After the explosion of August 4 in Beirut, I used to find myself a prisoner and search for the alleys that I once visited, and the homes in which I stopped to admire them or the markets and the neighborhoods in which I find condolences.
In one of my last rounds, I went to the gamble trench in the Al -Bashoura neighborhood, five minutes on foot from the city center and about fifteen minutes from the port..Al -Basharah, like many other neighborhoods in Beirut, is a testimony on the struggle of various urban parts to preserve their assets and bear violent transformations and changes in the city.Slow growth and development in the gambage trench contradicts the city center that has been rebuilt.Here, unlike the glossy clean city center, the rugged alleys and roads are characterized by suffocating trees, destroyed homes and stone walls devoured by weeds.And many of the deteriorating decorative buildings, most of which are still inhabited.
secret Garden
During my wandering, I saw wherever I was affected by the affected facades and broken windows, and I hear the broken glass junction as it fly.I decided to go towards the abandoned Saint George Church, which is a beautiful Catholic Syriac Church that was built in 1878, and today it is stuck between the tall buildings of the "Beirut District" digital neighborhood in the outskirts of the gambling trench.If I didn't know that it was there, I would not have seen it.
While trying to search for a person to help me enter the rest of the abandoned church, I met Donia.I had taken a dead end between two dilapidated stone houses, and at the end of it it was a closed red gate.One of the neighbors sitting on a nearby balcony and suggested to her visit.I was initially hesitant, which prompted her to call Dunia, a 50 -year -old woman, who left her store.Donia opened the red gate and brought me into her home, and I sat me in a dilapidated magic style courtyard, and it was clear that he was in the past alive Berjawia.Suddenly, the city's noise decides.Moments of calm under the shadow of the orange and berries tree.
Donia's house consists of one floor with white walls, wooden windows, and a diagonal red tiley ceiling recently added.The kitchen was connected outside on the other hand, in a completely square building.Short and wide trees have grown, to be completely isolated the house from the rest of the city.The family moved here from southern Lebanon in 1958, and it rented the house from a relative.They have stayed in the trench since then, and they never left the city during the various conflicts and wars it witnessed.
Soon after my sitting, Dunya showed me its windows that were affected by the explosion.She introduced me to her mother, who was lying on a sofa inside.While we were talking, you told me how they survived that day -and how they continued to repeat this "miracle".Another version of the painful story that many Beirut population shares.
Extension of Beirut in the nineteenth century
It is often referred to as a gamble trench simply in the name of the "trench".There are many explanations about the origin of the name, including those dating back to the era of the French Mandate, when the youth in the region were involved in skirmishes with French soldiers.In another narration, the name is due to the beginning of the 1958 revolution that challenged President Camille Chamoun's rule and his pro -Western look.Al -Nasiri journalist Nassib Al -Metni, editor -in -chief of the "Telegraph" newspaper, was also assassinated in the surrounding area as well.Other stories of the neighborhood imagine that his fate is always isolated from his surroundings -perhaps because it was built at a low geographical point between the capital, Ashrafieh and Al -Masitah, and surrounded by a cemetery that is not implemented on its western side.
The Bashoura Cemetery is located on the outskirts of the gamble trench, and it has high walls made of sandstone, a substance that was mostly used in the late nineteenth century throughout Lebanon.The walls may have been built early in 1892, then they were restored after the First World War.There is conflicting information about the age of the cemetery itself. Some texts belong to 1878, while others claim that Imam Al -Awza’i visited it in the eighth century.There are still other sources dating back to the time of the Caliph Omar bin Al -Khattab, that is, to the seventh century.
Historically, the location of the graves and the places of the dead was always important.The rituals of commemoration and spiritual practices led to the emergence of miracles, ghosts or other activities linking the living and the dead.In the ditch of gamble, the cemetery rises by several meters from the street, so one does not walk next to the graves, but rather walks below it.I wondered loudly if this was what gave the street - and recently the neighborhood - its name.But Donia laughed and said that she forgets the presence of the cemetery because she rarely sees her from her home.The huge walls give a aura of serenity to the neighborhood, which seems to live uncomfortable in the dense urban fabric of Beirut.
