To step into the “world” of Van No. 4 and its community is to enter an ongoing, unending conversation; a platform where dialogue never rests.

To ride its route, follow its timetable, and move in the rhythm of its wheels is to engage as a listener, a contributor, or a discussion participant in debates and exchanges that mirror the social, political, and religious realities of the Van No. 4 “line,” in its present, past, and future.

The conversations inside the van are the roaming dialogues of the streets and neighborhoods of Beirut’s southern suburb, traveling back and forth to the city. The suburb is the “heart” and home of Lebanon’s Shiites; it is where they exist as displaced and deprived, as powerful, as both oppressors and oppressed. These conversations touch on politics, culture, community affairs, women’s issues, and more. 

The Van is also an observatory, its windows capturing news, conversations, daily lives, concerns, voices, and images and preserving them in a living archive renewed with every journey.

It is, too, a space for research and reporting. And within it lingers a name that never fades: Lokman Slim.

We at UMAM Documentation & Research have decided to turn this journey into a digital publication to make the Van “community” and its world an open public forum in which all Lebanese can take part: sometimes as drivers and writers, sometimes as passengers and readers.