A Matter of Life and Debt

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A matter of life and debt: the untold costs of Rafiq Hariri's New BeirutRichard Becherer aa American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon; Iowa State University ,Ames, Iowa, USAPublished online: 22 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Richard Becherer (2005) A matter of life and debt: the untold costs of Rafiq Hariri's NewBeirut, The Journal of Architecture, 10:1, 1-42, DOI: 10.1080/13602360500063089

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A matter of life and debt: the untoldcosts of Raq Hariris New Beirut

Richard Becherer American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon;Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA

The images accompanying the rst reconstruction project to appear after Lebanons sixteen-year long Civil War are seductive indeed. The unabashedly modern urban life depictedwithin the projects promotional images is peaceful, orderly, afuent, leisurely.

While these labour-free images of Beirut quietly sidestep the issue of money, the fact ofthe matter is that this rst reconstruction project did nothing less than to obsess over it.Money lay at the heart of this project. For without it, how would the war-ravagedeconomy replace 1200 damaged or demolished buildings, sanitise a 60-hectare toxic wastesite, and replenish 150 hectares of city, in what would be the worlds largest urbanrenewal? The much-vaunted answer has a familiar ring to it: privatisation. And RaqHariri, Lebanons billionaire homeboy made good was just the man to do it. The rst stepentailed Hariris agitation as Lebanons new Prime Minister virtually to give the city

centre to a new development corporation optimistically named Solide ` re

. The states event-ual payback would issue from prot on sales of its properties and income generated by thesite. The government would also underwrite a public offering of shares in this company, asubscription that would capitalise the company to the tune of more than one thousandmillion dollars, making it the largest corporation by far in Lebanon (and one of the largestin the Middle East). And in order to attract other investors, Hariri would leverage his nan-cial reputation by himself investing in the project, as would virtually all of Hariris family andkey business associates. The Lebanese government together with its Prime Minister wouldbe invested in the publicly traded company, thus ensuring government oversight.

Today, Lebanons once-vaunted privatisation programme is regarded contemptuously bymost economists who have downgraded Lebanese treasury and corporate bonds to junklevels. For the truth of the matter is that Solide `re, still Lebanons largest company, has nottruly privatised, and does not truly grow out of the free market. Instead, it epitomises a com-plicated public/private arrangement, less partnership than Faustian pact. The private sectorholds the public sector hostage as its private fortunes are equated with the governments.Meanwhile the public sector does what it can to protect its investment and to damage-control the activities of its business model and the worlds perceptions of the Lebanesemarketplace. Neither public nor private, Solide `re epitomises a hybrid economic worldwhose viability is fundamentally dependent on huge infusions of state capital, public reven-ues that might otherwise serve other unsung sectors of the economy. Tacit state guaranteesalso encourage proigate scal irresponsibility, fraud, croneyism, monopolism, and excess

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expenditure that further draw down the states meagre resources, explode its nationalbudget decit, and atrophy the civil state.

For the state to call Solide `re a day would be to admit the failure of its economic centre-

piece as well as the defeat of the very modernist social programme that propelled theproject in the rst place. Whats more, to leave Solide `re incompletea ruinwould be toacknowledge the futility of Lebanons dreams for social and economic reform, a realitywhich sadly this part of Solide `res story serves but to illustrate.

A. Picturing BeirutBeirut. August 2000. After a vote of no condencein the government of Prime Minister Salim El-Hoss,the city prepares for the third Parliamentary electionin four years. Political campaigns in Lebanon, it hasbeen said, are second only to those of the United

States in terms of their cost and extravagance.Evidence of this: the city is festooned with politicalposters, their images oating through the air likeso much ticker tape. Candidates impress their por-traits onto particular sectors of the city, quartersthat each knows to be partisan, to be a location ofsupport, of clientele. For instance, Walid Jumblatt,a Druze MP and long-term Minister of the Displaced,surfaces among the households of his people in AinEl-Mreisseh. Nabih Berri, de facto head of the Shiitepolitical party Amal and current ParliamentarySpeaker, pops up six storeys high on an apartmentblock in Beiruts Shiite Southern suburbs. Salim El-Hoss, the current Prime Minister, commands fouroors of Beiruts storied Hotel St. Georges, still inruins after the Civil War (Fig. 1).

Hosss setting is signicant for it confronts thegreat expanse of terrain controlled by his politicalarch-rival, Raq Hariri. And Hariris turf is aseeming desert located upon what had beenBeiruts city centre, a new urban development

known by the acronym Solide `re (Fig. 2). Solide `re,the economic and spatial entity, is almost single-handedly controlled by Hariri. Indeed, the HotelSt. Georges is noteworthy in this place as the onlyparcel of land attached to the city centre notowned by Hariri or his proxies. And Hosss image

on this outlier building makes this political pointabout property ownership for a knowing Beirutelectorate.

