Erasing memory in downtown Beirut

...........Hallak is among several activists and academics who have long argued that any project to rebuild the city center should aim to bring original residents back in an effort to stimulate post-war reconciliation over a profit-making enterprise. But she has lowered expectations considerably.

“Just give me one building, that would have shut me up,” Hallak says, rolling off a list of promised cultural centers that never materialized. Hallak has spearheaded the Beit Beirut museum, which will be housed in a shrapnel-pierced apartment block that had become the most-feared sniper’s nest on the line dividing East and West Beirut during the civil war. Hallak spent over a decade of her life fighting to save the arcaded 1930s-era building, which lies just outside of the Solidere area, and was four days away from demolition in the late 1990s, she says. But the slightly graying activist is exasperated by the battle for the BCD.

“I think we deserve Solidere. The people of Beirut don’t understand that it was the biggest rip-off–a real estate company taking over a downtown. I mean, it’s crazy. It changed the whole history and identity of the city. For me, Solidere is a question of erasing the memory of Beirut.” (more)