She’s bought a hat like Princess Marina’s

To wear at all her social affairs

She wears it when she’s cleaning the windows

She wears it when she’s scrubbing the stairs

But you will never see her at Ascot

She can’t afford the time or the fare

But she’s bought a hat like Princess Marina’s

So she don’t care

These lyrics, written by Ray Davies for Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), were taking shape in the spring of 1969. Around the time this song was written, during the recording sessions for the album Arthur in fact, The Kinks left London to play a concert at a venue they had never played before.

Today, they are remembered alongside The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who as one of the groups that shaped modern rock music. Yet unlike many of their contemporaries, The Kinks spent much of the second half of the 1960s following an unusual path. Unable to tour the United States because of an American Federation of Musicians ban and moving through one of the most creative periods of their career, they accepted engagements in places that now seem unexpected. On 17 May 1969, one of those places was Beirut.

More than half a century later, bassist John Dalton — who had then only recently joined The Kinks — recalled the visit for Melkart Magazine. His memories offer one of the few surviving first-hand accounts of the band’s forgotten Beirut performance.

Beirut and The Kinks

The Beirut that greeted The Kinks in 1969 was a city at the height of its reputation as a cultural crossroads. International performers like Louis Armstrong regularly passed through Lebanon, and the city’s hotels, theatres and nightclubs hosted artists from across Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

The concert took place at the Melkart Hotel in Ramlet al-Bayda, one of Beirut’s best-known seaside districts. Looking out toward the Mediterranean, the hotel sat on a stretch of coast where visiting performers often stayed while passing through the city.

The band arrived in Lebanon at a pivotal moment in their career.

Between Village Green and Arthur

Only six months earlier, The Kinks had released The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. The album sold modestly and attracted little attention outside dedicated fans. Yet over the following decades it was gradually reappraised and is now widely regarded as one of the key British albums of the period.

Rather than embracing the psychedelic experimentation that dominated the late 1960s, Ray Davies turned his attention to memory, community, ordinary lives and a disappearing England. The songs were intimate, observational and deeply English, qualities that gave the record a lasting appeal far beyond its original audience.

When The Kinks arrived in Beirut, they had already begun work on their next album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), during sessions at Ray Davies’s manor in Borehamwood. The album would be released five months later in October 1969.

If Village Green was an inward look at a fading England, Arthur was an outward turn toward the forces reshaping it. Through the story of an ordinary family, Davies explores themes of emigration, class, war and the fading certainties of post-war Britain. Together, the two albums came to represent the moment when The Kinks moved beyond hit singles and produced some of the most ambitious songwriting of their career.

What Did Beirut Hear?

No complete setlist from the Melkart Hotel performance appears to have survived. Yet concerts from the same period provide some clues about what Lebanese audiences likely heard that evening.

The band were still performing many of the songs that had made them famous: You Really Got Me, All Day and All of the Night, Tired of Waiting for You and Sunny Afternoon regularly appeared in their live shows.

Contemporary setlists suggest that newer material almost certainly featured as well. Songs such as Days and Plastic Man were part of the band’s repertoire at the time, while selections from Village Greenmay also have appeared.

John Dalton Joins The Kinks

John Dalton had first moved into The Kinks’ sphere in 1966, when he was brought in as a temporary replacement for Pete Quaife after Quaife was injured in a car accident. At the time, Dalton was already an experienced working musician, having played in The Mark Four, part of the London beat circuit that produced a generation of mid-1960s groups. His initial role with the group was straightforward: cover the bass duties until Quaife could return. He did so for live performances and early recording sessions, before stepping back when Quaife rejoined the band later that year.

Three years later, the situation had changed. Quaife left The Kinks permanently in 1969, and Dalton was called back — this time not as a stand-in, but as a full-time member. From that point onward he became the band’s bassist through one of their most creatively productive periods. He played on Arthur and remained through the years that followed, including the era of Lola and Muswell Hillbillies, when The Kinks re-established themselves internationally after their return to the American touring circuit.

John Dalton Remembers

For a concert that has largely disappeared from the historical record, John Dalton’s memories of Beirut are refreshingly ordinary.

He does not recall the setlist, nor does he have any pictures, posters, or promotional material from the event. Rock history has a habit of turning ordinary events into mythology. Yet one of the few surviving first-hand memories of The Kinks’ visit to Beirut involves neither music nor mayhem:

“Nothing much happened in Beirut apart from the fact I walked into a plate glass window in the hotel, and was lucky that I didn’t have a scratch on me from the broken glass!”

His impression of the city itself is equally direct.

“I didn’t know anything about Beirut, so was surprised when we landed there were soldiers with guns everywhere.”

For many British musicians of the era, Beirut was not yet the familiar reference point it would later become through news coverage and political events. It was just another cosmopolitan stop on a tour schedule, somewhere beyond the usual European circuit.

“I do remember there wasn’t many people at the show, and I don’t think we got paid.”

Which gives the event a rather embarrassing place in the city’s history. Fortunately for Beirut’s reputation, Dalton adds that such incidents were not unique.

“But that happened a few times with The Kinks!”

Perhaps the promoter disappeared. Maybe there was a dispute. It’s possible the accounting simply never worked out. More than fifty years later, nobody seems entirely sure.

Other published accounts claim that the band members had their passports confiscated by hotel staff until the hotel bill was paid, and that some equipment was even left behind in Beirut. But Dalton’s final observation of the ordeal isn’t bitter.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t spend more time there because it would have been nice to see some places.”

Unlike other touring musicians of the era, the band did not develop a lasting relationship with the city and never returned.

Yet, while the concert itself left few physical traces, The Kinks’ presence in Lebanon survives in another, more tangible form.

A Lebanese Village Green

Among record collectors today, one of the more intriguing artefacts associated with the band’s history is a Lebanese pressing of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Issued for the local market, it stands as a reminder that Beirut was not simply a stop on an unusual tour itinerary but part of a wider international network through which music circulated during the 1960s.

That a Lebanese edition exists at all says enough on its own. At a time when the album struggled commercially in Britain and America, copies nevertheless reached Lebanon, where local listeners could engage with the same music that would later earn a place in the rock canon.

A Small Chapter in Beirut’s Story

By the end of 1969, The Kinks’ American ban had finally been lifted. The band returned to the United States and entered a new phase of their career.

Most of the physical traces of the concert in Beirut have vanished. The Melkart Hotel is gone. No recording of the concert has surfaced. No complete setlist survives. Even Dalton’s memories are remembered in fragments.

The Kinks spent much of their career writing about places threatened by time, events remembered imperfectly, and reconstructed through scattered details and fading recollections. In an unexpected way, their Beirut concert has become one of those stories too.

Although the Kinks’ experience in Beirut was less than ideal, the fact that the city remembers them more than half a century later is a kind of consolation of its own.

History is often written by those who pull triggers, but it is made possible by those who provide the means. In the coastal town of Guanabo, Cuba, in the mid-1950s, a Lebanese immigrant named Ángel Chaljup Barquet — known to locals as El Turco (The Turk) — altered the course of the Cuban Revolution. He did so not with a rifle, but with a direct question spoken to a young, destitute revolutionary:

“Do you need any money? Tell me, what you need?”

The Diaspora and the Dissident

By the 1950s, the Lebanese diaspora in Cuba was thoroughly integrated into the island’s commercial fabric. Like thousands of compatriots who departed the Levant following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Ángel Chaljup established himself as a respected trader. His shop in Guanabo served as a hub of daily community life, run with the characteristic business acumen and open-door practice typical of Levantine merchants.

In 1955, Fidel Castro arrived at a critical juncture. He had just been released from prison following the failed 1953 assault on the Moncada Barracks. Broke, heavily surveilled by Fulgencio Batista’s secret police, and lacking resources, he faced the immense challenge of rebuilding a movement from scratch.

While much of Havana’s established elite closed their doors to the radical young lawyer, Chaljup offered support. Recognizing an intense determination in Castro, the merchant looked past the immediate political risk to assist a figure challenging the status quo.

Financial Backing

Chaljup’s financial assistance was not a calculated political investment or a transaction for future leverage. Instead, it was an instinctive extension of support to someone facing an asymmetrical struggle against an oppressive state apparatus — a reality familiar to many families who had emigrated from the politically turbulent Levant.

