MARCH has been working hard on conflict resolution and peace building across many of Lebanon’s most marginalized communities since 2013.
Beb El Tebbeneh and Jabal Mohsen have been the focus of MARCH’s work for the past 3 years. After the success of Love and War on the the Rooftop play between fighters from both neighborhoods, we felt we needed to do more and that’s when Kahwetna — قهوتنا Café bi Kaffak cultural cafe was born on the former frontline of Syria Street, employing 5 former fighters full-time, and 5 part-time.
BEB EL DAHAB
Almost a year after Kahwetna — قهوتنا Café bi Kaffak’s opening, MARCH kicked off its Beb El Dahab Rebuilders Initiative in late 2016. The plan was to renovate 100 shops heavily damaged by the decades of fighting and neglect.
MARCH hired 80 young men, all former fighters, to renovate and revamp 100 stores on Syria Street and Muhajereen Street, overseen by experienced foremen, architects and engineers. Not forgetting the gender equality aspect, MARCH also trained 12 young women from the area in graphic design and marketing, who then went on to design all the shops’ signage and marketing material.
THE CELEBRATION
The rebuilding process is now complete, and MARCH has the extreme pleasure of inviting you to celebrate with us on April 2nd, 2017!
Syria Street and Muhajereen Street will be car-free on the day, with local shop owners and artisans displaying their authentic products with great deals and offers for everyone coming from Tripoli and beyond!
Kahwetna — قهوتنا Café bi Kaffak’s outdoor space will host many local NGOs doing amazing work across Tripoli and the Lebanon. This will include the first ever DONNER SANG COMPTER “Blood for Peace” drive, between fighters from the opposite side of the divide.
The festival features two big stages as well, with bands, singers, musicians, comedians and celebrities entertaining guests and visitors throughout the day. Guided walking tours will also be available for visitors who have never been to Beb El Tebbeneh and Jabal Mohsen!
SEE YOU THERE!
Many of you always ask if you can visit and how you can help with MARCH’s projects in Tripoli and elsewhere. This is your perfect chance to come and see what we do, meet our amazing team and see how you can be part of our ongoing and future projects. It’s also a perfect chance for you to discover Tripoli as we have now come to know and love it! ❤
I’m not much of a creative type, but one thing I have begrudgingly began to accept is that I really love taking photos. Instagram is by far my favorite social network. It’s also the one I put the most effort into. Heck, I think I’d even be willing to deactivate my Facebook and stick to Instagram if I didn’t enjoy trolling statuses so much.
Before, the idea of buying a camera was always so farfetched to me. My smartphone cameras were always enough, and I used to tell myself that when you see a good shot, you probably won’t have your camera and its settings ready to take that shot. In 2015, after going to Dubai with Canon for an awesome workshop and street photography weekend, I kinda understood why a camera isn’t as much of a hassle I thought it would be, and that it’s actually a lot of fun and gives you a lot more to play with before sharing an image.
On my way back from JFK in late 2015, I had a layover in Doha’s Hamad International Airport. I remember checking Amazon for mirrorless cameras, and thinking the Fujifilm XA-1 seemed within a price range I was willing to part with. I had second thoughts, and didn’t up ordering. At the duty free in Qatar though, I saw a tech store with that same camera, two lenses, a camera bag and a 64GB SD card for the price of the camera on Amazon. I picked up the box, headed to the cashier, and what’s when I bought my first camera.
The first time I tried using manual settings, I watched 4-minute YouTube clip about how to take shots in low light, and headed down to Mashrou’ Leila and spent the entire night trying to capture something decent. I did. I was in love. I don’t think I’d ever go down the DSLR path, cause quite frankly, I’m lazy and my XA-1 fills in for me so I just have to point and shoot when not at night or at a club.
Anyway, recently, I’ve noticed I love themes in the shots I take, and one theme I am particularly fond of is my “See-Through” shots. They’re shots taken in neighborhoods and cities that have been torn apart by war and are still struggling to pick the pieces up. In Lebanon, it’s hard for your eyes to not fall upon a bullet-ridden abandoned building with shrapnel wounds every few hundred meters. In some places, it’s a long-gone memory. In others however, it’s an ever-present warning of how quickly things can go downhill again.
The name was just a lazy Instagram caption at first, but then I realized it kinda had a double entendre. See-through as in transparent, but also, see through as in not fall for the deception, and see things for what they truly are.
Here are some of my “See-Through” shots, taken with my Fujifilm XA-1 and my Motorola Moto G4+
Taken in Tripoli, from what’s left of a building damaged by dozens of rounds of violence since the Lebanese Civil War (Fujifilm X-A1)
That same building in Tripoli, but from the other side of the former frontline, taken a week after the first one above (Fujifilm X-A1)
This shot summarizes the decades of fighting all in one frame. The wall is traditional Lebanese stone masonry, damaged so heavily, that it was plastered with cheap material and painted orange to cover it up. The wall was then punched through by a shell shot from below, and eventually served as an opening to shoot rocket-propelled grenades from above in retaliation. (Fujifilm X-A1)
Despite the damage though, and being burned and destroyed many times over the past few decades, someone still lives there, and attempts to renovate the building are clear. (Fujifilm X-A1)
This building used to be a printing press on the corner of Monot Street and Huvelin Street. Today, only parts of its facade still stand, flanked by student parking on one side and pubs on the other. The bullet holes on a building so close to the “Green Line” that used to divide East and West Beirut are a gentle reminder to people walking through those streets who bother to glance up and care to notice the scars, and see the sky through them.
This building off Sassine Square is also a phantom that many of us pass by almost on a daily basis, but never bother to look at. This shot has special significance for me personally, since for once, I wasn’t alone while taking it, but with a person I care for deeply who agreed to venture into the abandoned building and explore it with me.