To Hosss parry comes Hariris thrust: a similar kindof gigantic poster just a stones throw away, in oneof the citys most beloved locales, the Mina or sher-mans port (Fig. 3). What makes Hariris seaside entryto the battle of political adversaries remarkable is notso much that his image is positioned in a special spot(much as Hosss). Rather the singularity of his imagestems from the fact that the poster actually capturesphotographically the setting in which it is so promi-nently displayed. As it does so, social reality andpolitical imagination, life and art, telescope oneinto the other.

And what might candidate Hariri hope to gainfrom the obvious spatial and experiential blurringhe so deftly orchestrates here? How might thisparticular political image function for him (Fig. 4)?Most obviously, the picture operates by collapsingthe real space of the port into the ctive space of

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the photograph. Specically, the photograph takesas its pictorial context the port itself, completewith shermen, boats, nets, and its line of seasidedwellings. And centered among these is a local land-mark, the prominent nineteenth century yellowhouse, upon which Hariris face actually settles. Inci-dentally, signicantly edited out of the photograph isthe forty-storey luxury apartment building borderingthe Mina, a structure that most Beirutis see as del-ing the port, improbably nanced by a bank ownedby none other than the candidate himself. With thispotential political embarrassment eliminated, theimage colludes with its setting, making the place

seemingly picture-perfect, and the photograph,picturesque. Hariris implicit authorship of theposter is signalled by a three-quarter portrait, his

face turning in a panoramic survey. If so, then photo-genic setting and its principal internal viewer, Hariri,enter into a visual pact, viewing this place across acertain mighty subjectivity, and making this placereal. More importantly, the port and its communityare attered into believing that it is being activelyobserved, and, therefore, that it is of politicalvalue. By insinuating itself into the Minas affection,the visual rhetoric of Hariris image rings out overand above the general political din raised by SalimEl-Hoss and others embroiled in Campaign 2000.

The image of Hariri viewing the port captures acomplex subject/object relationship moving backand forth between the pictures centre and edge.Is the focus here on the place or is it the person?Which one has the power to see? And who seeswhat? Does the gaze of Hariri, arguably Lebanonsmost powerful man, valorise the place, or does theplace behold the candidate, investing him with itsown power? With its reexivity, the picture providesa succinct and telling illustration of the places incipi-ent clientelism, and the long-standing relationshipbetween the patron (or zaim) and his supporters. 1

By situating himself within this place beloved byall, Hariri instructs the quarter, the city, the nation:Invest me with your collective electoral power, andI will in turn represent your concerns. You guaranteemy interests, and I will in turn protect yours. Quidpro quo. The image foregrounds the political advan-tages to be gained as each party in the political pactsafeguards the interests of the other. At the sametime, the clientelism inhabiting the image also

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Figure 1. Salim El-Hopolitical postersuspended from theHotel St. Georges.

(Source: The Daily StaAugust 2000.)


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Figure 2. Solide `re,aerial view. (Source:Solide re Annual Report ,1998.)


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Figure 3. Politicalposter of Raq Hariri ithe Mina. (Source:author.)


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presumes that any political advantage furthered byeither client or patron comes with something atstake. With every asset, be it political, social, oreconomic, comes a liability, with every promise adebt. If the port does give its allegiance to the can-didate (and the very existence of this image in theport suggests that the Mina is prepared to give it),then the candidate must be prepared to do some-thing for this place. That is, Hariri must do more

than exploit the ports picturesque potential forenhancing the value of his own property.

Current political propaganda notwithstanding,

Hariri had in point of fact been privately confectinghis own images of the city for years. 2 And part ofthis imaginative project develops from the fantasticfunction that the city had long played in nourishingthe young mans mental life and forming his politicalidentity. Beirutbecame theOtherfor Haririthat is,allthat wasdifferentfrom thehometown wherehe grewup, the provincial port city of Saida in South Lebanon.As Paris is for my children, so was Beirut for me, thecandidate recently admitted in an interview with acolleague of mine at the American University of

Beirut.3

Beirut was all that was glamorous, foreign,Western. 4 It was Orientalism in reverse. 5

Hariri spent the beginning of the War abroad inSaudi Arabia, where he amassed his fortuneworking for the Saudi Royal Family, becoming oneof the worlds wealthiest people. 6 Returning tothe city in the late 1970s, he found it devastated,a shadow of what it had been, a far cry from the fan-tastic place he had dreamed of as a child or knownas a student at the Arab University. Almost at once,he set to the monumental task of rebuilding thecapital city, a mission that took shape in manydesigns over the next fteen years. There can belittle doubt, as I will show later, that these projectscapture to some degree the imaginary shape ofHariris remembered city. They also privately con-soled him. Affecting though these designs may be,however, it warrants emphasising that onepersons site of promise may well be but anotherslocation of pain, one mans imaginary, anotherssymbolic.7 To understand the sometimes conicting

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Figure 4. Detail of3. (Source: Fadi Nassar.)