While the exact sums exchanged in the backrooms of Guanabo remain family history, the practical impact was clear. Chaljup’s funds helped sustain Castro and his inner circle during a vulnerable period of regrouping before they were forced into exile in Mexico. It was from Mexico that Castro would later return aboard the Granma yacht to launch the guerrilla warfare that ultimately overthrew the Batista regime.

A Promise Kept; The Rebel Returns

History contains many examples of revolutionary leaders who distanced themselves from early benefactors once power was secured. Castro, however, maintained his ties to the merchant from Guanabo.

In January 1959, rebel forces entered Havana in victory. Amid the immediate chaos of setting up a provisional government and navigating international scrutiny, Castro traveled to Guanabo to visit Chaljup and his family. He arrived not with the heavy military escort of a head of state, but as a individual returning to express formal gratitude. This reunion, documented in Cuban diplomatic records, established a permanent link between the family and the new administration.

The Diplomatic Legacy

Today, the story of Ángel Chaljup Barquet serves as a foundational narrative for the contemporary relationship between Cuba and Lebanon.

Decades later, the two nations continue to maintain diplomatic and cultural ties, often anchored by a shared history of resistance and survival.

There is an animated version of the Peanuts comic strip in which Snoopy develops a fear of the dark.

Distressed, he visits Lucy’s famous five-cent psychiatric booth and explains his anxiety. Lucy listens before asking a simple question:

Is it dark outside, or in your mind?

The joke lasts only a few seconds, but the question endures because it captures something fundamental about human experience. We do not encounter reality directly. We encounter it through memory, expectation, fear, hope, and habit. We respond not only to what is happening, but to what we believe is happening and what we imagine is likely to happen next.

This is true of individuals. It is also true of nations. Countries develop stories about themselves. Over time these stories become more than descriptions. They become assumptions. They shape politics, influence public expectations, and determine how societies interpret both success and failure.

Some nations imagine themselves as engines of progress. Others imagine themselves as victims of history. Lebanon occupies a more complicated position. It is a country that has experienced enough catastrophe to make pessimism seem reasonable, and enough resilience to make pessimism seem incomplete.

A Nation That Contains Opposites

To listen to Lebanese conversations is to encounter two countries at once.

The first is a country permanently on the edge of breakdown. Its institutions are weak, its politics paralyzed, its economy fragile, and its future uncertain. Every crisis appears to confirm a familiar conclusion: nothing works, nothing changes, and nothing lasts.

The second country exists simultaneously. Universities continue producing talented graduates. Businesses continue operating under extraordinary constraints. Artists, writers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and professionals remain influential far beyond the country’s borders. Restaurants are crowded, new initiatives emerge, cultural life persists. The diaspora continues to invest emotionally and financially in a homeland that has disappointed it repeatedly.

Neither is false. Lebanon often appears to function despite the very conditions that should prevent it from functioning. Yet this observation raises a difficult question. Is Lebanese pessimism merely a distortion of reality? Or is it the rational response of a society that has repeatedly learned how fragile reality can be?

Beyond Psychology

It would be reductive to believe that Lebanon’s difficulties are largely interpretive — that the country suffers from a crisis of confidence and that a healthier national narrative might unlock hidden possibilities.

There is some truth in this, but there is also a danger. The language of perception can unintentionally obscure the language of power. Many Lebanese do not expect disappointment because they suffer from a cultural tendency toward negativity. They expect disappointment because they have experienced repeated disappointments. They have watched institutions fail, savings disappear, promises collapse, and political systems reproduce the very conditions that generated crisis in the first place.

The question is not only why citizens have become cynical. The question is what has repeatedly taught them to be cynical. This distinction matters because narratives do not emerge in a vacuum, they are produced by experience.

The Memory of Catastrophe

“Lebanon, the country of resilience.”

The description is accurate, but incomplete.

Resilience is usually celebrated as a virtue. Yet resilience can also become a burden. A society praised endlessly for surviving can gradually become accustomed to conditions that should never have required survival in the first place.

Behind many Lebanese assumptions lies not merely pessimism but memory.

Civil war. Occupations. Assassinations. Economic collapse. Displacement. Political paralysis. Explosions. Regional conflict.

These are not abstract historical episodes. They form part of the emotional architecture through which many citizens interpret the present. When stability repeatedly proves temporary, skepticism becomes understandable. What outsiders sometimes describe as negativity may in fact be accumulated experience.

The darkness inside the mind did not emerge independently from the darkness outside. The two have been shaping each other for decades.

Who Benefits From Despair?

National stories are never politically neutral. A society convinced that nothing can change may eventually stop demanding change. A population that expects institutions to fail may invest less energy in reforming them. Citizens who assume corruption is permanent may come to treat corruption as natural. In this environment, the corrupt thrive.

The Question That Remains

So as Lucy asked: Is it dark outside or in your mind?

For Lebanon, the answer is both.

The darkness outside is real. No serious observer can deny the country’s political dysfunction, economic hardship, social fragmentation, or exposure to regional conflict.

But the darkness inside deserves attention as well — not because it is imaginary, but because perceptions eventually become forces in their own right.

Expectations shape choices; Choices shape institutions; Institutions shape futures.

The deepest challenge facing Lebanon may therefore be neither psychological nor political alone. It may lie in the relationship between the two.

Can a society remember its wounds without becoming defined by them? Can it confront failure without turning failure into identity? Can it remain realistic without becoming fatalistic? Can it imagine alternatives without retreating into fantasy?

These questions matter because nations do not live only in the world they inherit. They also live in the stories they construct about what is possible.

In 1964, the Austrian-American critic Bernard Rudofsky unsettled the architectural establishment with his exhibition Architecture Without Architects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His thesis was simple yet radical: some of the most intelligent buildings in the world were not designed by architects at all. They were shaped instead by communities — by inherited knowledge, climate necessity, ritual practice, and material constraint. Rudofsky’s provocation was not anti-architecture; it was anti-amnesia. He asked the profession to look at what it had ignored.

For readers in Lebanon and across the Arab world, the idea is hardly foreign. The region’s landscapes are filled with built forms that predate the institutionalization of architecture as a profession. Long before starchitects and global masterplans, there were courtyard houses in Beirut and Tripoli, mudbrick cities rising from desert valleys, and reed structures woven along marshlands. These were not anonymous accidents. They were accumulated intelligence.

Today, in a Middle East grappling with climate stress, displacement, and rapid urbanization, revisiting architecture without architects is not nostalgia — it is urgency.

Shibam and the Vertical Desert

In Yemen’s Hadramaut valley rises the extraordinary city of Shibam, often described as the “Manhattan of the Desert.” Its earthen towers — some reaching eleven stories — were built as early as the 16th century using sun-dried mudbrick. There was no single architect, no signature vision. The city evolved through collective practice, shaped by defensive needs, scarce agricultural land, and the logic of vertical expansion.

UNESCO recognizes Shibam as a masterpiece of human settlement based on environmental adaptation. Its compact urbanism reduces sun exposure; its thick earthen walls regulate heat; its verticality preserves farmland. In contemporary sustainability discourse, these strategies are praised as innovative. In truth, they are ancestral.

Shibam exposes a fallacy embedded in modern development across the region: that density and technological sophistication are recent imports. The desert skyscraper was already there — sculpted from earth, built by communal memory.

Wind, Courtyards, and the Intelligence of Air

Across the Gulf and the Levant, traditional houses reveal an equally refined environmental logic. The barjeel — the wind tower common in Gulf architecture — captures upper breezes and directs them downward into living spaces, functioning as a passive cooling system centuries before mechanical air conditioning. In Lebanon’s historic courtyard houses, inward-facing plans create shaded microclimates, filtering light and organizing domestic life around a protected center.

These spatial strategies were not stylistic gestures. They were climatic negotiations. Thick masonry walls delayed heat transfer; narrow streets created urban shade; mashrabiyas filtered light and preserved privacy. Social custom and environmental performance were inseparable.

The tragedy of much late-20th-century development in the Arab world was not modernization itself, but separation from its source. Reinforced concrete replaced earth; sealed glass façades replaced cross-ventilation. Imported typologies, often indifferent to climate, proliferated in cities from Beirut to Riyadh. Scholars have argued that this shift severed architecture from both ecological logic and cultural continuity.

