Beginning her tour at the back of the National Museum in central Beirut, Samira Ezzo immediately made the Lebanese Civil War palatable to her audience.
“From the inside of the museum, a sniper dug a hole into a mosaïc dating back to the Byzantine times,” so that he could shoot whoever would cross the line of demarcation, she told her group, recounting how the museum’s artefacts were protected in cement casts during the war (1975-1990).
She then reminded her audience of the cost of the war: between 1975 and 1990, according to differing estimations, between 90,000 and 150,000 people were killed, and between 3,000 and 17,000 disappeared.
Dressed in black and white, Samira, who was not even born when the war ended, stressed the conflict’s different root causes while underlining how different narratives coexist.
Standing on the sidewalks of Damascus Road, she explained how the area gradually became a kill zone, effectively separating “West Beirut” (Al-Gharbiyah) from “East Beirut” (Al-Sharqiyah).
[Photography by Matthieu Karam]
[Photography by Matthieu Karam]
Samira started her tour in 2021 under the name Layers of Lebanon. After a few years of working as an English teacher with an interest in culture and heritage, she decided to go back to university to study tourism. It is while walking around the city — her hobby — that she was struck with the impact left by the war on Beirut.
“Growing up, I did not hear about the Civil War, I then started asking questions about what my family had faced during those years,” Samira tells The New Arab.
She turned this familial silence into a compelling story for her audience. “My maternal grandpa had to flee his home in what was East Beirut at the time, as his colleagues came to tell him that he would need to leave immediately, saying that the Christians were coming to kill all the Muslims in the area. They were stopped at a checkpoint.”
Thankfully, his colleagues could pull some strings and Samira’s grandfather made it to West Beirut unscathed.
Samira’s personal history resonates in many ways with that of her audience.
“I remember crossing the Green Line with my mother, my siblings, and our suitcases when we had to go to the airport to visit my father in Africa,” Myriam Sfeir, the executive director of the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University, shares with The New Arab, while on the tour.
“I feel very sad today. Look at how we harmed each other. We were not resilient, we were scared: many women and men relied upon and abused antidepressants that were readily available over the counter during the war,” she continues.
“The war gravely scarred us physically and emotionally, given its brutality and absurdity, and we should all work to remember so that it is not repeated,” she explained.
Myriam’s organisation is part of the executive committee of Hkeeli, a civil society-led initiative commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil War.
Continuing the tour, Samira leads the group to the Prince Building, an Art Deco building used by several militias from the Left. The heritage building’s sandstone walls are riddled with bullet holes.
Safaa Joshkon, another attendee of the tour, stands in a corner of the building, directly overlooking the former demarcation line.
Unlike Samira’s grandfather, hers did not survive the war. “He was shot in the back. It is hard to lose someone just because he is Muslim. But it is our history,” the 22-year-old shares with The New Arab.
She said through the tour she finally understood the demarcation line. “My parents would often tell me not to go to Al-Sharqiyah or Al-Gharbiyah,” she says, to which she would always respond: “There is only one Beirut; the war is over!”
[Photography by Matthieu Karam]
Thirty-one-year-old Noor, who asked her full name not to be used, said that her generation knows about the Civil War mainly through their parents, which comes at the risk of being exposed to a certain narrative.
“In school, we learn about old history, a lot of it is tied to Fakhreddine (a Druze emir in the 17th century), but we are not taught about the Civil War,” she said.
In public schools across Lebanon, the history curriculum stops at 1943, when Lebanon gained independence from France. Since the end of the Civil War, there have been repeated attempts to incorporate this period into textbooks, in 1997, 2001 and 2010.
In 2024, meetings resumed to reform Lebanese curricula under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education. Consultations are ongoing, and the question of including the Civil War or not is currently being discussed, The New Arab learnt.
Nevertheless, even being raised outside of Lebanon does not guarantee easier access to this period of history, as Alexandre Zammar, a Swiss-Lebanese who was in Lebanon for a visit, explains: “I always knew that my father had to leave Lebanon because of the war, and I have known rather early on that there had been a Civil War that pitted Christians against Muslims, but I never dared to ask questions because I could sense it was a sensitive topic.”
The tour continues, as Samira makes a stop in front of the Jewish cemetery and a fresco featuring characters from the movie West Beirut by Ziad Doueiri, before her final stop at Beit Beirut, a heritage building saved from destruction in the 1990s.
It is here that Nadim Azzedine, a Syrian Arabic teacher who has lived in Lebanon for 10 years, shares how he feels that the Civil War has not yet ended.
“It is still going on within the Lebanese on a personal basis,” he tells The New Arab. “In some families, the children have the same ideas as their fathers and grandfathers, and the same thing will happen in Syria now.”
He then wonders, “Maybe in 50 years, we in Syria will be in the situation that Lebanon is living in at the moment?” reflecting on the consequences of the fall of Bashar al-Assad, on December 8, 2024.
Laure Delacloche is a French freelance journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon, She focuses on social issues, especially how crises impact women. Her work has appeared in French and international outlets and she is a member of Solvo, a solutions-oriented collective of journalists
Follow her on X: @LaureDelacloche
