Interiors
As with formerly occupied territories, there is a typology of formerly occupied buildings. In the region around Aley, buildings were mostly taken over from the first wave of refugees who had fled to the mountain when the bombs were hitting Beirut. If the exteriors seem rather banal, the interiors are rich in detail revealing part of the story of each of their inhabitants: the bathrooms tiles, the wallpaper, the light smudge left on the wall where a dish washer or a washing machine use to be stored.
The objects left by the military remind me of a modern art installation: each object, brick, crate or fruit juice carton seems to have been left there for a reason. The place is dirty and dark, the living conditions insalubrious. There are no toilets; shit and toilet paper lie on the ground. The filth is everywhere.
The Wallpaper
The walls are insulated with a kind of shiny foil paper made from the packing of random household items such as shampoo and liquid soap. The repetition of the same paper, with its psychedelic colors and its absurd product logos gives a pop art effect to the room. Andy Warhol in a war zone.
It comes as a surprise to find another room, plastered with a Laura Ashley-esque wallpaper. The salmon pink paper was hastily stuck. Who lived in this room? Civilians or soldiers? When was the wallpaper put up?
The Ceilings
The ceilings are a different thing all together. They are the only walls which aren't covered with foil. Instead, there are lines and lines of Arabic script painted in black. Text and text and text. Was there nothing else to write on?
The gym
There is of course no gym, although we did see a pair of gymnastic rings that seemed to have been brought back from the Soviet Union circa 1950. But weights were everywhere. Soldiers must have used them to build muscle and pass time.
How to build your own weights on a very low budget.
Take two canned boxes of powdered milk, preferably from the Nido brand (Nestlé). Prepare some cement to fill the boxes. Look for a sturdy iron rod. Insert the rod into the boxes while the cement is still moist.... Voila!
The Corridors
The long dark corridors evoke a sinister world of misery and torture. We were hoping to find documents and file cabinets, but everything was emptied out. No archives, no official papers, not even the scribblings of a bored tenant.
The choice of images
A lot of women are drawn on the walls. They are sometimes shown naked and other times in portrait. The drawings are rarely vulgar. The women smile with their big oriental eyes.
As the mountain remains a contested territory, it's common to find each militia marking its territory with political graffiti.
The propaganda imagery - landing parachutists, flags blowing in the wind, portraits of various military leaders - is almost cartoonish. It's all very Cold War.
On the highway towards Sofar, men dressed as Father Christmas are selling cotton candy. It's early September, summer is not yet quite over.
Many empty buildings straddle either side of the road. A train station dating from the Mandate is still standing in ruin. Behind the hill, the big hotels of Aley are covered with large posters advertising diamond-studded jewelry to the improbable Saudi tourist. |