To speak of architecture without architects in this context is to question whether professionalization distanced design from lived intelligence.

The Marshes of Iraq: Architecture as Ritual

In southern Iraq, the reed structures known as mudhifs rise from the Mesopotamian marshes in graceful parabolic arches. Built entirely from bundled reeds, without nails or industrial materials, these communal halls are reconstructed periodically as part of living tradition. Their form is both structural and ceremonial — hosting gatherings, mediations, and rituals.

Anthropologists trace this building culture back thousands of years, linking it to ancient Mesopotamian practices. The mudhif is architecture without blueprints, sustained through apprenticeship and memory. It resists permanence; it accepts cyclical renewal. In an era obsessed with monumentality, it proposes ephemerality as resilience.

Lebanon and the Question of Continuity

Lebanon occupies a unique threshold between Mediterranean and Arab architectural cultures. Its vernacular stone houses, red-tiled roofs, and triple-arched façades evolved through Ottoman, Levantine, and European influences — yet remained grounded in climate and craft. Post-war reconstruction, particularly in central Beirut, introduced a different paradigm: corporate planning, speculative development, and image-driven urbanism.

The question facing Lebanon today is not whether to reject contemporary architecture, but whether to reconcile it with inherited intelligence. The renewed interest in earth construction, adaptive reuse of heritage houses, and climate-responsive design suggests a quiet return to vernacular principles — albeit reframed through professional practice.

Rudofsky argued that vernacular builders achieved “a harmony between man and his environment” that modern architecture often failed to sustain. In the Arab world, where environmental extremes are intensifying, that harmony is no longer romantic; it is critical.

Lebanon’s national symbols are well established. The cedar occupies a central place in the country’s cultural imagination, while its mountains have long been celebrated in literature, politics, and tourism. Far less familiar is a species that inhabits those mountains at elevations where few people spend much time: Montivipera bornmuelleri, the Lebanon mountain viper.

Endemic to the high mountains of Lebanon and parts of the Anti-Lebanon range, M. bornmuelleri is one of the Levant’s most distinctive reptiles. It is also among the region’s least known. Restricted to rocky habitats at high elevations, the species has adapted to environmental conditions markedly different from those experienced across most of the eastern Mediterranean. Its distribution, ecology, and evolutionary history make it a valuable indicator of the health of Lebanon’s alpine ecosystems.

A High Mountain Snake

First described in 1898, the species belongs to a genus of mountain vipers distributed across parts of the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia. Adults are relatively small by viper standards, typically measuring less than 75 centimetres in length. Their colouration — various shades of grey, brown, and black — provides effective camouflage among limestone outcrops and alpine vegetation. Although highly venomous, the Lebanon mountain viper is not considered aggressive and is seldom encountered outside the remote alpine environments it inhabits. Encounters with humans are uncommon, largely because the species occupies remote terrain and is generally inactive during periods of intense daytime heat.

What distinguishes Montivipera bornmuelleri is not its rarity alone but the environment it inhabits. Most records come from elevations between approximately 1,700 and 2,400 metres, where winters are severe and snow cover can persist for months. These high-altitude habitats support a concentration of endemic plants and animals that have evolved under ecological conditions found nowhere else in Lebanon.

An Indicator of Alpine Ecosystem Health

As with many mountain specialists, the species faces pressures that extend beyond direct human persecution. Habitat disturbance, expanding recreational activity, infrastructure development, and climate change all pose potential risks. Because the viper occupies a relatively narrow ecological niche, even modest environmental changes may have disproportionate consequences. Warming temperatures are of particular concern. Species adapted to cool, high-altitude conditions often have limited opportunities to shift their range upward when climatic conditions change.

The conservation significance of M. bornmuelleri extends beyond the species itself. Its presence reflects the ecological integrity of Lebanon’s alpine zone, an environment that remains comparatively understudied despite its biological importance. Protecting these habitats contributes not only to the survival of the viper but also to the preservation of a broader assemblage of endemic flora and fauna.

Beyond Fear: Scientific Value

Scientific interest in the species has increased in recent decades, particularly in relation to its venom. Research has identified biologically active compounds with potential pharmaceutical applications, including anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties. While such findings remain primarily within the realm of laboratory investigation, they underscore a broader point: biodiversity often acquires practical value only after it has already become threatened.

The species also challenges common perceptions of snakes in the region. Public attitudes towards reptiles are often shaped by fear or misunderstanding, leaving little room for appreciation of their ecological role. Yet predators such as M. bornmuelleri form an important part of mountain ecosystems, helping maintain natural balances within fragile habitats.

Conservation in a Changing Climate

In Lebanon, discussions of environmental conservation tend to focus on forests, coastlines, and urban development. The country’s high-mountain ecosystems receive less attention despite their ecological distinctiveness. The Lebanon mountain viper offers a useful reminder that some of the country’s most significant biological assets exist far from population centres and outside the landscapes that typically dominate public debate.

Climate change has added urgency to this conversation. Alpine species are often among the first to experience the effects of rising temperatures, and their restricted ranges leave them particularly vulnerable. For Montivipera bornmuelleri, the future of Lebanon’s mountain habitats may prove inseparable from its own.

A Place in Lebanon’s Natural Heritage

Whether Montivipera bornmuelleri ultimately becomes a conservation success story will depend on how Lebanon manages its alpine environments in the coming decades. What is already clear, however, is that the species occupies a unique place within the country’s natural heritage. Not because it is charismatic or widely recognised, but because it represents an evolutionary lineage found in few places on earth and adapted to one of Lebanon’s most demanding landscapes.

At a time when questions of environmental stewardship are becoming increasingly urgent, the Lebanon mountain viper serves as a reminder that national heritage is not limited to monuments, archaeological sites, or iconic trees. It also includes the lesser-known species whose continued survival reflects the health and resilience of the landscapes they inhabit.

It’s 1963, and you’re walking along the Champs-Élysées with Lebanese pounds in your pocket. Your friend wants to see the Eiffel Tower later, but first you need to exchange money. You look up at the board outside the currency shop: the dollar, the pound sterling, the franc — and there, among the world’s major currencies, the cedar tree of Lebanon. For a country as small as Lebanon, it feels improbable. But by the early 1960s, Beirut had become the financial center of the Arab world, and much of that rise was tied to one institution: Intra Bank.

Founded by Youssef Beidas in 1951, Intra connected Gulf capital, regional commerce, and international finance through Lebanon, helping turn Beirut into a banking hub with influence far beyond its size. It controlled prestigious real estate on New York’s Fifth Avenue near Rockefeller Center, along Champs-Élysées in Paris, as well as in London, Geneva, and other major global financial hubs — offering exclusive services unavailable anywhere else. When the bank collapsed in 1966, it was more than a financial failure. For many, it exposed deeper tensions inside the Lebanese system — tensions over power, identity, and who the state was ultimately willing to protect.

The Rise of Intra Bank

At its peak, Intra Bank was among the most influential financial institutions in the region. Its influence extended far beyond deposits and lending into the commanding heights of the Lebanese economy. It held controlling or decisive stakes in sectors that shaped both economic life and cultural projection abroad: Middle East Airlines, which connected Lebanon to global markets; Casino du Liban, a centerpiece of tourism and elite social life; and Studio Baalbek, which helped define Lebanon’s cultural golden age. Its reach extended into the Port of Beirut, real estate, and international ventures across multiple continents.

Through this network, Intra integrated finance, infrastructure, culture, and capital flows into a system centered on Beirut. Intra became deeply embedded in the Lebanese economy, with influence across multiple sectors. Yet not all observers saw this dominance as a strength. Even at its height, some observers pointed to structural vulnerabilities — particularly its rapid expansion, cross-sector exposure, and reliance on confidence-sensitive deposits — raising questions about how it would perform under stress.

However in Lebanon’s political economy, that level of concentration rarely goes uncontested.

An Outsider

Lebanon’s post-independence order was shaped by a Francophone elite whose authority rested on political office, inherited networks, and control of key institutions. Cultural alignment with France functioned as a marker of legitimacy within this structure. Beidas stood outside it.

Born into a Palestinian Christian family in 1912, his ties to Lebanon were nonetheless deep: his mother was Lebanese, his wife was Lebanese, and his life and work were rooted in Beirut. Yet at the decisive moment, his position within Lebanon’s political and financial order remained ambiguous, particularly in moments when institutional backing became critical.