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agendas set into motion by various of Hariris cityreconstruction projects, some critical background isin order.

B. Beirut: a Western OrientI begin with a few words as to the genesis of theHariri-sponsored Beirut Central District, or BCD,reconstruction. As is commonly known, Lebanonwas shaken by a Civil War that began in 1975and continued, in varying degrees of intensity, until1990 (Fig. 5). The conict claimed 150,000 lives byconservative estimates. 8 Damage to the countrywas widespread and profound, but nowhere moredebilitating than in Beirut, and no place more devas-

tating than in the citys commercial centre. From thisstricken heart of Beirut issued that most notorious ofbattle lines of the Lebanese Civil Warthe infamousGreen Line sited on what formerly had been theDamascus Road. This spatial demarcation (whichtook its new name from vegetation encroachingupon the unused roadbed) has established itselffor many as the spatial and psychic boundary separ-ating East from West, Christian from Muslim sec-tions of the city. The causes of the War arecomplex, and its political consequences have irrever-sibly altered the city of Beirut and its people. I willaddress these issues indirectly during the course ofthis paper as I focus upon the processes anddesigns of Beiruts city centre reconstruction, andthe manifold modalities of social representationdeployed in the projects major iterations. I amespecially concerned with imagesimages thatgive shape to critical locations of Lebanese culture,images that simultaneously project and obscurenational identity/ies, images that serve to attract

and distract a desirable marketplace at once,images that construct and deconstruct one-Self.

Zygmunt Bauman has stated that the political

nature of modernity, and its enlightened will toorder, is distilled into the colonial impulse. Modernityis for the East, the tunnel at the end of the light. 9

That light is the light of enlightenment, and it orig-inates in the West. It strikes the Orient like a spot-light, operatically staging the places prominentperformances upon a luminous centre stage. Alter-natively, other supernumerary features are lost inthe shadows cast by this brilliantly OccidentalisedEast. The light we observe today at the end ofLebanons tunnel vision has been shaped by centuries

of colonial occupation, most recently Ottoman, fromthe nineteenth century to the end of World War I,and French, from 1920 to 1941, the so-calledMandate period. In November 1941, the countrybroke ranks with its Vichy French administration,declaring the moral bankruptcy of its colonial occu-piers, and claiming its independence and sovereignty.

Ottoman and French rule oversaw the early mod-ernisation of the city of Beirut, eventually turning itinto the Middle Easts major nancial and commercialcentre. Memories of Ottoman dominance persist inthe BCDs largest historic structure, the Serail, todayrecongured (by Raq Hariri himself) as political seatand residence of the Prime Minister (Fig. 6). And theFrench presence lingers, most prominently perhaps,in one of the city centres most notable urban set-pieces, the Parisian-style Place de lEtoile, garnishedwith a healthy dollop of Tony Garnier. Public modern-ism is paralleled in a private project like the HotelSt. Georges, mentioned above, designed by AntoineTabet, a Lebanese student of Auguste Perret.

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Figure 5. War Damagein the Beirut CentralDistrict: Souk Sursock.(Source: Ristelhueber,

Beirut , 1984.)


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Figure 6. Serail.Present-day appearanceafter reconstruction:in the foreground,

monument to RiadEl-Solh in Riad El SolSquare. (Source:personal.)


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Despite the persistence of outspokenly modernforms like these, the postcolonial was accompaniedby a quiet attack on Western modernity itself. 10 For

instance, projects like Willy Sednaouis PiccadillyBuilding, while showing an afnity to Le Corbusiersabstract and aloof Pavillon Suisse, also remakes theparadigmaticallyHighModernbyperverselyabsorbingit into the city, appropriating and contaminatingCorbus vacant ground oor with nothing less thanan Arab souk (Fig. 7). The Postcolonial Modern inBeirut seems implicitly to travesty essentialisingWestern modernism while illuminating ways in whichits prescriptions might be both dethroned and radica-lised, that is to say, postmodernised avant la lettre. 11

