels during social and national occasions. Riders sing in unison without instrumental accompaniment, focusing on poetry that praises horses, courage, and lineage. The khanjar, worn alongside bamboo sticks, reinforces the ceremonial presence of the riders.

Taken together, Omani traditional arts reveal a culture in which poetry, movement, and dress are inseparable.

On a warm Sunday afternoon in June 1964, hundreds of people pressed against the edge of Beirut International Airport’s runway, straining for a glimpse of an aircraft that wasn’t even scheduled to stay. Some clutched vinyl records, others scraps of paper. One even wore a mop-top wig. At a moment when Beatlemania was sweeping the globe, Lebanon found itself hosting unexpected guests — The Beatles. Though they never performed in the country, their brief refueling stop in Beirut left a small yet memorable imprint.

A One-Hour Stop That Drew Hundreds

On Sunday, June 7, 1964, The Beatles’ aircraft landed at Beirut International Airport for a quick refueling stop as the group traveled from Europe to Hong Kong. The band was in the middle of a 27-day tour spanning Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and the Far East.

News of their arrival spread quickly. More than four hundred fans — Lebanese and expatriates — gathered at the airport, turning an ordinary logistical stop into a spontaneous celebration. Many brought posters and vinyl records; some held out scraps of paper hoping for autographs. The crowd’s excitement spilled onto the runway, to the point where police reportedly deployed fire-fighting foam across the runway in an improvised attempt to hold back a crowd that had spilled beyond the terminal.

Initially, the band hesitated to leave the plane, but eventually appeared at the top of the stairs to wave to the crowd. Silent footage from the stop shows fans rushing toward the aircraft and a young Paul McCartney leaning down to shake hands with those who managed to get close.

The stop was brief, but it did not go unnoticed. Beirut newspapers the following day treated the arrival as both curiosity and spectacle, noting the crowd it drew and the unusual disruption of an otherwise routine airport stop.

Long after the airport crowd dispersed, the band’s presence lingered in record shops, living rooms, and car stereos across the city.

Local Pressings, Lasting Presence

In the years that followed, The Beatles’ presence in Lebanon continued in quieter ways. By the late 1960s, their records were being manufactured locally.

Even into the 1990s, Lebanese listeners could buy Beatles music produced for the local market. A compilation cassette manufactured in 1996 is one example of how their catalogue remained part of the musical landscape.

These releases weren’t novelties or imports — they were produced locally for a listening public that labels and distributors knew existed.

Echoes Across the City

Traces of The Beatles still surface across Beirut today. In Mar Mikhael, a public house named Abbey Road references the band’s famous album cover.

In Achrafieh, their name appears in graffiti on a traditional Lebanese home, blending global pop culture with vernacular architecture.

Beirut and The Beatles

In the end, the story is less about The Beatles than about Beirut. The airport stop was brief, unplanned, and unremarkable on paper — but the response it drew, and the traces it left behind, reveal a city deeply connected to the wider world.