His early life unfolded in a multilingual environment linking Eastern Mediterranean trade and finance. He entered banking through Arab Bank, rising quickly through technical skill and operational discipline. The decisive shift in his trajectory came after the 1948 upheaval, which disrupted the region’s economic geography and displaced much of its commercial class.

He was also distinctly Anglophone in orientation. His financial practices and partnerships aligned more closely with Anglo-American capitalism than with the Francophone traditions of Lebanon’s established elite, reinforcing his exclusion.

As Intra expanded, it came to represent an alternative center of power — one operating outside sectarian, familial, and cultural control. By the early 1960s, his growing influence generated increasing discomfort among segments of the political and financial establishment.

The Unraveling

The collapse of Intra Bank in October 1966 is often framed as a financial crisis, but its progression has led some contemporaries and later observers to question whether factors beyond pure market dynamics were at play.

In the days leading up to the collapse, rumors targeting Intra’s solvency spread rapidly through Beirut’s financial networks, reaching major depositors and triggering a sharp loss of confidence. Withdrawals escalated, draining tens of millions of dollars and placing the bank under severe liquidity pressure.

Some contemporaries argue that Intra could have been stabilized through emergency liquidity support. Others disputed this, pointing to rapid expansion and reliance on short-term deposits as signs of deeper structural vulnerability. From this perspective, intervention carried risks of amplifying instability across Lebanon’s banking system.

Beidas sought emergency support from the central bank. The liquidity required was within the state’s capacity, particularly given the strength of Intra’s underlying assets. The request for emergency support was ultimately denied. Whether that decision reflected political considerations, institutional caution, or uncertainty about the bank’s underlying exposure remains debated — but it proved consequential, as liquidity pressures quickly escalated into collapse.

The decision accelerated the bank’s transition from liquidity stress to collapse. Other banks facing similar stress were assisted and survived; Intra did not. Contemporary accounts point to political hostility and elite opposition as important factors. The reported dismissal of Beidas on the grounds that he was not Lebanese reflects how identity and power shaped an economic decision with national consequences.

External Pressure and the Withdrawal of Capital

As internal pressure mounted, external forces intensified the crisis. Intra depended heavily on Gulf deposits, and during the critical days of October 1966, large volumes were withdrawn.

The timing and scale of these withdrawals significantly intensified the crisis, removing critical liquidity at a moment of declining confidence. They unfolded amid strained relations between Beidas and Gulf political figures, and during a broader regional shift as oil-producing states began redirecting financial strategy.

The withdrawal of Gulf capital did more than bring down a bank. It weakened Beirut’s position as the center of Arab finance and accelerated a redistribution of financial power across the region.

Collapse and Redistribution

When Intra fell, its system was dismantled and redistributed. Its holdings — from aviation to culture to infrastructure — were absorbed by the Lebanese state and other actors.

What had been a relatively concentrated structure was broken up into multiple components, redistributing control across state and private actors. For some policymakers, this fragmentation was not entirely negative but a necessary correction to a system seen as overly concentrated in a single institution. The state reasserted control, but without the integrative vision that had defined Beidas’ model.

A Foundational Fracture

The fall of Youssef Beidas marked one of the first major fractures in the modern Lebanese state.

It highlighted tensions between economic decision-making, elite interests, and identity politics, revealed institutions unwilling to defend systemic stability, and shattered the confidence on which Lebanon’s financial model depended.

Beirut’s role as a regional financial center rested on trust — in its banks, its institutions, and its neutrality. The collapse of Intra broke that trust.

From 1966 to the Present

While 1966 did not determine Lebanon’s future on its own, it exposed structural tensions that would reappear in later periods. The entanglement of finance and politics, the selective use of state power, and the prioritization of elite interests over systemic stability became recurring features of Lebanon’s economic life.

Over time, these dynamics eroded institutional credibility and resilience. The financial collapse of modern Lebanon follows a trajectory that can be traced, in part, to this earlier rupture.

The Point of No Return

The case of Youssef Beidas can be interpreted not just as the marginalization of an outsider, but as a reaction to a figure who had become highly central without being fully integrated into existing structures of power.

Despite his Lebanese family members, his roots in Beirut, and his role in building the country’s economic power, he did not receive the level of institutional backing that might have been expected at a critical moment. That denial was not symbolic; it was operational. It shaped decisions that dismantled the system he built.

The fall of Intra Bank wasn’t only the collapse of a financial institution. It was a decision about who is allowed to hold power in Lebanon — and under what conditions. In choosing to let Intra fall, the Lebanese system preserved its internal hierarchy over its own economic future.

That choice did not end in 1966. It helped shape much of what followed.

There are poems that survive not only because they are profound, but because they remain relevant. If— belongs to this category. Like national slogans repeated long after belief has faded, the poem reappears whenever societies need to aestheticize endurance.

Lebanon has long had an affinity for this language: composure under pressure, dignity amid disorder, self-control mistaken for stability.

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs…”

In Beirut, losing one’s head is rarely dramatic; it is procedural: a frozen bank account, a pharmacy missing half its shelves, a power outage at the wrong hour, a currency fluctuation during an ordinary dinner. One inconvenience folds into another until deterioration itself becomes ambient noise.

Now war has returned to the country’s vocabulary with exhausting familiarity. Families displaced from the south move through Beirut carrying plastic bags, mattresses, medication, children half-asleep in strange apartments. Entire neighborhoods absorb new populations overnight with the weary efficiency of repetition. The shock is real, but so is the familiarity. Lebanon has lived through versions of this before: hurried departures, overcrowded apartments, schools converted into shelters, families reorganizing themselves around uncertainty.

The Lebanese middle classes once possessed a remarkable talent for converting instability into routine. This was not “resilience” in the therapeutic vocabulary preferred by NGOs and foreign correspondents; it was adaptation through fragmentation. Every household developed parallel systems: generators replacing infrastructure, dollars replacing salaries, relatives abroad replacing institutions. The state became supplementary to society rather than the reverse.

“If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you…”

Lebanon specializes in doubt. Not dramatic ideological doubt, but the smaller, more corrosive variety: doubt in banks, courts, electricity, currencies, governments, investigations, futures. Citizens compensate accordingly. They accumulate backup plans with near-professional discipline: two currencies, three telephones, one sibling abroad.

War deepens these doubts unevenly. In recent months, displacement has fallen disproportionately upon Lebanon’s Shi’a communities in the south and southern suburbs, many of whom already carried memories of earlier wars, occupations, and reconstructions. Entire families now inhabit schools, unfinished apartments, relatives’ homes, temporary rooms offered by strangers. The country speaks constantly of unity during crisis, but suffering in Lebanon is rarely distributed symmetrically.

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same…”

Perhaps no society practices this more instinctively than Lebanon. Political victories rarely last long enough to become history; disasters arrive too frequently to retain their exceptional character. Celebration and catastrophe exist almost beside one another, weddings continue during crises, restaurants reopen after explosions.

Foreign observers inevitably describe this as resilience, usually with photographs of crowded bars standing a few streets from visible ruin. The admiration is often sincere, but incomplete. Lebanon is not only resilient; it is habituated to continuation.

This habit was not born with economic collapse. The civil war conditioned generations to normalize interruption: roads closing suddenly, neighborhoods divided overnight, ordinary life reorganized around violence. Later conflicts merely altered the scale and geography. The present war with Israel has reopened older structures of fear and displacement that never fully disappeared.

Lebanon’s relationship with refuge further complicates the story it tells about itself. Palestinians arrived first as temporary guests and became permanent participants in the country’s unresolved political landscape. Syrians followed decades later into a nation already strained by its own instability. Now internal displacement repeats the same logic: schools becoming shelters, relatives becoming institutions, hospitality becoming infrastructure.

“If you can wait and not be tired by waiting…”

Waiting in Lebanon ceased being transitional long ago; it became environmental. People wait for salaries to recover value, for governments to form, for embassies to respond, for roads to be repaired, for electricity to return, for their children at the airport. Families from the south wait to learn whether homes still exist, parents refresh news feeds with the mechanical discipline of ritual. Even memory functions through delay — events linger unfinished, suspended between trauma and bureaucracy.