When it came to sketching rst thoughts on thenew shape of Beiruts BCD following the Civil War,I initially saw the French connection persisting hereas though nothing particularly unusual had inter-vened. It was business as usual, or so it appeared.In equally familiar fashion, the light at the beginningof the tunnel emanated from La Ville Lumie re. 12 TheFrench-trained Maronite architect Henri Edde , apartner and lead designer in the Middle Eastslargest architectural rm Dar El-Handassah (a Haririproperty whose global investments include theChicago architectural rm Perkins and Will) trod, itseemed, a time-worn path (Fig. 8). 13 Others toohave seen it in this way, particularly as his projectwas roundly criticised for taking its inspiration fromolder colonial models (like Beiruts classic Placede lEtoile), and for uncritically resorting to suchtrademark French planning devices as boulevards,rond-points , and scenic vistas. Forms like theseseemed to many useless and obsolete spatial effectsand unnecessary urban spectacle. Furthermore, it

was argued that such planning devices weresimply inappropriate formally, standing in stark con-trast to the casual intricacy of the Centres centuries-

old street network and densely-packed historicbuilding fabric. The foreignness of the projects inter-ventions immediately met with the criticisms ofEdde s contemporariesarchitectural regionalistslike Assem Salaam, Jad Tabet and Nabil Beyhoum:the URI group. They also, however, emboldened anew post-War generation of architects (like theinformal group calling itself Plan B)mostlytrained in the United Statesto produce their owndecidedly contextual brand of site-specic urbanresponse. Criticism arriving from both quarters led

to many public meetings, then to televised Parlia-mentary debate. The immediate consequences: asecond, and equally unsuccessful Edde scheme,and then a new project by another hand.

Before proceeding to these, I would rst like toturn to a number of images from the rst Edde design to discuss in more elaborate terms why thisproject seems so foreignwhy it seems particularlye trange. For me, its strangeness has to do largelywith the degree to which Edde s buildingsdespite their purity of shape, modern construction,curtain walls, and their omnipresent allusion totransparencyseem so typologically opaque. Inshort, why do they seem so tight-lipped, so uninfor-mative? My commentary also has to do less with theway that Edde s architecture exists in fact as the waythat it is staged and therefore constructed to beviewed. There is little doubt, I think, that a veryconsiderable amount of wishful thinking andfateful doubling goes on in this project. As notedabove, the great boulevard that opens to the port

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Figure 7. WillySednaoui: PiccadillyBuilding, 19657.(Source: author.)


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(a high-speed thoroughfare obliterating the historicBurj, the historic space where independence was

declared) seems equal parts Pariss scenic Champs-Elyse es and Los Angeless efcient (and progress-ive) Harbor Freeway (Fig. 9). The twin-toweredWorld Trade Centre advanced by another of Edde simages mimics its ill-fated big brother in the BigApple. Such explicit formal quotations serve hereto recharacterise Beirut in prominently Western,that is to say, High Modern terms (Fig. 10). Andout of this Occidental resemblance evolve at oncea visual legitimation of a re-emergent Lebanesestate and economy, and a reassurance if not an

enticement of an external, Western marketplace.Here, the Western gaze now sees a familiar ifreduced version . . . of itself. Surely this is a safelydomesticated place where global capital can feelsafe, secure, comfortable, and where it can dealwith people whose values are its own.

C. The City that doesnt workIt is worth noting I think, that Edde s imagesoperate allusively, connotatively as much as they

do instrumentally. They also promise a secondstory of sorts, a narrative set into the storyboardsthat this new, modern city produces, and vignettedagainst the natural settings that have come to sym-bolise, to the Christian Lebanese at least, Le Grand Liban. 14 For instance, the drawing of Edde s WorldTrade Centre presents his twin towers as sleeklyanti-gravitational, oating diaphanously above acrystalline sea as effortlessly, as naturally, as thewind-lled sails propelling the ketch in the imagesforeground. In a second drawing, less effusive butno less self-assured, ofce buildings march regularlyalong a picturesque canal framing (and spatialising)

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Figure 8. Henri Edde :plan of the FirstReconstruction Projectfor the BCD, Beirut,

1991. (Source: Gavin.)

Figure 9. Henri Edde `:Martyrs Square, rstproject, 1991. (Source:Edde .)

Figure 10. Henri Edde :World Trade Centre,rst project, 1991.(Source: Edde .)


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a new island carved from the collective debris of asixteen-year long Civil War with spit and polish(Fig. 11). Unlike this procession, promenaders dallyalong the canals quais as they survey motorlaunches passing lazily beneath them. In a fourthimage, a massive circular fountain is maternallyfondled within the nurturing embrace of twocurving surfaces of glass (Fig. 12). These pairedstructures opportunistically collaborate to enclose aspace and frame a vista onto the sea, seizing theprospect of an unlimited horizon. A fth and nalview seems to gaze upon the yacht basin besidethe Hotel St. Georges, pausing rst at the luxurious

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Figure 11. Henri EddeCanal, rst project,1991. (Source: Edde .)

