The Desire for Revolution…Between Damascus and Beirut
Hisham Al-Hadi, Pseudonym
Translated by Sara Hlaibeih
Beirut, a city that has been depicted and written about so often, the small yet vast city that has always been the first refuge for Syrian political exiles. The seaside city where the endless blue horizon became associated with its image.
Since the experience you get from living in Beirut is an important phase in the life of someone who wants to become an artist(as my father has always told me),this city represents the gate for so many young people’s dreams back home in Damascus.
But what does Beirut look like nowadays, after the economic crisis, the defeated revolution and the port explosion? Can this city still embrace all those exiled from Syria since 2011? Is there a place for one more exile?
The City’s Beautifully Tainted Walls
I moved from Damascus to Beirut recently because I couldn’t afford more disappointments and burdens in Damascus. I decided to start a new series of disappointments in another city, thinking that maybe she’ll grant me some more fake time in this wretched world. Seeking to become a theatrical artist, I came to Beirut carrying my father’s words about the impact that this city would have on my journey as an artist. It wasn’t the sea or the blue horizon that first caught my eye, it was the slogans of the revolution on its walls: “the revolution continues”, “all of them means all of them” and “revolution”. My sense of futility and misery clashed with my desire to discover its streets, my eyes turned into colorful forests sweeping the coldness of the city. The remaining revolution slogans on the city’s walls were the first thing that I really laid eyes on in Beirut, once again stirring the feelings of desire to rise, feelings I thought had died a long time ago. I have always thought that the revolution’s slogans on the walls to be the most beautiful distortion of the images of our hiding behind the mask of civilization. It is the most important landmark in its beautiful chaos. Rebelling against repressive regimes in a brazen and direct manner is a real facet of the many aspects of the city that I can’t wait to get to know.
Seeing these slogans filled my eyes and revived my heart. In Damascus, we were overwhelmed with shame and fear whenever we spotted the remains of our defeated revolution’s slogans. They were erased or replaced with brutal alternatives that confirmed our defeat and stood there as a daily reminder. “Assad or we burn down the country”. “They fought you and forgot who your father is”. Some were replaced by iconic images of Bashar Al-Assad that deformed the city and tarnished its image. Here in Beirut, those slogans are a constant reminder of their revolution, when they once expressed their anger and their desire for what wished their country to be .
I became more eager to get to know this city and its people, to understand what it means that a city doesn’t stop reminding its citizens that the revolution is ongoing. The idea of my work in the theater here ignited my enthusiasm, sparked questions about the survival of the features of the revolution despite its defeat, and generated curiosity towards the nature of this exile I came to.
Familiarity and Alientation
I remember the first time I took a taxi in Beirut to get to my first rehearsal. The driver started talking about the suffocating economical situation in the country, reminding me of the taxi drivers’ conversations in Damascus, which I had always considered a sign of defeat.
In Damascus, I used to get into these conversations all the time, play all kinds of mind games and ask manipulating questions, then end up with the driver getting all suspicious about my purpose. However, I would feel content and satisfied! But in Beirut, I didn’t dare to utter a word. I actually tried to hide my Syrian accent. I couldn’t even understand my feelings at the time, the strange mix of familiarity and alienation.
The driver started driving through secondary streets avoiding traffic, and I started seeing the streets clearer. The revolution slogans on the walls blended with posters of various politicians and leaders. I saw two posters of military leaders with a phrase written on them “May your horror last”. It was as if they were staring me in the face with their fully black dark eyes, while I was trying to figure out what I was looking at. Is this serious or sarcastic? That was when I started realizing the complexity of this city and the impossibility of truly understanding it.
Between the Syrian and Lebanese Revolutions
Both countries, Syria and Lebanon, have lived through a revolution in the current century, separated by eight-years. The statements, transformations and slogans accompanying the revolution are different, as are the methods of punishment and repression by the authorities . Defeat, however, was a common destiny for both of them. The kind of defeat that you can feel around the clock in the daily details of life.
