Street Roots:

Beirut’s concrete jungle a fitting backdrop to art show

June 13, 2008

By Taylor Stevenson, Contributing Columnist

Beirut, Lebanon—If you’ve been in Portland since the early ’90s, you know why the city was dubbed “Little Beirut.” While the moniker is charming to Portland activists and Bush haters, the two cities could not be more different.

I left Portland for Beirut in early March to visit an old friend and curate an exhibit of recycled art. My first impression was that the city is remarkably safe. Women can walk alone anywhere and at any time without fear. I can leave my purse unattended in a nightclub without worry. And even the local taxi drivers offer an honest deal. Upon arriving, I even marveled repeatedly to local friends about how stable the political situation seemed. As they offered me an uneasy smile, I’d look for something wooden to knock on. Nothing wooden in sight.

Not just is there no security from sudden political upheaval, Beirut is a city completely devoid of wood, trees and public green space. Having grown up on the edge of Portland’s Forest Park, where I could walk for hours in the woods and relax, Beirut feels imposing. Here, the environment is upscale stores and abandoned buildings, miniscule sidewalks and kamikaze taxi drivers, polluted beaches and ocean side landfills.

Two months into my trip, my environment became relegated to the walls of my apartment as the country was shut down by yet another violent national crisis. Kept awake by nearing gunfire, I was reminded of why Portland was once tagged Little Beirut — for its protests. Portland is calm in the absence of George Bush, but Beirut cannot seem to outgrow its reputation as a volatile country. And while I was trapped at home, craving Portland’s Forest Park or some other calm, green sanctuary, I couldn’t help but wonder if the city’s environmental crisis isn’t somehow related to its political crises.
The recent political crisis in Lebanon occurred between the Sunni-led government and The Opposition (Shi’a Hezbollah and its allies). For years, Hezbollah has been pressuring Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to step down. Siniora is a friend both to the United States and to the late Rafic Hariri, Lebanon’s infamous Prime Minister-turned-martyr who was assassinated in 2005. While the shrine to Hariri is a public and flower-filled site in downtown Beirut, Hariri is known for favoring profitable development over public space. Beirut’s downtown is a prime example.

Once a central hangout for people of all confessional and socioeconomic backgrounds, Beirut’s downtown was decimated during its 15-year civil war (1975-1990). Hariri, who was in power under Syrian rule in the years following the civil war, attempted to reconstruct Beirut’s downtown by selling it to a development company, Solidaire, and offering shares to his wealthy Lebanese and Saudi friends. Most of the shares, though, he kept for himself. Solidaire is now the name for Beirut’s infamously upscale center of high-rise buildings, where human diversity is barely even a memory.

Solidaire is sterile and expansive, encompassing even a nearby landfill. Unable to transport garbage to a proper landfill during the civil war, West Beirut began dumping its garbage and war rubble into the Mediterranean Sea, forming what became known as the Normandy Landfill. By the end of the civil war, the makeshift landfill was a 55-acre peninsula that contained more than 6.5 million cubic yards of waste. Today, the landfill is closed and slated for development into more high-rise buildings by Solidaire, which seems fitting in a city devoid of parks and public space.

Hariri was accused of stealing billions from Lebanon through the corporations that he and his business partners established, and which remain in the family for the benefit of people like his son, Saad Hariri, the current Sunni parliament majority leader. One such company is Sukleen, which collects Beirut’s solid waste. When Sukleen was established, garbage was privatized to make it illegal for anyone but Sukleen to collect trash in Beirut. While a few lone scavengers have illegally returned to Beirut’s dumpsters, the law was heavily enforced during its inception. Sukleen has a dismal recycling record, but it manages to charge the government $100 per ton of garbage it collects daily, totaling about $200,000 per day.
So it is fitting that Sukleen’s garbage cans were stolen and burned during the recent siege. The opposition is looking for a clean sweep. Hariri’s friends, family and corporations have taken advantage of their power and made off with everything from Beirut’s downtown to the city’s garbage.

This is not to say that the opposition would handle the country any more responsibly than the country’s current leaders, especially its natural environment. I have never heard the opposition eschewing the plight of a concrete jungle, and their reputation for burning tires in the street certainly wouldn’t bode well for their stance on Kyoto Protocol regulations.

Having grown up in Portland, one of the world’s greenest and most livable cities, I am convinced of the need for a healthy environment to maintain the collective mental health of a community. Countless scientific studies support the claim that exposure to nature reduces aggression, blood pressure, muscle tension and domestic violence rates. While living in Beirut, I did not need scientific research to prove the merits of public green space; my own mounting anxiety was proof alone. Even when politically stable, Beirut is a stressful and polluted place to live. My apartment balcony became my only available sanctuary, except when exposed to aimless bullets.

While most of the Lebanese people I spoke with complained about the lack of public green space in Beirut, they find that starting an initiative to create it a daunting task. I had traveled to Beirut to curate an exhibit of recycled art and, with the onset of the recent crisis, was wondering if the exhibit would be cancelled. Countless important projects are started in Lebanon that simply dissolve when the big guns appear. This is what it is to dream big in Lebanon—always expect a rude awakening. So while I believe that public green space would serve the population well and help to alleviate some of the country’s endless tension, I recognize that the hard work that it will take to rally for public space will require enough quiet time to give local activists the nerve to start again.

Those of us living in Little Beirut are lucky. We can plan for the future, shed guilt by recycling, and even the most destitute of us have access to a patch of public green space. I, however, was also lucky in big Beirut. By some twist of fate, the crisis ended just in time for my recycled art exhibit to open. People were so excited to have an environmental exhibit in Lebanon that they flocked to the gallery for interviews. Just as the cameras were aimed and ready, a Hezbollah leader somewhere began broadcasting a speech on television. Excited supporters took to the streets with their AK-47s and aimed for the sky, drowning out my descriptions of woven plastic and bicycle inner tubes.

Only in the real Beirut can an entire room of professionals erupt in exhausted laughter at the deafening sound of gunfire.