Figure 12. Henri EddeRoundabout at the FirsBasin, rst project,1991. (Source: Edde .)


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mid-rises on the island, and then off to Mt Sanine inthe far distance (Fig. 13). For those of us whoknow, the view is captured from a specic vantage-point: the celebrated, pre-War terrasse atop EdwardDurrell Stones Hotel Phoenicia.

This nal image does concern itself with the archi-tecture of Edde s reconstruction project, to be sure.But it equally attends, it seems to me, to ratherspecic private activity in its foreground. Twin non-Starbucks cups of coffeeand, yes, Starbucks hasreached Beirutrest on that cafe table, while anattractive couple, lovers maybe, chat quietly andinsinuate the viewer into the image. Like theoutside viewer, the two inside break from their

intimate te te a te te , looking towards the dramaticvista that Edde imagines here, this new viewhaving the power to give pause to their irtations,at least momentarily. In this single vignette, Edde cap-tures the new Beirut less as progressive, modern mar-ketplace than as surprisingly romantic diversion, adelicious, enticing and surprisingly familiar worldripe, ready, and waiting for consumption. As thishappens, consumption as based in need is tacitlytransformed into consumption based in desire. Theimplicit sexual drive the image employs to power itsmessage carries, it seems to me, another meaning,to wit, that for all the would-be modernity of thisnew place, the life of this city remains essentially

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Figure 13. Henri Edde :The Phoenicia Terrace,rst project, 1991.(Source: Edde .)


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body-driven, propelled by urges equal parts boy andgirl, eminently human, basic, and natural. Allimages operate as if to say that this much here in

Beirut is, quite simply, unarguable. Beirut, whetherold or new, could simply perform no other way.

The combination of naturalness and diversion isreinforced in later renditions of the Solide `reproject, even when those proposals are consciouslydesigned to critique the progressivism embeddedin the project itself. Most importantly, AngusGavins replacement Dar El-Handassah scheme(also underwritten by Hariri via Solide `re) outspokenlybolsters the historical framework of the project,while consciously seeking to quell the outrage of a

local Beirut population who bridled at the thoughtand appearance of Edde s seeming modernity(Fig. 14). Gavins outspokenly contextual scheme,which makes direct use of such postmodernist the-ories as Colin Rowes notion of urban Collage,grounds his project, he claims, within the residualand uncanny historical specicities to be foundon-site, recalling Beiruts now-buried shorelineand Ottoman seawall, antiquities, heritagearchitecture, and so on. 15 He even furthers hisdesign essentially to fabricate historical form(sometimes even stylistically simulating it 16 ) byintroducing gridding into his plan, an organis-ational form which harks back, so he argues, toboth Greek and Roman sources. Whats more, heframes the entire scheme between not one buttwo distinct yacht basins, a design motif directlysuggesting that most resilient signier of theLevantine city-state (and this, presumably, is hiswishful thinking for Beirut), the double-harbouredPhoenician city (Fig. 15).17

Despite the bounty of historical allusion, Gavinsproject works contrary to Rowes call for controlledambiguity and an iridescent urban semantics as setout in Collage City. (Indeed, Gavins project is, inthe nal sense, more about ambiguous control.)For that book, as the entirety of Rowes late urbanis-tic project, geared itself to unmasking and humiliat-ing any progressivist order. 18 In so doing, Rowe hadsought to loosen the strictures modernism placedupon contemporary practice, allowing his kind ofdesign to advocate a more subversive understandingof history (as opposed to historicity) and to expandits palette of meaningful architectural and urbanform. 19 Gavins scheme operates quite differently.Solide `res revision of Rowe seeks to restructure andrigidify the ambiguous post-War state of Beirut,implementing essentially academic formal devices

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Figure 14. AngusGavin: Project for theBCD/Solide `re, 1992.(Source: Gavin.)


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that here appear nothing short of invasive. All pos-turing aside, in the nal analysis, history takesGavins denitive scheme for Solide `re to the sameplace modernity does for Edde : to an ideal locationwhich is the naturaland necessarydestinationof an urban teleology. One mans history would bebut another mans progress.

