Beirut I Love You: Portrait Of A City On The Edge

Zena El Khalil’s Beirut, I Love You portrays the incredible variety of life to be found in Lebanon’s thriving capital, despite the encroachment of war, political upheaval and other calamities. Sarah Zakzouk records her impressions of Khalil’s work, and looks at how it embodies the complexities and contradictions of the city of Beirut.

Zena el Khalil, Beirut, I Love You – A Work in Progress in collaboration with Director Gigi Roccati

Zena El Khalil, author of Beirut, I Love You has lived a colourful life of travel, trials and tribulations. She has resided in Lagos, London, New York and Beirut where she currently works as a visual artist, writer and cultural activist. This cultural activism sees Zena take a prominent role in Lebanese society, including her annual ‘performance’ in The Pink Bride of Peace, which involved donning a viciously pink wedding dress for the Beirut International Marathon. This is a tradition El Khalil began in 2003, which she continues to this day.

In 2006, El Khalil began writing her blog, documenting the scenes of the Israeli invasion from her Beirut apartment. This blog received international acclaim and was publicised on various news portals including CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Counterpunch, The Nation and Spiegel Online. El Khalil received an invitation from the Nobel Peace Centre in 2008 to participate in a panel discussion on the topic of freedom of expression online.
Beirut, I Love You has been translated into several languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Italian. Publisher Saqi Books is an independent publisher of North African and Middle Eastern books, and was awarded the Arab British Culture and Society award in 2008 and the British Book Industry Award in Diversity in Literature in 2009.
‘The open sore that is the Middle East’.
Beirut, I Love You is a story about identity, a story about war, strength and belief – keeping hold of belief and of losing it. Amidst the backdrop of warfare, the people of Beirut must find something to hold on to, something tangible, something real. Zena El Khalil holds on to Beirut and her memories of this beautiful city and its potential to be something great. El Khalil personifies Beirut; it is its own character with feelings, emotions and anxieties.

‘What we didn’t do with guns, we were doing with sex. In public we voiced our opposition, but in the darkness we released our disappointment on each other’.
These are semantics of confusion, of anger, of deep sadness and torment, semantics of frustration, fear, passion, hopefulness and hopelessness. Barriers have come crashing down, lines have been blurred and identities are confused. People are looking for a way to feel human, to experience emotion for themselves and take control of their feelings, rather than being dictated by external forces. People are taking control of their bodies, their sexuality, their appearance and their minds: ‘Girls were breaking off their cultural noses and replacing them with Barbie ones.’ This is about expression, about reinventing oneself and breaking free from stereotypes and oppression. But no matter what the external appearance, these are continuous wars, cyclical in nature; in spite of the Barbie noses, these women were still Arab on the inside:
‘The Middle East has not changed much in the last 200 years. We are still fighting the same wars, but we’ve given them new names.’

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