The Beirut port explosion revealed this with particular clarity: The scale of destruction should have produced rupture. Instead, the city absorbed it into its existing logic of continuation. Rubble disappeared faster than accountability. Restaurants reopened beside shattered apartments. Mourning became administrative.

But something else emerged alongside exhaustion: mutual recognition. Volunteers sweeping streets before the state arrived, strangers opening homes to the displaced, doctors working through broken hospitals, a city improvising solidarity because improvisation is often the only available institution.

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone…”

Entire generations have learned to organize emotional life around contingency: private generators replace electricity grids, remittances replace economic policy, humor replaces political language. Stability becomes something rented temporarily rather than possessed.

The ability to continue is not always a virtue. Societies can adapt so successfully to violence that adaptation itself begins to conceal the scale of what has been lost.

But Lebanon also possesses another habit rarely acknowledged abroad: the refusal to become culturally provincial despite repeated collapse. Beirut still produces conversations unavailable elsewhere in the region — Arabic, French, English, cynicism, diasporic longing, exhausted cosmopolitanism compressed into a single evening. The country remains intellectually engaged even when politically stagnant.

“If you can dream — and not make dreams your master…”

This line feels particularly Lebanese. Dreams here are treated cautiously. Entire generations were raised on promises of recovery, reform, renaissance, rebirth. Most learned instead to distrust grand narratives while continuing to build ordinary lives anyway.

Perhaps this is the country’s most durable quality: not optimism, but attachment. People continue investing emotionally in Lebanon even after leaving it physically. The diaspora speaks of Beirut less like a homeland than an unfinished argument or an unrealized dream. Distance rarely weakens the connection; it often sharpens it.

Kipling’s poem assumes that discipline eventually produces coherence: endure long enough, master yourself sufficiently, and stability follows. Lebanon offers no such promise. Crisis here does not culminate in transformation; it accumulates. And yet the country continues.

“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run…”

Lebanon has spent decades doing precisely that: stretching limited time, limited resources, limited certainty into forms of life that remain unexpectedly vivid. Not ideal, not stable, certainly not just — but alive.

Kipling ends If— with inheritance: “you’ll be a Man, my son.” The line now reads less as wisdom than as a relic of another century’s certainty — the belief that character guarantees arrival.

Lebanon guarantees no arrival. It does not ask “if.”

It simply carries on, and leaves interpretation to catch up later.

For Ramy.

Sheikh Abdallah Al‑Alayli was a Lebanese intellectual, linguist, writer, and thinker whose work had substantial impact on modern Arab cultural thought, linguistic studies, and debates about identity and reform. Born in Beirut in 1914 and active throughout much of the 20th century, Al‑Alayli combined deep classical training with a bold engagement with contemporary issues, making him one of the most influential and controversial figures in Arab intellectual history.

Early Life and Education

Abdallah Al‑Alayli was born on 20 November 1914 in Beirut, during the final years of Ottoman rule and a time of immense social upheaval in Lebanon. His early schooling was in traditional Qur’anic schools and local primary institutions before he traveled to Cairo to study at Al‑Azhar University, one of the foremost centers of Islamic scholarship in the Arab world. There he studied under eminent teachers and immersed himself in Arabic, Islamic jurisprudence, theology, and literature.

After completing his studies in the mid‑1930s, Al‑Alayli returned to Beirut, where he began a lifelong career as a teacher, preacher, and public intellectual. He engaged widely in cultural, linguistic, and religious debates, and also took part in nationalist movements seeking cultural and social reform.

Scholarly Work and Major Publications

Al‑Alayli’s literary and intellectual output was both broad and ambitious. He believed that language, culture, and thought are inseparable from the progress of society. Much of his work focused on modernizing and critiquing traditional approaches to language and religion, and on arguing that Arab societies needed to adapt intellectually to the challenges of the modern world.

One of his earliest significant works was Introduction to the Study of Arabic Language, where he set out principles for a systematic and modern study of Arabic that bridged classical tradition and contemporary linguistic thought. His commitment to the Arabic language also led him to create The Great Dictionary, a major lexicographical work intended to expand vocabulary in a way that reflected social change and intellectual development.

In Refining the Linguistic Approach, Al‑Alayli elaborated his methodology for teaching and understanding language, advocating clarity, analytical depth, and openness to new linguistic insights. Beyond language, he tackled broader questions of culture and religion in works such as Where Is the Mistake? Correcting Understandings and the Theory of Renewal and Where Is the Mistake in Islam?, which prompted widespread debate because of their reformist stance toward traditional interpretation. He also wrote on human identity and social roles in Where Is the Human?, reflecting his holistic approach to human sciences.

His writings spanned not only academic treatises but also literary essays and poetry. Al‑Alayli published works in various genres, including lyrical and philosophical poetry collections that reflected his engagement with personal and societal themes.

Ideas and Intellectual Contributions

Al‑Alayli saw language as a living, evolving phenomenon that should reflect the needs and realities of contemporary societies. He argued that without linguistic and cultural renewal, societies remained intellectually stagnant. His approach to language combined deep respect for its historical foundations with insistence on reform and adaptation. This placed him at the center of debates over how Arabic should be studied and taught in the 20th century.

In religious and philosophical realms, Al‑Alayli called for reinterpretations grounded in context and reason. He believed that rigid adherence to tradition without openness to modern insights hindered intellectual and social development. These views, especially in Where Is the Mistake?, sparked controversy among conservative scholars at the time, leading to bans of his work in certain places.

Scholars have also highlighted his broader philosophical orientation, which included renewal in jurisprudence and contemporary readings of foundational texts, positioning him as a figure who merged classical scholarship with modern critical thought.

Recognition and Legacy

Throughout his lifetime, Al‑Alayli received both public honors and criticism. He was recognized for his service to Arabic language and culture and awarded national distinctions for his writing and scholarship. His bold critiques sometimes put him at odds with religious establishments and political authorities, yet they also ensured that his ideas remained central to discussions about reform and intellectual renewal in the Arab world.

Sheikh Abdallah Al‑Alayli died on 4 December 1996 in Beirut after a long career that left a deep imprint on Arab linguistic thought, cultural critique, and intellectual reform movements. Today he is remembered as a pioneering reformist thinker, whose work challenged readers to rethink how language, culture, and religion can evolve together in a rapidly changing world.

The papacy is often imagined as an institution rooted almost exclusively in Italy and Western Europe. Yet in the early centuries of Christianity, the leadership of the Church in Rome was far more diverse. Several popes came from the eastern Mediterranean, which in antiquity encompassed much of what is today Lebanon, Syria, and southern Turkey.

This should not be surprising. Jesus himself was from the Levant, and in the following centuries, it became one of the great heartlands of early Christianity. Cities such as Antioch, Tyre, and Emesa were vibrant centers of theology, trade, and culture, producing bishops, scholars, and saints whose influence extended across the Roman world.

Between the second and eighth centuries, six popes are generally recognized as having Levantine or Syrian origins. Their pontificates remind us that the early Roman Church was deeply interconnected with the eastern Mediterranean — and that figures from the Levant once stood at the very center of Christian leadership.

Anicetus: An Early Bishop of Rome from Emesa

One of the earliest Levantine figures to lead the Roman Church was Pope Anicetus, who served in the mid-second century. Tradition places his birth in Emesa, modern day Homs, an important Syrian city that was both a religious and cultural center of the Roman East.

Anicetus governed the Church during a formative period when Christianity was still developing its structures and traditions. His papacy is remembered for a famous encounter with Polycarp of Smyrna, who visited Rome to discuss differing practices regarding the date of Easter. Though they maintained separate traditions, the two bishops remained in communion — a sign of the diversity that characterized the early Church.

John V: An Antiochene Pope

More than five centuries later, the papacy again passed to a man from the Levant. John V, born in Antioch, became pope in 685.

Antioch was among the most important cities of early Christianity and one of the intellectual centers of the eastern Roman Empire. Before his election, John had participated in the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681) as a papal representative, where the Church addressed major Christological debates of the time.

Although his pontificate lasted only about a year, his election reflects the continuing ties between Rome and the eastern Christian world.

Sergius I: A Syrian Family in the Mediterranean World

Sergius I provides a vivid example of the mobility that characterized the Byzantine Mediterranean. He was born in Palermo to a Syrian family originally from Antioch.

