Beirut

i don't know what you see when you look at this image
i know what I see.
I see war.
no hesitation, this is a war image.

it was supposed to be a romantic view of Beirut over the clouds.
... NO, no romance, just horror.

maybe because of the site too.
look at the image.

go straight, right in the middle, you'll arrive to a place where i was caught one day in the middle of a street fight. panic and pure fear.
civil war, they called it.

go to the right, you'll reach the place where our prime minister has been assassinated a few years ago.
a big black explosion.
war has ended, they said.

go left, you'll go inside my memory
i was sixteen
war was a fact of life, like school and friends and death.
like having electricity and water for few hours only everyday.
we vaguely knew other people had them all the time, but that idea was so abstract.

one day we had a whole week fight in our street (Verdun street it's called)
we slept in the "visitors bathroom", the only safe place in the whole house.
and of course no water, no electricity for the whole week.

one of the days,they declared a "break" for 6 hours.
yes, they used to do that, even the fighters need to eat and sleep.
people too.


at the left of this image, was a small public "fountain"
i have no idea why and how it was there, in the middle of the city.
we went there, waited for 1 hour for our turn to arrive, drove back home, waited another half an hour for the generator.
we lived in the 9th floor.
we put all this in the bath tubs
and went there again.
all day long. until the end of the break.
we barely made it.

------

I've seen people shot, people explode, people burn. I've escaped a sniper, several times.
I've seen bodies tied to a car and driven in the streets.
I've seen countless number of bombs falling around me, for 16 years.
I've been attacked by the "enemy's" dogs, when passing between regions.

but that stupid "water" day, that is one of my ugliest war memories.
it has to do with the humiliation.


and it's right there into this image.

i wanted to show you a part of my memory.