Tag: lebanon

by jad

#BusLineHeroes: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 18

Part 1: Becoming the Change This week, I’m stripping it all back to the bare tacks: I’m grateful for the stories I’m able to tell. @BusMapProject was a bit of tactical urbanism, a modest gambit to capture a global moment when participatory data and collective mapping were becoming en vogue, in the service of a sociotechnical artifact that was very much not—and in doing so, it was a lot more than that. It was an attempt at re-writing a story that Lebanese people told themselves about themselves. In place of chaos, we wrote of everyday ordering; instead of lawlessness, we … Continue reading “#BusLineHeroes: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 18” →

by jad

Earth Week: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 17

Part 1: Lebanon I’ve noticed a pattern on Instagram in the last few weeks; every time I flick through your stories, I see one or two or three or four of you posting images of plant life—wild flowers, potted plants, tree bark, even grass. These little odes to botany come from different countries & diverse people, but they usually share a similar aesthetic: close up, almost reverential, with an air of rediscovered naïveté like “have you ever really seen a leaf, like really really seen a leaf?” It seems that social distancing has brought us closer to our non-human neighbors. … Continue reading “Earth Week: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 17” →

by jad

Creed & Culture: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 11

Part 1: Grandpa’s Hymn This is a hymn written by my grandpa, a poet and gentle soul who always spoke like he was from another dimension, and now, is struggling to cling to the last tendrils of connection to this world. He’s been hospitalized after a bad fall and his mental state is deteriorating rapidly—my mother says that he’s not recognizing anyone in the room, though he’s talking about me by name. At first, I was stunned by that particular detail; I’ve been a terrible grandson, rarely around or in touch. But then I stopped to think about why he’d … Continue reading “Creed & Culture: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 11” →

by jad

Kuwait: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 10

Part 1: Growing Up For the longest time, I’d dream in distinct phases. In college, my dreams were populated by people from high school; in high school, my dreams featured my friends from Kuwait. That pattern has since abated; today, my memories of Q8, as we called it, are still vivid, but the details are hazy & more dreamlike than ever before. Kuwait is where my sister was born; it’s where I heard Pretty Fly for a White Guy on the US Armed Forces Radio—you had to turn the dial to the very edge of the spectrum, in one corner … Continue reading “Kuwait: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 10” →

by jad

The Ex: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 6

Part 1: Difference Today I want to talk about hummus. That’s not hummus in my photo, that’s mtabbal, aka baba ghannouj. I don’t want to talk about mtabbal at all. I took that photo years ago to talk about “my” culture. I want to talk about chocolate–flavored hummus. Rick Flair-endorsed, BDS-listed #SuperBowl ‘mmus. I want to talk about how my views have both changed and remained the same when it comes to this amorphous cellular cake of matter and meaning we call human culture. I didn’t think much about hummus before I started leaving Lebanon; that’s when it stopped being … Continue reading “The Ex: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 6” →

by jad

The Family Tree: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 5

Part 1: Oummi I’m looking at a NYT article from 1984. The story goes like this: “The United States battleship New Jersey bombarded Druse & Syrian gun batteries in Lebanon for more than nine hours today in the heaviest and most sustained American military action since the Marines arrived here 16 months ago. The gunfire was directed at targets ”in Syrian-controlled Lebanon which have been firing on the city of Beirut,” a Marine spokesman, Maj. Dennis Brooks, said. The shells fired into the capital had landed in Christian-dominated East Beirut, several miles from the Marine compound at Beirut International Airport.” … Continue reading “The Family Tree: 20 Weeks of Gratitude, Week 5” →

by jad

November in the October Revolution

I’d been fighting back tears all October long, and had managed, quite successfully, to keep the tempests in their tiny bottles despite the highs and lows of this eventful month. Then some footage of a young man from Sidon emerged. This man is a metalhead, from what I could glimpse of his t-shirt in the aggressively framed video; the cinematography directs your eyes elsewhere—to his bloodstained teeth, to the fear in his eyes. “I didn’t mean it,” they have him say. Once more, with feeling. And the bottles fell off their shelves. And here they are, still falling—for this young … Continue reading “November in the October Revolution” →

by jad

#LebanonProtests in Seattle, Part 2

Seattle stands with the #LebanonProtests for the second Sunday in a row. Back home, a human chain was formed earlier today connecting cities across Lebanon’s coast in a show of unity, as the fissures begin to manifest on day 11 of the revolt. Pro-President friends and family have started to speak out after days of silence; moods swings in people once exuberant and supportive are more noticeable—maybe due to the daily inconveniences to ordinary lives, maybe thanks to pro-government agitprop, I don’t know. Tempers are flaring on the other side as well; the vanguards are in tension, with some raising … Continue reading “#LebanonProtests in Seattle, Part 2” →

by jad

Reflections on Bus Map Project in the October Revolution

Bus Map Project emerged just before the last wave of protests in 2015, and part of its DNA was a desire to see “less talk, more action.” We were tired of hearing the question: “where is the state?” At first, this alienated some of our potential allies. What we wanted was to see more people stepping into their rightful place as “the people.” At the end of the day, we are “the state,” because: 1) people are its source of legitimacy, 2) and people are what make it all function, through everyday “doing.” It’s so heartening to see the current … Continue reading “Reflections on Bus Map Project in the October Revolution” →

by jad

20+C+M+B+19

This may not be the strangest thing to happen in our building’s very long history in this part of town, but I dare say that it probably stands out. Tonight, our parish priest blessed every room of our tiny apartment with a special prayer based on the function and meaning of that space—yes, including the bathroom. We started by chalking the door: 20 † C † M † B † 19, the year and the letters of “christus mansionem benedicat,” or “may Christ bless this house.” Our home was then sprinkled with holy water from an aspergillum of rosemary. Something … Continue reading “20+C+M+B+19” →