Whats more, both projects seek to outline anarchitecture that is less productive in the capitalistsense of the word than attractive. Edde speakshardly at all about the functional use of his urbanensemble and the buildings themselves assist littlein the clarication. Gavins project reduces to littlemore than mixed use with functions to be deter-mined on demand by the marketplace. Whatguides the urban conception here is fundamentallyaesthetic, not practical zoning. And this means

that appearance is as powerful a driver of thisurban conception as it was in Edde s proposal, ifnot more. Recent developments in Gavins project

further underscore this fact: the urban vision nowtouts itself no longer as the capital centre of theMiddle East (and its a good thing because it wouldbe hard pressed to reclaim this title from AbuDhabi, Jeddah, or Dubai) but as a tourist destina-tion. 20 With its plethora of archaeological remainsbeing unearthed (and therefore degraded), Beirutnow seeks to market itself as an attraction for theso-called heritage tourist. Furthermore, there iseven talk now of loosening the BCDs vaunted aes-thetic zoning, the projects legislative centrepiece,

in certain key locations of the plan earmarkedspecically for designs to be produced by so-calledmaster-architects. 21

These buildings, so the head designer explained,might be just the constructive incentivethe archi-tainment needed to promote highly protablearchitectural tourism. 22 The new list of attractionsgoes on. The most recent redesign to enhance theschemes visual appeal occurs on the projects land-ll portion. This area, the one-time nancial districtin both Edde and Gavin schemes, has just beenrecongured (by SOM no less) to accommodate aFormula 1 racing course a la Monte Carlo, therebytargeting a wealthy class of mostly male sportstourist. And with this single grand gesture, theone-time Switzerland of the Levant is transformedinto monster-car track, a fancy playground for bigboys with big toys.

Historical fabulation in Gavins executed scheme(and even more in Edde s unexecuted projects)went hand-in-hand with historical erasure (Fig. 16).

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Figure 15. Aerialphotograph of the cityof Saida, showing itstwin Phoenician

harbours. (Source:LebanonOpportunities. )


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Of the more than eighteen hundred buildingsdamaged but largely extant within the site connes,fully two-thirds were demolished for replacement bySolide `re. Where the remains of these buildings havegone is a simple question to answerthey have joined the other debris left by the Civil War in theNormandie dump, now euphemistically known asthe Solide `re land ll (Fig. 17). Of course there werethose buildings, like the suite of commercial banksalong the Rue Riad El-Solh, that escaped damage vir-tually intact, thanks to smart bombs then too, orwere they smart bombers? Monumental, religiousbuildings, no matter how degraded, were also off-limits to the developers. Historically signicantstructures and urban ensembles were also pro-tected, like the Place de lEtoile. And then therewere buildings belonging to politically inuential

owners, like the Murr Tower, the property of thecountrys former Minister of the Interior who lever-aged his political status to avoid expropriation. 23

Buildings too were destroyed for political reasons.Whereas colonial buildings of one eraof theFrench Mandatewere largely protected and cher-ished, Ottoman structures of the previous century,the old souks for instance, were almost wholly eradi-cated. And, as George Corm the former Minister ofFinance recounts, there was the Jewish quarter inWadi Abu-Jamil, rased, apart from the synagogue(protected as a religious structure), as misplaced pol-itical protest, or vengeance, against the 1996 Israeliinvasion (Fig. 18).24 Here, Corm indicates a case ofwhat might be termed rhetorical demolition, thatis, history erased because the reality of its continuedeffect is just too painful or infuriating to bear.

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Figure 16. AngusGavin: RetainedBuildings, Project forthe BCD/Solide `re, 1992

(Source: Gavin.)

Figure 17. NormandieDump/Solide `re Land Fc.1985. (Source: Gavin


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At moments like this, urban renewal goes hand in

hand with denial and, in turn, leads to repression,which is, in Pierre Bourdieus reading, the ip-side ofseduction, historical or otherwise. 25 Of course, the fea-tures that both reconstruction projects, Edde s andGavins, seek to eradicate most effectively are tracesof the War itselfand the vast emptiness recordedby time-lapse photographs, taken through theAmerican University of Beirut for the Aga KhanArchnet website, registers this historical reality onlytoo clearly (Fig. 19).26 The land ll, that shard pile ofthe recent past, has today been cleansed and puriedby a waste management company from Houston,Texas27 , the dirt of the War puried of any chemicalor psychological toxicity. What we nd today of theold city that Solide `res developers have depositedthere is scarcely more than gravel. 28

The great irony is that there is little renewal in theBCD per se; for of the twelve hundred buildingsdestroyed, only six new ones have been constructedto date. 29 The Normandie dump/land ll todaylooks equal parts transplanted, sixty-hectare

fragment of the Arabian peninsula and terrain

vague.30

What we now see in this place rests insharp contrast to any idealising image a la Edde . Tocontemporary eyes the BCD site presents itself as astark and surprisingly modernist tabula rasa , a vastspace that operates as the best defence againsthidden demons (Fig. 20). Not a single buildingshould be kept as it is to remind us of the civil war.There is no need to preserve this painful memory,so Raq Hariri recently pronounced. 31 His messagehere is clear. To guard against recurrent trauma,erase. In the absence of collective memory, collectivedenial will do.