When I passed the cemetery, there was a man sitting with the wall on the sidewalk.Hadi was sitting on a plastic chair.He smiled and said that he was sitting here daily while waiting for others to join him in their spare time.Ten months ago, he was demobilized from the press he was working with, and for the first time in his life, he had time just for sitting and watching people passing through.But today he has reached 65 years, and with the economic crisis and the absence of a retirement plan, today it is concerned about his future.Hadi says that there are fountains inside the cemetery, some of which are still useful and user.And if you dig a few meters on the ground, you will find the old water channels of the neighborhood, which were used when Beirut was surrounded by its medieval walls in the 1940s, with seven gates and market surrounded by agricultural lands.At that time, the graves were on the suburbs, not in the city as it is today.
In the mid -nineteenth century, Beirut underwent a major transformation in its modern history.The port placed the coastal city on the map early in the eighteenth century, but after a century and a half, the Ottoman bank was built and the main port was expanded and the construction of a road linking Beirut to Damascus and the internal Middle East.This era also brought various population groups to the city as a result of conflicts and turmoil in Aleppo, Damascus, the Bekaa Valley and Mount Lebanon.I migrate migration was a prosperity in construction accordingly.By 1860, about 20,000 trader and craftsmen settled in the city, and they contributed to its economic growth.Later, more immigrants from the countryside arrived in search of job opportunities in the port, markets and agricultural lands surrounding the city center.After two decades, the city quickly expanded beyond its walls and fading gates.
At that time, the agricultural lands surrounding the old city turned into an extension of the city's tissue.And what is known today as a gambling trench was full of three -brackets and workers ’homes, along with productive agricultural fields and trees.Several channels that pass through the neighborhood were built in the form of trenches that were originally used for irrigation.I wondered if this is not the reason for her name.
Demographic transformations
At the end of the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and divided between the victorious countries, Beirut became part of the Great Lebanon subject to French rule..Refugees arrived today in Armenia, Syria and Turkish, most of whom were Christians fleeing the Ottoman rule and then the Turkish rule later, in addition to the Lebanese rural families coming to Beirut in search of job opportunities and safety.
The newcomers worked in the port or in the market in central Beirut, which was easy to reach from the area.Tyan Street in the gambi trench was directly linked to the street networks and the sprawling alleys near the sea, and it was described as a smooth picnic in the morning.The three -century trilogy villas were expanded vertically to accommodate the density of the region.
Hadi said that this era was the golden age of the neighborhood.Many street names have also changed between the twenties and 1940, which is a clear trend to confirm the identity by the population.The Umayyad Street also turned into Khanda Al -Ghamik Street after most of the water channels disappeared.
In addition to a network of villas, buildings and corridors that connect the neighborhood, the gamble trench was linked to each other through thick alleys, created when the adjacent and surrounding small rooms were transferred to their agricultural lands and gardens to accommodate the increasing numbers of workers coming from rural areas.This led to the establishment of a unique mixed society.The style of labor buildings on the ends continued to prosper well in the fifties of the last century, which created a multi -beneficial and income alive whose features are still clear to this day..
Once again, demographic transformations occurred at the beginning of a 1958 conflict in Lebanon.With the presence of many different societies in a crowded neighborhood, the gamble trench became one of the main battlefields in the conflict.Religious Christian societies have come out, while the families descending from the people who came from southern Lebanon settled.Various urban growth strategies have been developed from 1955 to 1965, including the creation of three fast roads that separated the gamble trench from other neighborhoods.During this decade, it was allowed to build government buildings in the areas surrounding the region, which led to a larger demographic shift than before and increased demand for housing and office spaces..
In one of the remains of the remaining few workers - a two -meter lane that can only be reached on foot - she lives a smile, a woman in the seventies of her life.When my traffic was in a small neighboring homes, it was built between 1840 and 1950, and many of them were surrounded by a square that has only a few trees left, I saw it sitting outside a series of houses that were the property.I asked her while I was sitting to talk to her: “What do we do to change the situation?”, Referring to the big crisis waving on the horizon.Ibtisam suffers from diabetes, and like others, she was unable to find the medications you need for several weeks.
Architectural heritage is threatened
Donia, the owner of the store, also has a house that also appears from the workers' residence class, but her mother does not know when it was built.Her mother stated that when they moved, the house was already old, and that the squares at that time were full of trees, and with small rooms scattered in the fields to accommodate thousands of rural workers who came to settle in the city.
“This house requires a lot of maintenance constantly,” Dunia said it laughing when asking whether the residence is listed as a heritage building in the region.Beirut's heritage was severely threatened by the decisions taken by successive governments since the civil war, where the classification lists of many listed buildings were raised, and the neighborhoods were neglected.
