Few things I knew about Lebanon before setting a foot in the country: Amin Maalouf is Lebanese, it has an extraordinary cuisine, and it is the country with the largest number of refugees per citizen.
But in the three years that I have been part of the Lebanese and the USJ community, I have had some time to discover more aspects about Lebanon. I have confirmed that all the previous points are true, but in the process of reading novels, eating moutabbal and encountering Syrian refugees struggling with the consequences of the bloody war some kilometers away, I have also found a place to unlearn and learn, create, connect, and dream. I have lived inside a movie where Beirut is the main actress.
- “An actress? But… it is a city!”, my friends in Spain asked me the first time that I talked about Beirut.
- “Well, Beirut is… is not just a city!” – I would tell them.
I have travelled quite a lot. I have also lived in different cities of different countries and yet, none of the qualities used to describe those places can describe Beirut. When I talk about Paris, Madrid, or Milan, I usually express their beauty, the many cultural activities that take place there, the weather, the food… However, Beirut, the protagonist of this movie, goes beyond those descriptions.
Beirut is neither beautiful nor ugly. It is not a hot or a cold city. Beirut is not ancient or modern. Beirut is not just a city. Instead, Beirut is for me an entire alive entity that suffers and rejoices with her population. “Her” population, of course, it could not be any other way, because Beirut is a nostalgic teta preparing coffee and manouche zaatar for her grandchildren on a Saturday morning. In the early afternoon, she metamorphoses into the chaotic mess of never-ending traffic, claxons and cursing at every intersection. And after a cold shower and a great dinner with arguileh, my dearest friend Beirut accompanies me to dance frenetically until dawn. Beirut cannot be just beautiful, but also lovable, caring, chaotic, and euphoric, like the people that she has created and that recreate her back.
She is a chaos of cables and facades with holes that whistle the past wars and the new ones. She is a lunatic that reads with the light of a candle and an ambitious historian that does not like transitions and tends to repeat the same story again and again. And I have seen her gathering pieces of her fallen castle and throwing them to the sky, shouting for change, claiming for justice and for what is hers.
Beirut is tired, as my friends, as my neighbors, as all of us are, but she is also immortal, and her power goes further than the corruption and the fear, fighting against the separation between the Lebanese people. In Beirut, I have become reckless, I have laughed, I have cried, and I have loved as intensely as the city has loved me, dragging me into her artistic chaos until I became a part of it, part of her addictive nonsense, and once inside, I know well that I can’t get out of it.
That is why, Beirut, this is not a goodbye, yet.
Sonia Caballero Pradas
Spanish lecturer at the FdLT
under the AECID
(Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo)