A few hours after I shared about wondering if it was time to nag the lab for my scans (it wasn’t), I saw them in my inbox, much earlier than the turnaround had promised. Spooky...
Because there’s something inherently ghostly about seeing film come back weeks after having already processed your experience of a place digitally, especially when some frames are similar while others are not. It’s like the sedimentation of memory itself; every re-telling is another exposure on the film of your mind: hazy, layered, and re-imagined.
I came to this spot because, to me, it represented my father, a son of this town whose most famous son became the patriarch of a whole fatherland: the imagined nation of Greater Syria. He visited it often and has several photos of himself standing here, at the foot of the za’aim. It was my way of thinking through fathers and sons and meaning and purpose in a land that overdetermines them all.
I took these photos exactly one month ago on my very first Saturday morning back in Beirut. I walked from the Corniche to Gemmeyze, and on my way, I passed by this gentleman with his adorable friend and immediately smiled to myself. But I kept walking. And I couldn’t shake that scene. And I tried to keep walking. But I just couldn’t let it go. So, I turned back and gathered my courage to ask for a portrait.
I said: “ya3teek el 3afye, I just walked past you but couldn’t let go of what I saw—can I take your photo?” And he said sure, no problem. After I took my eye off the viewfinder, I noticed someone was now standing next to us. He said (to the cat): “you’re famous now, ya bissy!”
I’m so glad I turned back.
This was the only other time I had the mental wherewithal to 1) ask for a portrait 2) do it twice: one film and one digital. And it was because this gentleman started chatting me up as I was pointing my camera at various windows and doors.
He started telling me about his museum, and when I turned to look, I immediately noticed the giant medal he was wearing. So, I asked him about it, and he said something about receiving it from the Lebanese president. So, I asked for his name, and he introduced himself as Samir Baz, a figure I later learned really did own this museum and really was a big deal. If you google him, you’ll even learn that he’s descended from German nobility from an article on the Goethe Institute website. That would probably explain his striking blue eyes which I only saw after he took off his sunglasses.
But the real story lies in what he started to say to me soon after. He said: “you’re a womanizer, aren’t you – I can tell!” I laughed and he asked: “how do you pull all these women, huh,” and I laughed even harder. At this point, my brother-in-law joined us, so Mr. Baz asked him an even crasser question. So crass, in fact, I was too embarrassed to repeat it again in front of my sister…
He continued to invite us to visit the museum, even offering to waive the entrance fee, but by that point we were awkwardly backing away and making excuses about having to head back to Beirut.
So yeah. Ask for that portrait! You’ll never know what you might learn…