The origin of the projects frank promotionalismrests in the person of one man, Raq Hariri. Thebasics of Hariris background have been outlinedabove; however, the Prime Ministers central roleas the reconstruction and planning force in con-temporary Lebanon demands amplication. As Imentioned earlier, Hariris rst impulses for the cityand the BCD specically were essentially philanthro-pic, using his construction company to help repair

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Figure 18. WadiAbu-Jamil, withSynagogue.(Source: author.)


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19


Figure 19. WadiAbu-Jamil, before andafter. (Source: Archnetweb site.)

Figure 20. Place desMartyrs, Summer 2001(Source: author.)


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degraded infrastructure. In the mid-1980s, however,his energies and ambitions turned from mere main-tenance to city and nation building, and this involved

engineering not just economic opportunities for thenation but political ones for himself as well. At thispoint he commissioned a rst reconstruction projectfrom French architects, largely situated on the Nor-mandie dump here reconguredas a peninsular recreational development equal parts

Riviera Port Grimaud and Montreal Habitat (Fig. 21). 32

Following the Taif Accords, the Hariri-designedpeace pact that more or less ended the Lebaneseconict, the countrys Conseil du De veloppement et Reconstruction (or CDR) solicited a reconstruction

project for the city centre from Dar El-Handassah,the architectural rm in which Hariri was heavilyinvested. In fact, it was at his personal expense,another act of philanthropy, that the Edde projectwas developed. The government would soon priva-tise this initiative, and the citys public land would berebuilt privately, or so it was thought, by the devel-opment corporation named Solide `re, a publiclytraded company. And Solide `res major investorwould be none other than the eventual PrimeMinister thanks to his private agreements withfamily as well as political and business allies, manyfrom Saudi Arabia, who would act as silent partners. 33

D. Quidding the QuoToday there is little doubt that the BCD project hasserved Hariris political ambitions, and that thisproject like so much of his charitable work waspersonally benecial, even as his economic supportof public works was touted as philanthropic. In aLebanese context particularly, philanthropy does

not come free of obligation. Giving denitelycomes with strings attached, and acts of benevo-lence are normally undertaken with the expectation

of return in kind. Call it patronage, clientelism, orwhat the Lebanese do masoubiye such moderndisplays of generosity, particularly in the MiddleEast, are seldom undertaken without an impliedsense of personal debt and eventual payback. 34 Asrecent events point up, the quid pro quo has cer-tainly been a hidden driver of Hariris institutiona-lised philanthropy as another of his Campaign2000 posters illustrates (Fig. 22). This one displaysthe candidates genial portrait against a montageof his charitable activities: historical preservation,

university scholarships (some fteen thousand overthe course of almost 20 years), port modernisation,educational technology upgrades, and, of course,the new BCD for which he takes the credit. All areregarded as endowments conferred by Hariri on aLebanese population, beneting from but alsoindebted to his benecence. So the image servesimplicitly to remind the electorate of their long-standing debt to the candidate, and of the inescap-able fact that with this election, the debt nowbecomes due. Its payback time, the imageremonstrates.

Philanthropy of many stripes does seem to havethis single fact in common. Although Americanphilanthropy (as epitomised by the likes of theCarnegie and Rockefeller foundations) has com-monly been presented as having no stringsattached, 35 the social theorist Max Weber hasbeen so bold as to suggest that even this supposedlydisinterested philanthropy had an implicitly ideologi-cal aim. 36 For Weber, such giving was geared to

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21


Figure 21. Project forthe BCDReconstruction, c.1985(Source: Edde .)


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educating the disadvantaged, thereby inculcatingamong the receivers values consonant withthe interests of the benefactor. Even benefaction,particularly benefaction, extracted a potentiallyadventitious spiritual debt in place of a materialone, particularly in those unlucky Middle Easternplaces where the prize of oil was not at stake.There is a major difference between thephilanthropy deployed by the Hariri Foundation

and that of his modern American forebears,however.

The matter of debt, real or symbolic, is somewhatdifferent in the Islamic world because charitablegiving is regarded a moral duty, tithing a fact oflife for the devout Muslim. Whats more, thematter of debt that is an unspoken reality in muchWestern philanthropy is further problematised inIslam, for both the Koran and the Shariah expressly

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Figure 22. Politicalposter depicting RaqHariri and hisphilanthropies. (Source:

The Daily Star.)