It is definitely not possible to summarize what happened in those two revolutions in a couple of sentences. Nevertheless, we can say that what happened was two attempts at refusal in a world that is too harsh to accept any form of refusal. It is as if defeat was the only possible result for both of them. Egypt is living with military rule again, Tunisia is under the rule of a dictator who believes he represents the revolution, and Libya is in an endless civil war. So, I start facing another struggle, the desire for the revolution to continue and the inevitability of defeat. Between the revolution slogans that revive my heart and the dictators and military figures’ posters that blind my eyes.
But the revolution is a continuous act that cannot be stopped because its goals haven’t been reached. It will inevitably continue as long as an oppressive regime exists. Nor is the act of a revolution limited to the duality of victory and defeat, but is rather an accumulated realization of the revolution that will one day fulfill its purpose. The joy I felt when I saw the slogans on the walls cannot be in vain. Nor can our dreams, hopes and desires be limited to barely visible slogans on walls. It cannot be that we let defeat turn us into futility’s slaves, and that is why we are determined to keep writing and documenting, to make art, and to preserve our stories, our positions, our actions and even the repurcussions of our defeat.
Theater and Revolution’s Inevitability
My first theatrical show in my professional career as a writer was in Beirut, where I tried to build a relationship with this city according to what my father had told me about it. The play was about death and how it might affect us. It questioned suicide, how we can deliver the new of someone’s death and how we come to accept it.
However, the madness of this city, between yesterday’s dreams and the present’s absurdity, was revealed a week before the opening. The theater was in Al-Tayouneh neighborhood in Beirut, where, on October 14th 2021, signs of civil war were ignited for a few hours after a protest demanding the dismissal of the judge investigating the port’s explosion case.
These events escalated a week prior to our show. I remember how I was heading to the theater when I started hearing shouting followed by heavy gunfire. I turned back half way trying to avoid a random bullet that might end my life. When I got home, I turned on the news while on the phone with my friend and the director of the show who got trapped at the theater for the next four hours.
The shooting was continuous and very loud. What surprised me was how rapidly the events escalated. I was afraid but I didn’t feel like I was targeted, it just happened that my Syrian friends and I were working on a play about death in a theater where the signs of civil war erupted in Lebanon suddenly and unexpectedly. I was worried about our show’s fate in these chaotic circumstances, while wondering about the fate of the many Syrians during the port explosion. All they wanted was to survive their harsh daily struggles, they are not a piece in this puzzle. How is this city treating those exiles if it is killing its own people with such randomness? This city’s brutality does not care about where you come from, it will control how the story will be told and dictate who has the right to rage
My besieged friend managed to get out and escape through back streets, arrivingbreathless and asking for water to drink. I stood still for a while and then he looked at me with eyes full of defiance, fear and worry, and said “I remembered Syria”. I suppressed my tears. It was as if the world stood still for a second.
Our fates are intertwined, the ways of death and defeat might be different, yet the essence is the same.
We managed to open the show on the set date, but no one attended during the first two days.he area was packed with soldiers and checkpoints. We were overwhelmed with disappointment, fear, sadness and oddity as we walked every day in front of hundreds of soldiers. Some were set to go, others were sleepy, excited, angry or even bored. We would make it to our empty theater where we could not help but feel defeated again
People started coming in the next few days. Attending our play had become this whole experience of coming to a place where blood hadn’t yet dried or the rubble removedt. A play that questions accepting death performed in a place that had witnessed the randomness of death. I have no idea why people would go to such a dangerous area to attend a play, or even why we continued the show in those circumstances, but by the last day of the show we were sold out.
I doubt that our play achieved its purpose with the audience. Regardless, I am grateful to Beirut for granting me this rich experience that has pushed me into the world of theater. Another exile to find a place in this crazy city. A space for me and others who have also refused to be marginalized in this exile called Beirut.
Part of me is still in Damascus, keeping an eye on the attempts to create an independent theater despite the limited space and margins for action. I follow my young friends’ persistent attempts to establish a theater free of the regime’s ideologies and one dimensional discourse. I keep track of performances’ taking place in alternative settings and venues outside of governmental control. They express rejection and resistance to Damascus’ harsh reality now, the same of what we have been seeing from Daraa and Al-Sweida. Rage is still roaming Damascus even if we don’t see it in its squares. Rejection is not tied to hope. It is the continuous revolution, it is the essence of our existence, it is our endless and pure desire to keep the revolution alive.
