The Roads from Sarajevo: Diaries on Bosnia’s Missing and the Fate of the Lebanese
Last June, fifteen Lebanese parliamentarians, judges, prosecutors, lawyers and representatives from organizations of the families of the disappeared and civil society organizations spent four days in Bosnia visiting with their counterparts from that country. This invaluable trip was organized by the Internal Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and the Freidrich Ebert Stiftung foundation.
During this visit, the delegation toured the laboratories of the ICMP, met with Bosnian parliamentarians and spoke with the families of the Bosnian missing. The delegates also discussed political will and judicial process at the Bosnian Institute of Missing Persons (MPI) as well as with Bosnia-Herzegovina’s General Prosecutor.
UMAM’s research fellow, Sevag Kechichian, was a member of the delegation.
On the large avenue leading from the airport to the city along the sea-shore, the Carlton spreads its facade along the corniche which surrounds the new residential parts of Beirut. The Carlton was constructed in such a manner that all rooms face the sea giving equal opportunity to enjoy the splendid scenery….
This is how one particular Web site, which doesn’t appear to have been updated for at least two years, describes Beirut’s old Carlton Hotel. Opened in February 1960, while this landmark truly exemplified the Beirut scene, it perished (or rather, was assassinated) during Beirut’s ongoing urban slaughter. At the end of 2008, the hotel was purchased by a real estate developer who sought to reinvent it as an extravagant residential compound comprised of three towers.
Among the very few articles that offered an obituary to this unique landmark, one described it as “the meeting [place] of politicians, [a home to] journalists, and a stronghold of intellectuals and revolutionaries” (Asharq Alawsat, December 5, 2008). But as generous as the observation is, it tells but a small part of the building’s story. We certainly cannot forget that the Carlton was one of the laboratories for social life and its advancement in Lebanon.
Thanks to a serendipitous coincidence that occurred while the building was being prepared for demolition, UMAM D&R was able to retrieve several tons of documents before it was lost forever. While this collection has not yet been sorted out (which makes it quite challenging to sift through, organize, catalogue and add individual pieces to our archive), it remains a uniquely eclectic resource. Notably, its assets range from tedious bureaucratic data to amusing day-to-day information, and the items provide an interesting glimpse into social life at different times in Lebanon’s history. Yet without having conducted a methodical examination of this find, we do not know yet what surprises it may reveal. Thus, we invite everyone interested to help UMAM D&R analyze this archive and make it available to a wider audience.
Transitioning from a busy produce warehouse in the 1950s to a hotbed of cultural experiences, The Hangar is now an icon of free expression inBeirut’s Dahiyeh (southern suburb) neighborhood. Its most recent addition, a reading room, allows visitors to review UMAM D&R’s expansive resource library.
UMAM D&R has been working feverishly to perfect its new home on the Web. While we have made significant strides in adapting our vast resources to this improved environment, there is still a great deal of work to be done. Nevertheless, as one of the guiding philosophies of our organization is to “strike while the iron is hot,” we believe it best to launch the site now, even though it remains incomplete, so that we can remain in the public eye. Of course, visitors to our site will continue to see changes, improvements and additions to its content in the near future. We appreciate your understanding as we continue to develop our new portal, and we welcome your comments.
In the wake of the work done by UMAM D&R, our intent in Books from the Battlefield is to challenge the platitudes (and hence, mainstream public opinion) which position the concepts of “war” and “culture” at opposite and irreconcilable ends of the spectrum. In this project, we attempt to elucidate the association betweenLebanon and written works against the backdrop of war. In such an endeavor, UMAM D&R’s vision has always been to ponder, contend with, and sometimes revise our recent history—even its most painful and shameful episodes—both openly and honestly. Indeed, only by doing so can we finally come to terms with this part of our “past.” More specifically, Books from the Battlefield seeks to explore the role played by “cultural production” during the war (especially in book form), and the influence it may continue to exert in view of the recent spate of epiphanies as well as the physical and symbolic “reincarnations” of the war.
MULTIFACETED PROJECTS
What is to Be Done?
Missing
The "War" through its Memorials
UMAM D&R commenced its multi-year, multi-partner initiative titled What is to Be Done? Lebanon’s War-Loaded Memory in April 2008. Through a series of publications, exhibitions, film screenings and workshops that attracted international experts, this initiative succeeded in arousing a deeper, more comprehensive debate about Lebanon’s war-loaded memory. The project was intended to contextualize persistent injustices as well as the problematic nature of Lebanon’s “postwar” reality. Most importantly, this undertaking sought to pave the way for a more viable civil peace. Fortunately, the program stimulated a number of pivotal and ambitious follow-up activities that are currently being pursued in Beirut and the surrounding regions. To facilitate this, UMAM D&R must cross geographic borders in order to engage with people and organizations that share its values.
Beyond the theoretical debate on missing persons, UMAM D&R considers it essential to utilize creative approaches to foster public awareness about the magnitude and impact of enforced disappearance on Lebanese society. Over time, it seems the more resolved we became about the non-existence of those who disappeared, the easier it became for us to ignore our responsibility to conduct effective investigations into their continued and painful absence. In response to the general conclusion “if it cannot be seen it cannot be real,” UMAM-D&R’s exhibition, Missing, is comprised entirely of photographs. It includes pictures of hundreds of individuals from diverse confessions, origins, political persuasions and sex, all of whom disappeared during the Lebanese civil war(s). The exhibition attempts to reanimate those who have disappeared and tie them to our reality, both as individuals and the proportion of the Lebanese population that remains missing.
Memorials convey substantial information about the Lebanese state itself, the many wars the country has endured and the myriad impressions Lebanese people have of themselves. In some cases, the memorials have been situated to distinguish the otherwise invisible lines that separate parties and communities. Indeed, questions abound regarding the emphasis given to those boundaries, and it matters little whether these are motivated by an imposing monument erected in Beirut to commemorate a dignitary or a more modest memorial placed in a remote village to prevent an obscure martyr from falling into oblivion. While all these memorials seem abstract, they remain elements of Lebanon’s public dialogue.
