Reconstructing Beirut: Memory and Space in a Postwar Arab City

Chapter Five. Caf

This chapter examines the relationships of Beirutis to specific urban public spaces and the sense of place they provided before, during, and after the war. In particular, it analyzes the ways the social understanding of time and place is expressed through memory at a time when competition over space reached its height in the unpredictable postwar environment. As I look at issues involving space and memory, I examine postwar “temporality ” by analyzing specific coffee-drinking venues. Based on interviews with men, women, academics, artists, and ordinary residents, the chapter presents the ways specific public sites are remembered and recalled. The following cases of remembering and forgetting explore some of the differences and intersections between gendered groups in their recollections of public spaces before and during the war. The spaces in question were not official political arenas, nor were they former battlegrounds, but rather were ordinary spaces, ones where Beirutis gathered around the practice of drinking coffee. Coffee-drinking venues in Beirut provide case studies of some of Lebanon’s very real and complex postwar dilemmas. By examining the recollected narratives centered on the experiences of socializing and drinking coffee at prewar French-style cafés, wartime funeral homes, and postwar expresso vans, the chapter presents the ways in which gender, class, and temporality are linked to prohibited and accessible spaces. Recalling PRewaR times anD sPaces In the reconstruction era, prewar Beirut had become a historical utopia. As mentioned earlier, one finds it described as having been the cosmopolitan center of the Middle East, the “East’s window to the West,” and “the Paris of the Arab world.” Authors often praised the prewar city as a place that enabled an international community to feel very much at home, and as a place that functioned as a regional center for finance, Chapter 5 cafés, funeRals, anD the futuRe of coffee sPaces 90 ReconstRucting BeiRut commerce, and other economic activities for the entire Middle East. In addition to its crucial economic role, Beirut was remembered through oral and written accounts as a place where men and women, intellectuals, artists, and writers exchanged ideas and engaged in intellectual debate. In an interview I conducted with Niqola Ziadeh, a retired history professor, he praised his favorite city as unique: “Beirut is different from both Damascus and Amman. A French person can easily live in Beirut, but not in Damascus or Amman.” Ziadeh had lived in a number of cities in Palestine , Jordan, Syria, England, and the United States, but he nonetheless had felt homeless, stateless, and jobless. He said, “As a Palestinian, Beirut rescued me.” During the 1950s and 1960s, he recalled that there were, on average, 2.5 cultural activities (concerts, lectures, workshops) per day in the area of Ras Beirut that housed the American University, the Spanish Cultural Center, and the Italian Institute, as well as other local cultural organizations. The Lebanese remembered and documented prewar and wartime periods through various means: they created art, including theater plays, visual work, and film; published memoirs, historical accounts, and coffee-table books of photographs;1 and founded museums, both on the official and unofficial levels. They also launched Internet Web sites where individuals posted memories, old photos, or notices seeking lost friends and family members. The authors of these works believed that healing the wounds of the war and preventing a future civil war could be accomplished only by confronting the past, especially the brutality of the war. Prewar and wartime memories are gendered. Men and women recalled different sites as accessible or prohibited. In their recollections of their prewar experiences, educated Beiruti women nostalgically described a sophisticated, vibrant urban setting. They emphasized their experiences of crossing social, familial, and religious borders in their attempts to set up places for themselves in public life. In an interview with me, Ilham, a professor at a local university, described the situation of women in the 1960s: “At that time, women were visible in almost all public spaces without necessarily being accompanied or guarded by men.” In Ilham’s case, many of the places that were prohibited for her mother’s generation became accessible to her. Before the sixties, women’s spatial movement was restricted to traditional spaces such as the hairdresser, the tailor, houses of close relatives, and some local shops. At that time, only a handful of women worked outside their homes. cafés, funeRals, anD the futuRe of coffee sPaces 91 In...