During his long pontificate (687–701), Sergius confronted the Byzantine emperor Justinian II, who attempted to impose disciplinary rulings from the Council in Trullo on the Western Church. Sergius refused to sign the council’s decrees, demonstrating the growing independence of the papacy from imperial authority.

He also left a lasting mark on the Roman liturgy, including the introduction of the Agnus Dei chant during the Mass.

Sisinnius: A Brief but Energetic Pontificate

Sisinnius, a pope of Syrian origin, ruled for only a few weeks in 708, making his reign one of the shortest in papal history.

Despite his advanced age and illness, he immediately turned his attention to the defense of Rome, initiating efforts to repair the city’s deteriorating walls. Some later traditions associate his family with Tyre, an ancient Phoenician city on the Lebanese coast.

Constantine of Tyre

Sisinnius was succeeded by Constantine, who is traditionally said to have been born in Tyre.

Constantine’s papacy (708–715) was notable for a rare diplomatic journey: at the request of Emperor Justinian II, he traveled to Constantinople in 710. This visit was one of the very few occasions in which a pope personally visited the Byzantine capital during the early Middle Ages.

His diplomatic mission helped ease tensions between Rome and the empire during a politically volatile period.

Gregory III: The Last Levantine Pope of the Early Middle Ages

The final Levantine pope of this period was Gregory III, born in Syria and elected in 731.

Gregory’s papacy coincided with the iconoclast controversy, when the Byzantine emperors attempted to prohibit the veneration of religious images. Gregory firmly defended the traditional use of icons and convened a synod in Rome that condemned iconoclasm.

Historically, Gregory III occupies a unique place: he was the last pope from the eastern Mediterranean.

The Levant’s Place in Papal History

The existence of Levantine popes reminds us that early Christianity was profoundly Levantine in character. The intellectual and spiritual life of the Church flowed continuously between Rome and the great cities of the East.

For the Levant, this history forms part of a broader cultural heritage. Cities such as Tyre and Antioch were not peripheral to early Christianity; they were among its most dynamic centers.

In the rugged mountain landscapes of Lebanon, a small and easily overlooked beetle tells a much larger story about biodiversity and scientific discovery. Libanoclytus tommasoi, a species described as recently as 2010, is not just another addition to the insect world — it represents an entirely new genus within the longhorn beetle family, Cerambycidae.

Its discovery reflects how even in regions with long histories of natural study, new species continue to emerge, often hidden in plain sight.

A Species That Redefined Its Own Category

When entomologists Gianfranco Sama, Pierpaolo Rapuzzi, and Antoine Kairouz first described Libanoclytus tommasoi, they realized they weren’t just classifying a new species — they were identifying something structurally distinct enough to require a new genus altogether. That is no small feat in taxonomy, where new genera are proposed only when differences run deeper than superficial variation.

At first glance, the beetle fits comfortably within the tribe Clytini, a group known for species that often mimic wasps in coloration and form. Yet closer inspection reveals subtle but decisive differences in its anatomy: the shape of its thorax, the structure of its head, and fine details in its body segmentation set it apart from its relatives.

Measuring just over a centimeter in length, L. tommasoi is modest in size, but its scientific importance far outweighs its physical presence.

Life Among the Trees

Like many longhorn beetles, Libanoclytus tommasoi is intimately tied to trees — not living ones in their prime, but those in decline. Its larvae develop within dead or decaying branches, making it part of a specialized ecological group known as saproxylic insects, organisms that depend on decomposing wood.

Field observations have linked the species to trees such as Ficus carica, Morus, and Cercis siliquastrum. These trees, common across Mediterranean landscapes, provide both nourishment and shelter during the beetle’s larval stage, which can last up to two years.

Adults typically emerge in late spring, around May and June, coinciding with warmer temperatures and increased biological activity in forest ecosystems. Their brief adult lives contrast sharply with their long developmental period, a pattern typical of the Cerambycidae family.

A Regional Native with a Narrow Range

So far, Libanoclytus tommasoi has been documented primarily in Lebanon and parts of neighboring Syria. Within Lebanon, it has been found in mountainous regions, including areas like the Qadisha Valley, a landscape known for both its ecological richness and cultural history.

This relatively limited distribution suggests that the species may be endemic to the Levant or at least highly specialized to its environment. Such narrow ranges often make species more vulnerable to habitat changes, though detailed conservation assessments for L. tommasoi are still lacking.

Why It Matters

At a glance, a small wood-boring beetle might not seem especially noteworthy. But species like Libanoclytus tommasoi play an essential role in maintaining forest health. By breaking down dead wood, they contribute to nutrient cycling, helping sustain the ecosystems they inhabit.

Beyond ecology, the species also underscores a broader scientific truth: biodiversity is still far from fully catalogued. Even in regions close to human settlement and long studied by naturalists, entirely new branches of the tree of life continue to be discovered.

In that sense, Libanoclytus tommasoi is more than an insect. It is a reminder that nature still holds secrets, and that careful observation — sometimes of the smallest creatures — can reshape our understanding of the natural world.

References

Sama, G., Rapuzzi, P., & Kairouz, A. (2010). Catalogue commenté des Cerambycidae du Liban.
Hoskovec, M. (2023). Species account of Libanoclytus tommasoi.
Márkus, A., & Németh, T. (2016). Notes on Cerambycidae host plants and ecology.

Youssef Aftimus, born on 25 November 1866 in Deir el Qamar, within the Chouf region of what was then the Ottoman Empire, emerged as a major civil engineer and architect whose style melded Moorish Revival aesthetics with urban planning in early 20th-century Beirut.

Early Life and Education

Aftimus was raised in a Greek Catholic family in the historic town of Deir el Qamar. His education began at the Collège des Frères Maristes around 1875. By 1879, he had progressed to the Syrian Protestant College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree. Prior to his journey abroad, he taught Arabic at the same institution for two years and even co-authored an Arabic grammar textbook – a testament to his early literary and academic inclinations.

In 1885, Aftimus traveled to New York City to study civil engineering at Union College, graduating in 1891. His initial professional tenure was with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, working on the Hudson Canal project and Pennsylvania rail lines. Subsequent stints followed with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company and General Electric.

Rise as an Architect of Global Stature

Aftimus’s entrance onto the global architectural stage came in 1893, when he was chosen to design several pavilions – Persian Palace, Turkish Village, and Cairo Street – for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Particularly, the Cairo Street pavilion was a notable crowd-puller. This marked a significant foray into Moorish Revival architecture, framing his stylistic perspective and anchoring his later contributions in Beirut and the broader Levant.

His work extended beyond Chicago, including involvement with the Egyptian pavilion at the Antwerp International Exposition in 1894, followed by a research visit to Berlin in 1895 focused on construction engineering. He returned to Beirut in late 1896.

Architectural and Urban Legacy in Beirut

In 1898, Aftimus was appointed municipal engineer of Beirut. One of his early notable contributions was the design of the Hamidiyyeh Fountain in 1900, dedicated to Sultan Abdulhamid II. Originally located at Riad el-Solh/as‑Sour square, the fountain was later relocated to Sanayeh Park, where it still stands.

Aftimus founded a consulting office in 1911 alongside Emile Kacho, another engineer. The next decade saw some of his most enduring projects. In 1923, Aftimus won the design competition for Beirut’s City Hall (municipal building), situated at the prominent intersection of Weygand and Foch streets — a structure that endures as a civic landmark today.

His public service extended beyond architecture: he held the position of Minister of Public Works in the 1926–1927 government under Prime Minister Auguste Basha Adib.

Among his broader portfolio, Aftimus contributed to:

• The Old Damour bridge (1920), later damaged in 1941.

• Water infrastructure in Nabatiyeh (1924).

• Nicolas Barakat Building (1924), and buildings for the Hôtel-Dieu de France hospital (1925).

• His own Aftimus House in Kantari (1927).

• Conference halls and residences like the Issa Building (also hosting the U.S. consulate) and the Le Grand Théâtre de Beirut (1929).

• The Mugar Building at Haïgazian University and works at Beirut University College (1932–33).

An ambitious, but unrealized, project in 1935 was his design for a Greek Catholic cathedral, which never came to fruition.

