Elias Khoury, “The Bulldozers of Memory and the Ruins of the Future,” Al-Mulḥaq, May 2, 1992.
An-Nahar is a major daily newspaper is Lebanon. The cultural supplement, which was sometimes also called Mulhaq An-Nahar (An-Nahar supplement), is now dissolved. Founded by poet and journalist Ounsi Al Hajj in 1964, it was suspended during the Lebanese Civil War and then resumed by the writer and novelist Elias Khoury in 1992.
Khoury, “Bulldozers of Memory.”
Khoury, “Bulldozers of Memory.”
“Alternative Vision for the Reconstruction of Beirut,” Al-Mulḥaq, May 2, 1992.
In 1991, the Lebanese government resolved to reconstruct Beirut’s central district through the framework of a public-private real estate company. However, the company itself (named Solidere) wasn’t founded until May 1994, during Hariri’s first term as prime minister. The creation of Solidere, which embodied Hariri’s vision for Beirut, is considered one of his main accomplishments, despite the many controversies that accompanied its establishment, especially its disconnection from the social fabric of the city and its expropriation of private property in return for company shares. After Hariri’s assassination in 2005, his tomb was erected on Solidere land, in a symbolic gesture indicating the intimate connection between the man and the company.
Khoury, “Bulldozers of Memory.”
Elias Khoury, “Memory Wars,” Al-Mulḥaq, January 25, 1997.
Khoury, “Memory Wars.”
The Lebanese newspaper As-Safir was founded in 1974, shortly before the Civil War, and was known for its support of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), before it later became close to the Syrian regime and Hezbollah. The newspaper was dissolved in 2016.
“Rights-holders” refers to those whose property was being forfeited in return for (often undervalued) shares in Solidere.
Talal Salman, “Goodbye Beirut,” As-Safir, September 21, 1994.
Yehia Jaber, “The Poet-Youths and Their War Memories: From the Barricades of War to the Barricades of Poetry,” Al-Mulḥaq, March 14, 1992.
Youssef Bazzi, “From the Beirut Stage to Beirut Theater: The Prison of Sand and Castles of Sand,” Al-Mulḥaq, April 8, 1995.
Roger Assaf, “Against Forgetting,” Al-Mulḥaq, May 16, 1992.
Elias Khoury, “In Defense of the War,” Al-Mulḥaq, April 14, 2000.
A coalition of right-wing Christian parties and personalities that was established in 1976 amidst the Lebanese Civil War.
Bilal Khbeiz, Jana Nasrallah, and Fadi El Tofeili, “The Left in Lebanon: Has it Earned its Name?,” Al-Mulḥaq, October 10, 1998.
“The Rubble of the Red House and the Heritage Slaughterhouse,” Al-Mulḥaq, May 11, 1996.
Khbeiz, Nasrallah, and El Tofeili, “The Left in Lebanon.”
Khoury, “Memory Wars.”
Elias Khoury, “The Intellectual and the Dog,” Al-Mulḥaq, March 4, 2000.
Bilal Khbeiz, “The Statements of Intellectuals Against the Extension: Coronation of Failures or Facilitation of Hope?,” Al-Mulḥaq, December 2, 1995.
Elias Khoury, “Letter to Georges Corm,” Al-Mulḥaq, September 9, 2000. The Taif Agreement, which was reached by Lebanese deputies in Al Taif in Saudi Arabia, brought an end to the Lebanese Civil War.
Elias Khoury, “Longing, Nostalgia, and Other Names,” Al-Mulḥaq, March 15, 1997.
Georges Corm, “Letter to my Friend Elias Khoury,” Al-Mulḥaq, February 10, 2001.
The play is named after landmark public garden, one of Beirut’s remaining few. The play refers to an incident in 1983 when Ibrahim Tarraf, a law student, was executed by the first public hanging in twenty years, in Sanayeh Garden. Tarraf had murdered his landlady and her son, chopped them up, and dumped bags containing their remains in the garden.
Rabih Mroué, Lina Saneh, Walid Sadek, and Tony Chakar, “The Sanayeh Garden: Criticism of the Regime or Re-production of Power?,” Al-Mulḥaq, May 24, 1997.
Translated from the Arabic by Sam Wilder. Thank you to Amal Issa for additional editing.