Since the outbreak of the waste crisis in the wider Beirut area in 2015, the Lebanese government has resorted to the supposedly temporary solution of storing municipal waste in the coastal landfills of Borj Hammoud, Jdeideh, and Costa Brava. Far from being new or temporary, this solution is in fact merely a repetition of decisions […]
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Qalaq—Notes from the Making of a Film
Prologue Rasha Salti Completed in 2018, artist and filmmaker Ghassan Halwani’s film Erased,___ Ascent of the Invisible is heartfelt journey into existential questions, manifest in images, sensations, signs, metaphors, and allegories, on what it means to continue to live with the absence of a person who was kidnapped, to cohabit with the archive of the Committee […]
The Factory of Beasts
Two weeks into my prison sentence, as I stood by the cell’s open door during exercise time, I saw two inmates holding a third from his underarms. They were walking him through the corridor, with the prison guard hurrying them to move faster as they struggled with the heavy weight of his body and his […]
On Rubble and Buried Meaning
“Tread softly;For I believe the crust of this earthIs nothing but the crumbled dust of these bodiesIt is disgraceful of us, regardless of time,To desecrate our fathers and forefathers” -Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī [1] There is no clear and documented historical context for the reasons that prompted al-Maʿarrī to write these verses. However, in the context […]
Punctuating Anxiety
First off, an admission: The process of writing this has, like most writing, spawned its own little qalaq storm. Least of all because, as I reflect on the topic of anxiety, I cannot help but anxiously wonder whether there is any point to writing on historical cultural anxiety at a moment when the present itself […]
Separation
clubhouse Julian Christopher pinged you: 3m ago You should join this room. I am talking with Chora Nerval, Gerard Labrunie, and 6 others about “Techniques for Eliminating Breath from Talk Radio” I am dead, dear listener. This is not a recording. This is not a metaphor. This is not a lie. I am dead, […]