Aftimus’s influence extended beyond his built works. He co-authored a published treatise on Arab architecture, titled العرب في فن البناء, and was inducted into the Arab Academy based in Damascus. He also served as president for the Syrian Protestant College alumni association, showcasing his continued engagement with academic and institutional communities. Notably, he was a force in the fight against tuberculosis, founding and leading a non-profit charity to combat the disease.

Cultural and Architectural Impact

Aftimus emerged during an era marked by an Ottoman architectural revivalist movement, which sought to define a distinct Ottoman architectural identity. This movement was sparked by the 1873 publication of Usul‑i Mimari‑i Osmani (“Principles of Ottoman Architecture”) under commission by Ibrahim Edhem Pasha. It blended disparate styles like Ottoman Baroque, Beaux-Arts, Neoclassicism, and Islamic motifs.

Aftimus’s exposure to Western exhibitions, particularly at Chicago, along with his experience in Beirut, positioned him uniquely to import an Ottoman revivalist style from Istanbul and the Columbian Exposition into Beirut by the late 19th century. His designs dominated public building styles in Beirut during the final decades of Ottoman rule.

The Barakat Building

The Barakat Building, also known as the “Yellow House,” and now, “Beit Beirut,” was one of Aftimus’s iconic designs. Severely damaged during the Lebanese Civil War and located in Achrafieh’s Sodeco area, it was slated for demolition in 1997. However, concerted efforts led by Lebanese activists along with media campaigns and public rallies, preserved the building.

An artistic intervention by Atelier de Recherche ALBA in 2000, exploring the building and neighborhood narratives, amplified the conservation campaign. In 2003, demolition plans were halted, and Beirut Municipality acquired the property to create a city memory museum chronicling the city’s 7,000-year history. With support from the government of France, restoration efforts progressed and culminated in the inauguration of Beit Beirut in 2017.

A Lasting Legacy

Youssef Aftimus passed away on 10 September 1952, but his architectural and urban legacy endures. As a masterful synthesizer of Moorish and revivalist aesthetics with pragmatic urban design, he shaped the face of modern Beirut. His influence stretched from civic edifices like Beirut City Hall to cultural memory sites such as Beit Beirut.

With roles encompassing engineering, politics, education, and philanthropy, Aftimus stands as a defining elder figure in Lebanese architectural history.

George Hatem, known in China as Ma Haide, lived a life that seems almost improbable. Born in the United States to Lebanese immigrants, he would go on to become a key figure in China’s Communist revolution, a trusted physician to its leadership, and one of the first foreigners granted citizenship in the People’s Republic of China.

Though his name is not widely recognized in the West, his impact on public health in China helped transform the lives of millions.

From Mount Lebanon to Medicine

Hatem’s story begins long before his birth, in the mountain village of Hammana in Lebanon. His father, Nahoum Salameh Hatem, left the region in the early 20th century in search of opportunity in the United States. During a return visit home, he married Thamame Milane, and together they settled in America.

George Hatem was born in 1910 in Buffalo, New York, and later grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, where his family ran a small business. Despite his American upbringing, Lebanon remained a strong presence in his life.

In 1929, he returned to Beirut to study medicine at the American University of Beirut. He then continued his training in Switzerland, graduating from the University of Geneva in 1933. There, exposure to international classmates — particularly from East Asia — sparked a curiosity that would define his future.

A Doctor in Revolutionary China

Soon after graduating, Hatem moved to Shanghai, where he opened a medical practice. It was there that he encountered influential figures in China’s political circles, including Soong Ching-ling, the widow of Sun Yat-sen. Through her, he was introduced to the Communist Party.

Hatem eventually made his way to Yan’an, the Communist Party’s remote base. There, he served as a physician within the leadership circle, treating high level officials — including Mao Zedong — while also tending to soldiers and civilians.

He joined the Chinese Communist Party and took on a new name: Ma Haide, meaning “the one who came from overseas.” It was more than a name change — it marked a complete transformation of identity.

In June 1944, Harrison Forman, Gunther Stein and other foreign journalists came to Yan’an to conduct interviews. They also talked with Hatem.

“One of the things I like most about this place is that there is absolutely no professional jealousy here. This is due in large measure to the fact that there is no financial incentive, no rivalry for special honors or favors. All of us work together like members of a big family, and satisfactions and disappointments are mutually shared.”

Hatem also mentioned the change of his mind in Yan’an.

“They taught me a very great deal I probably couldn’t have learned any other way. And I had some pretty swell people to learn from, you must admit.”

Medicine on the Front Lines

During years of war and upheaval, Hatem worked under extreme conditions, providing care to thousands of wounded fighters and villagers. His role was not confined to clinics; he was part of a broader revolutionary effort, where survival often depended on improvisation and resilience.

He worked closely with leaders like Zhou Enlai and contributed to the medical infrastructure that supported the Communist movement, culminating in the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Fighting Disease, Building a Nation

After the revolution, Hatem shifted his focus from battlefield medicine to public health — where his impact would be even greater.

As a senior official in China’s Ministry of Public Health, he became a driving force behind national campaigns to combat infectious diseases. His most notable work was in the fight against leprosy, a disease that had long been widespread and stigmatized.

Hatem spared no effort in spreading the message. He often said, “leprosy is preventable, curable, and not terrible,” and that it could be controlled within three days after medication and then eliminated, making it no longer contagious.

Through coordinated treatment programs, rural outreach, and medical training, Hatem helped bring the disease under control. By the late 20th century, leprosy in China had been reduced to extremely low levels.

He also contributed to broader efforts in sanitation, rural healthcare, and disease prevention, helping lay the groundwork for China’s modern public health system. In 1986, his achievements were recognized internationally when he received the Lasker Medical Award.

A Life Between Worlds

In the 1950s, Hatem became one of the first foreigners to receive Chinese citizenship — an extraordinary honor in a newly established state. By then, China was not just where he worked; it was home.

He married a Chinese woman, Zhou Su-fei, and the couple had two children. Fluent in Mandarin and deeply integrated into Chinese society, Hatem spent the rest of his life there.

Yet he never lost sight of his roots. In 1974, he returned to Lebanon, where he was welcomed with pride — especially in Hammana, the village his father had left decades earlier.

Recognition and Remembrance

Hatem’s contributions earned him recognition in both China and Lebanon. In 1985, he was awarded Lebanon’s National Order of the Cedar at the rank of commander.

Three years later, in 1988, he passed away in Beijing at the age of 78. He was given a state funeral and buried in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, a resting place reserved for China’s most distinguished figures.

A Legacy That Crosses Borders

George Hatem’s life cannot be confined to a single nation or identity. He was at once Lebanese, American, and Chinese; a man who crossed borders not just geographically, but culturally and politically.

In choosing purpose over origin and service over recognition, he built a life that defied easy definition. Today, his legacy endures in the health of millions and in the rare example of a man who belonged fully to more than one world, yet defined by none.

In a region where church bells and the call to prayer share the same sky, theological questions are rarely distant or abstract. Few issues highlight the differences between Christianity and Islam as clearly as the question of Jesus’ crucifixion. For Christians, it is central to faith; for Muslims, the dominant interpretation has long held that it did not occur.

Yet a closer reading of the Qur’anic text — particularly in its full form — alongside historical context, suggests a more nuanced possibility.

Mainstream Christians Belief

Within Christianity, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is foundational. The New Testament presents it as both historical fact and theological necessity: Jesus is arrested, tried, and executed under the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate (Mark 15:24; Luke 23:33). His death is understood as an atoning sacrifice, followed by resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3–4).

Mainstream Muslim Belief

In contrast, mainstream Islamic belief holds that Jesus (ʿĪsā) was not crucified. This view is primarily based on Qur’an 4:157, which states in full:

“And their saying, ‘Indeed, we killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the Messenger of God,’ and they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but it was made to appear so to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him for certain.”

Classical Islamic scholarship overwhelmingly interpreted this verse as a denial of both killing and crucifixion. Over time, a strong consensus (ijmāʿ) formed, often accompanied by the substitution theory — the idea that another person was made to resemble Jesus and crucified in his place.

It is important to acknowledge the weight of this tradition. At the same time, the substitution narrative itself does not appear explicitly in the Qur’an, but emerges in later commentary.