Donia adds: "One may think that heritage buildings should be protected, but all the houses listed as an abandoned heritage and collapse.".She and her mother at least try to keep this house by living in it instead of letting it be collapsed, then the owner will have an excuse to demolish it.
Beirut's heritage protection mainly focused on the three -century central villas that appeared in the nineteenth century to accommodate high -income population and the first immigrants to the city, some of which can be found in the northern outskirts of the Ghamic Trench.It is clear that it was made with many decorations and details, unlike the homes inhabited by Donia and Ibtisam.A few of them are still listed in the lists as protected buildings, but most of them are deserted and oppressed, like other buildings in the rest of the city.
In light of these homes and trees, I met Ali and Abbas, and they are two young men at nineteen years old, who presented themselves as two members of a strong political party..Abbas says that the neighborhood is indeed a "trench", and therefore "we must continue to resist and occupy the area in the city.".As for the night, they hang in the streets according to Ali, because the interior has become unbearable with the continuous interruption of electricity due to the crisis.
I asked them about the square and the trees.Ali says: “I am studying medicine, and I am not really interested in the natural scenes.” But the question made him monitor trees and branches everywhere: hidden behind posters and under the banners, or those that hang over political and religious slogans written on the walls.“Your grandmother used to use these trees when she wanted to give someone a place in the neighborhood,” says Khadija, the mother of Ali from her street grocery store..While I was continuing to search for trees, Ali and Abbas went to play billiards in a nearby café.
Beirut, a permanent construction workshop
With the outbreak of the civil war in 1975 and the division of Beirut into eastern and western on the basis of sectarian pluralism, urban growth slowed down.The ghost trench found itself directly on what was called the green line that separates the city, and literally turned into a trench.The conflict led to the arrival of large numbers of refugees, most of them from southern Lebanon, and they were distributed in vacant apartments in Beirut.Many of the buildings inhabited by these displaced families were sound, while others were affected by mortar shells and shrapnel.Most of the effects of the social and economic diversity of the neighborhood have been dissipated, as happened with other areas of the city.
With the end of the war, the displaced people were supposed to leave the city and return to their homes.The interventions of the Ministry of Displaced are often limited to providing financial compensation for the warfare of the war to evacuate them.It took more than a decade for most of the displaced to leave the apartments.Today, some things scattered between vacant buildings still remember their former population: books and newspapers, pictures of martyrs on the walls, alone shoes, and other things used in daily life.
Salman sits in a barber shop in front of the cemetery walls.This man moved to the gambling trench from the port area after his father lost in 1945 his job at the railway station that links Beirut to Syria and Palestine.Although Lebanon declared its independence on November 22, 1943, the French and British forces did not withdraw until two years later.Salman's father was involved in riots, which prompted him to leave his job, then opened the barber shop now run by Salman.I asked him about his commercial activity..Then he looked silently and smiled, before picking up a piece of cardboard to use it as a fan.“I have never left my store.I did not do during the war, and I will not do now. ”.
Since 1990 and the end of the Civil War, Beirut has become a permanent construction workshop, high buildings grow on their horizon constantly.Several neighborhoods have been subjected to violent demolition waves in the past two decades, which paved the way for new buildings that ignore every historical and demographic context.The bulldozers came with noise and dust to make the earth shake constantly, so this cacophony becomes part of daily life.In some cases, investment projects destroyed entire neighborhoods, and resulted in the evacuation of low -income families from the areas from which they always derived their livelihoods and socially linked to them..The worst results after the civil war during the reconstruction of downtown Beirut by real estate company "Solidere", a company that was created at the invitation of the region's restoration.Instead, Solidere demolished many of the affected buildings that could have been restored, and the neighborhoods turned into a sophisticated commercial center that only serves the wealthy - but even a few of them.The demolition of the glow trench was slower and more silent compared to others. All eyes were heading to the city center, including the attention of investors..This saved the area from the destroyed bulldozers, but it also left buildings like the war hall torn by the war on the deserted Tian Street, and many heritage sites scattered in the region deteriorate, and the walls of the graves are collapsed, and the ChurchDeprivation.
Away from the neighborhood on that day, I wondered how the current economic and political collapse - that is, all these recent crises - will affect the gambling trench..Perhaps he will lead him again on the path of internal and external migration, crowding and condensation, destruction and construction..