Not all the See-Through photos are sad or somber though. Some are liberating and comforting, capturing an intense love for Techno and the culture that surrounds it.
Richie Hawtin performing at Club Der Visionäre in Kreuzberg in Berlin. Hawtin is one of the producers that helped me discover how much I love Techno growing up, taken in a city I spent most of last year revelling in. It’s blurry because photography is not allowed in that city while clubbing, or at least exceptionally frowned upon. This shot was just too good though, and it brings back fond memories in a city that has embraced its dark, war-torn past, and transformed into something better and teaming with life.
Across the river from this gig is where one of the final major battles of WWII happened. Where Soviet troops overwhelmed Nazi defenses in Berlin, close to Treptower Park. That day, it was full of happiness and people dancing. It was also when I felt it was time to go home, which is why I was standing behind, looking through, no longer on the dance floor, but merely admiring from afar what had made my year special, all the people I met there, all the conversations I had and all the art my ears were privy to. I was seeing through the art installation behind the DJ booth, but also, I could see through the reason I needed a long break, and that it was time to leave and go back home.
I’m sorry for the cheesiness and preachiness of some of the captions, but even when it’s a quick, blurry shot, there’s always a story behind those shots and this is the first time I share them here and try to put what they mean to me into words. I’m used to using words, but this images thing is new and I’d love it if you guys tell me what you think.
Those of you who have had me in their social networks for a while now will probably know that a lot of what used to become blogposts, have now become almost instantaneous Instagram posts with captions and a shots taken mostly with my Fujifilm X-A1 mirrorless camera.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been sharing photos from Beb El Tebbeneh and Jabal Mohsen on the #BebElDahab hashtag. Below, I’ll briefly explain what MARCH is doing up there, why it’s been so fucking awesome for me and what we’re hoping to do next.
What’s MARCH?
It’s what I mean by “we” when I’m explaining to someone why I need to be in Tripoli after a full night of clubbing.
MARCH was founded in 2011. It was created to help empower the many different elements of Lebanon’s civil society. We do that mainly through freedom of expression and fighting censorship. MARCH’s mission is to educate, motivate, and empower citizens to know and fight for their basic civil rights. We hope to raise a tolerant, more open Lebanese society so we can foster our diversity and promote equality between all taxpayers in hopes of reaching a genuine reconciliation among the various communities scarred by decades of violence, mistrust and hopelessness.
What’s MARCH Doing in Tripoli?
Our work in Tripoli revolves around our peace-building and de-radicalization efforts in the former warring neighborhoods of Jabal Mohsen and Beb El Tebbeneh. At first, we painstakingly sought out and vetted 16 young men and women who had participated in the fighting in one way or another. Some were even part of radical extremist groups fighting on both sides in Syria and other parts of Lebanon.
Phase 1 — The Play, The Documentary
Over a period of 7 months, our volunteers were trained by many prominent drama and theater professionals. March hired Lucien Bourjeily to help mould the fighters into stage actors. The likes of George Khabbaz, Nadine Labaki, Rafic Ali Ahmad and many more helped the young men and women learn how to act on stage, build confidence and trust amongst each other. They also helped them write their own satirical play about their life and circumstances called “Love and War on the Rooftop”.
To make sure we document everything, everything was kept on film and MARCH produced a 50-minute documentary that depicts the transformation of the actors and the project from right after the clashes stopped, till the cross-country tour of the final play had wrapped up. Below is the trailer, and it will be available for the public very soon!
Phase 2 — The Cultural Cafe
The resounding success of the play, and its accompanying documentary, made us resolve to transform that success and momentum into something more permanent and sustainable.
That’s when we decided to take over a heavily damaged building on the former front line of “Syria Street” in Tripoli, and revamp it. A few weeks later, our fully-equipped cultural cafe: “Kahwetna — Cafe bi Kaffak”, was open.
The cafe is a safe space run by the former fighters themselves. It has a stage, screens, a sound-system and anything they might need to host their own shows, movie nights, karaoke nights and other events such as kids birthday parties and football match viewings. More importantly, it gave many young folks in both neighborhoods a place to hang out, to work and to unleash their talents on stage or learn from regular workshops carried out inside it. It also gave folks from outside of the two neighborhoods a chance to come visit the heart of them, and meet the people they had only heard bad things about over the news since 2008.
Months after the cafe opened its doors, it hosted the Cultural Blast festival, with a lineup of different comedy, musical and experimental acts from both Tripoli and other parts of Lebanon. The amazing success of both is what pushed the project even further, with plans to rehabilitate 90 stores on Syria Street and Muhajareen Street that were heavily damaged by the clashes.
Before the neighborhoods were called Beb El Tebbeneh and Jabal Mohsen, they were both known as “Beb El Dahab”. We loved that name, and it symbolizes a more prosperous, more peaceful time. That’s why we gave the rehabilitation project that name, and so far, several small business owners have decided to rename their establishments into: “Cafe Beb El Dahab” “Forn Beb El Dahab” and “Garage Beb El Dahab”!
A lot of the young folks from Tripoli and the region are extremely good musicians, singers and rappers. If you don’t believe me, check out this gem:
Our next plan is to try and create a recording studio for them in the cafe, so they can produce their own music, anytime without the exorbitant fees a musician usually needs to book a studio.
Tripoli isn’t our only focus though. In December, we launched a similar peace-building project in Akkar. This month, we kicked off our Beirut project with renowned Lebanese director and playwright Yehia Jaber: Hona Beirut.
If you’d like to volunteer, you can email us and get in touch with us regarding the projects you’d be part of.
We are also participating in GivingLoop’s campaign to help fund more of our projects, with a small monthly amount. So, if you like what I do, check out our page on GivingLoop!
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