Reading the Full Verse More Closely

When read in full, the verse does more than simply deny an event — it engages a claim:

“Indeed, we killed the Messiah…”

The response unfolds in several layers:

• A denial: “they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him”

• A qualification: “but it was made to appear so to them”

• An observation: “those who differ over it are in doubt”

• A critique: “they have no knowledge… only assumption”

• A final emphasis: “they did not kill him for certain”

Taken together, the structure of the verse shifts attention from the event alone to human perception, disagreement, and certainty.

This raises an important interpretive possibility: that the verse is not only describing what did or did not happen, but also challenging the confidence of those claiming to understand what happened.

Historical Context: A Widespread Belief

By the time of the Qur’anic revelation, belief in Jesus’ crucifixion had already been widespread for centuries. Early Christian communities across the Roman world consistently affirmed it, making it central to their identity and theology.

From an Islamic perspective, this does not establish theological truth. However, it provides context for the statement:

“it was made to appear so to them.”

The verse may be engaging a belief that had already become deeply rooted in collective understanding.

Corroborating Historical Sources

This belief was not limited to Christian texts. Non-Christian writers from the first and second centuries — including the Roman historian Tacitus and the Jewish historian Josephus — also refer to Jesus’ execution under Pontius Pilate.

While such sources are not authoritative in Islamic theology, they show that the perception of crucifixion extended across communities. This reinforces the Qur’anic emphasis on how events “appeared” and were understood by people.

A Linguistic Note: Where Certainty Is Placed

The final phrase of the verse adds a notable emphasis:

“and they did not kill him for certain.”

The qualifier “for certain” (yaqīnan) is attached specifically to the claim of killing. This does not negate the earlier denial of crucifixion, but it does highlight where the strongest emphasis lies.

Within the flow of the verse, certainty is directly challenged. People are described as being “in doubt,” having “no knowledge,” and following “assumption.” The final reaffirmation — that they did not kill him “for certain” — underscores the idea that their claim to decisive success is being rejected.

This does not prove that a crucifixion occurred. However, it supports a reading in which the verse is primarily concerned with denying certainty about Jesus’ defeat, rather than offering a purely mechanical description of events.

Understanding Crucifixion: Purpose and Outcome

In the Roman world, crucifixion was designed not only to kill, but to humiliate and eliminate influence. It was meant to end movements.

Yet in Jesus’ case, the outcome appears markedly different. His message endured, spread, and transformed societies. Today, he remains one of the most influential figures in history, revered in Christianity and honored in Islam.

If the intent was to eliminate him, it did not succeed.

Addressing the Central Objection

A central challenge remains: if the verse says “they did not crucify him,” how can one affirm that a crucifixion took place?

One possible approach is to read the denial in light of the entire passage. The verse begins with a claim of victory and ends by dismantling certainty around that claim. In between, it emphasizes appearance, doubt, and assumption.

In this framework, the statement “they did not crucify him” may be understood not only as a denial of the act in isolation, but as part of a broader rejection of the claim that Jesus was successfully defeated.

Such a reading does not dismiss the traditional interpretation, but suggests the verse may operate on multiple levels — historical, rhetorical, and theological.

Questioning the Substitution Theory

The substitution theory raises further questions. Why would another individual bear this fate? And why is this detail absent from the Qur’an itself?

Given Islam’s emphasis on clarity in revelation, this absence may suggest that later interpretations attempted to resolve ambiguity rather than reflect explicit textual claims.

A Shared Point: The Ascension of Jesus

Despite their differences, both Christianity and Islam affirm that Jesus was raised to Heaven. The Qur’an states:

“Rather, God raised him up to Himself” (4:158)

This shared belief offers an important point of convergence.

Toward a Reconciliatory Interpretation

If the full verse is read with attention to its emphasis on perception, doubt, and certainty, a reconciliatory interpretation becomes possible:

• A crucifixion event may have occurred

• It appeared to observers that Jesus had been defeated

• In reality, his enemies did not achieve their ultimate aim

In this view, the Qur’anic denial speaks not only to what happened, but to what it meant.

Jesus Lives On

While theological differences remain, both Muslims and Christians affirm that Jesus was sent by God and that his message endures.

Rather than focusing solely on the mechanics of the crucifixion, a broader perspective reveals a shared conviction: that his mission could not be destroyed, and that his influence continues to live on in the hearts of believers across traditions.

Long before oil wealth, nation-states, and global fashion cycles reshaped the Gulf, women across its coastal societies wore a garment that translated cultural identity into form: the battoulah, also known as the burqa’. Neither jewelry nor veil in the modern sense, it was a rigorously coded object — one that shaped how women were seen, signaled social position, and anchored them within a shared visual order understood across the region.

Trade, Textiles, and the Making of a Gulf Form

The battoulah emerged from the maritime cultures of the Gulf, shaped by centuries of exchange across the Indian Ocean world. From at least the early modern period, Gulf ports were linked to India, Persia, East Africa, and southern Arabia, importing textiles, dyes, and techniques that women adapted locally. Despite its metallic appearance, the battoulah was not typically fashioned from solid gold. It was constructed from stiffened cotton or silk, dyed — often with indigo or other natural pigments — and treated to achieve a reflective surface in tones of gold, bronze, or copper. Its sheen reflected textile knowledge rather than raw material wealth, and its durability made it suitable for daily wear.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, variations of the battoulah were widespread across what are now the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, parts of eastern Saudi Arabia, and the southern Gulf coast of Iran. It was not an imported curiosity but a locally standardized form, maintained, transmitted, and refined by women themselves.

Form as Geography — Regional Languages of the Battoulah

The battoulah was never singular. Its authority lay in variation. Shape, proportion, and finish differed from place to place, forming a visual language legible to those within it.

In the Emirates, styles tended to be narrow and sharply contoured along the nose, often finished in bright, polished gold tones. Omani versions were frequently broader and longer, sometimes extending toward the chin, echoing older South Arabian influences. In Bahrain and Qatar, forms often appeared squarer, marked by a pronounced upper panel, while Kuwaiti examples historically favored darker metallic hues and softer edges. These distinctions were not incidental. The battoulah functioned as geographic literacy, locating a woman within the Gulf’s social landscape without a word being spoken.

Social Meaning — Womanhood, Authority, and Visibility

Traditionally, the battoulah was not worn by girls. Its adoption marked a transition — most commonly marriage or adulthood — and with it a shift in social standing. To wear the battoulah was to be recognized as a woman with responsibilities, boundaries, and authority.

Crucially, it was not simply about concealment but about structured visibility. It framed the eyes, disciplined the face, and projected composure, allowing women to move through public life while commanding respect. In many communities, it was considered beautifying, lending gravity rather than anonymity. Among elder women especially, it became an emblem of experience and presence.

Craftsmanship carried meaning as well. Finer fabric, deeper color, and precise tailoring quietly communicated family standing and personal refinement, operating within an ethic that valued restraint over display. The battoulah did not shout status; it encoded it.

Transformation and Reinterpretation

The mid-twentieth century brought rapid transformation. Urbanization, expanded educational and professional roles for women, the spread of alternative veiling practices, and the influence of global fashion gradually displaced the battoulah from everyday life. Yet it did not vanish. Instead, it shifted registers, moving from daily garment to symbolic object.

Today it appears in museums, national celebrations, weddings, heritage festivals, and contemporary art. Designers reference it, photographers restage it, and institutions curate it as evidence of continuity. This evolution reflects not only loss but reinterpretation. The battoulah has become a site where questions of gender, memory, and authenticity are negotiated.

Reading the Battoulah Correctly

Contemporary encounters with the battoulah often reduce it to spectacle — a “metal mask” flattened into heritage imagery or aesthetic curiosity. Such readings miss its function. Historically, the battoulah was not decorative excess but social precision.

It organized the face without erasing it, asserted modesty without anonymity, and enabled women to move through public life while remaining legible to those who understood its codes. In a region where lineage, place, and reputation carried weight, it operated as a disciplined visual system — learned, maintained, and transmitted by women themselves.

What disappears when the battoulah is reduced to costume is not just a tradition, but a way of reading the world. Its shapes mapped the Gulf before contemporary political borders did. Its materials reflected trade networks rather than trends. Its authority emerged not from doctrine, but from practice.

To encounter the battoulah today — on the face of an elderly woman or behind museum glass — is to confront evidence: evidence of a culture that understood adornment as social intelligence, and of women who authored that intelligence deliberately and in full view.

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.