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outlaw the practice of usury, or the lending ofmoney for interest. 37 This is not to say, however,that interest payments do not occur in Islam, for

the simple fact is that it is not necessarily money inkind that is to be repaid. 38 Having said that, philan-thropy in Arab countries is not necessarily regardedas a gift outright, for there is an implicit social con-tract that comes attached to the Foundationsgiving, as illustrated, it seems, by the Hariri politicalposter. For it renders not just a culture in continu-ing receivership but in spiritual debt as well (assuggested by the visual exchange between mon-taged images) that is expected eventually to berepaid. And power and political support welling up

from the indebted was and continues to be certainlyone of the main ways of doing so.The charitable giving of the Hariri Foundation, and

the inestimable role it played for candidate Haririduring the elections, suggests that the candidateused his Foundations giving opportunistically,thereby keeping an indebted constituency at hisbeck and call. In point of fact, it might further besaid that this kind of pragmatic, politicised giving isactually demanded within the multi-religious, con-fessional construction of contemporary Lebanon,where literally every life decision is rendered simul-taneously political and religious thanks to thenations Constitution. Elections in Lebanon arewon not so much by garnering the support ofones own confessional group as by attracting orsecuring a coalition of other special interest groupsand confessions. Philanthropy particularly becomesan agent of securing old constituencies, andconstructing ever-larger political bases. HaririsFoundation continues to build interconfessional

support across a horizon of moral, and scal,

indebtedness. Of course this phenomenon is pre-cisely the subtext of Hariris political poster posi-tioned at a strategic point in the interconfessionalMina. 39

The consequences of this second image,described at length above, sustain and derive fromcoupled acts of seeing at once. First, there is thegaze of Hariri who views outward, seeing less thisparticular place, rather something more, indenableand untenablethe city, the nation, the worldperhaps. However, the potentially unlimited scopeof this image is reinforced in yet a third posterinfact, a oating installationbobbing in the wateracross the Corniche from the Mina, framed againsta sublime horizon and lapped by the Sea (Fig. 23).Its subject matter is nature surely, but also naturestemporal dimension that the candidate holds in hisvisual, and political, sway. This mans objectrelations, it seems, are endless.

And, then, there is the specic seeing of the peopleof Ain El-Mreisseh who rst attach themselves to

23


Figure 23. Politicalposter depicting RaqHariri, oating in theSea near the Mina.

(Source: The Daily Sta


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these images made prominent by their settingsandto the eyes that do not see harboured withinso asto imagine, to construct themselves as captured

within the candidates viewing. In the words of song-writer Jerome Kern, this is the sort of view that seemsto want to be seen. 40 The places lengthy lack of pol-itical representation is to be resolved, so it appears, byattracting Hariris attention to it, and, consequently,his serving the Minas interests and fullling its needs.

Jacques Lacan has argued that the lack felt by theinfant in the preconscious state is fullled by hisattachment to the image contained in the mirror.The image, rst captured within the reectivesurface and then introjected, provides a provisional

and temporary shape for the childs inchoate phys-ical experience and self-identity. 41 Imaginary activityof this order, though similar, is not precisely the caseon the Mina. Instead, the psychopolitics underlyingcultural identity, as implied by the relationship ofposter and setting, suggests a scopic alternative tothe mirror stage. 42 Again, Lacan usefully speaksto this slightly different construction of the gaze ina later discussion prompted by the question, WhatIs an Image? where he posits the impossibility ofthe image to perform as simple object-lesson per se. 43 Rather it performs simultaneously as anobject and a screen which a seeing subject comesto occupy in part as representable identity, as wellas mask concealing and protecting whatever is unre-presentablethe lack of presence. Hariris campaignposters, it seems to me, operate within this particu-lar binary psychic register.

The population of Ain El-Mreisseh constructs itselfas the tting object to Hariris attentionand as itdoes so the Mina insinuates itself into performing

as object of his subjectivity. This object lesson oper-ates advantageously for Hariri as he is likened tothe quarter as the quarter is to him. 44 What engin-

eers their need to become his object, however,derives from equal parts need arising from theirlack (in this case a specic lackthe Sunni lack ofpolitical representation in this place), and desire forrenewed self-construction, accomplished via theirrecourse to mimicry and attraction. 45 The Minasinhabitants construct themselves not so much outof who they believe themselves to be so much aswhat it is that they believe that their championdesires and demands of them. The residents of AinEl-Mreisseh are thus prepared to dispense with

what is perceptible of their own shadowy socialidentity, or lack thereof, while constructing them-selves as his partisans, as one of his own. 46

Whats more, by constructing their responses tomeet the demands of the market for their services,Hariri, it might be said that the local populationbehaves very much like the Western marketingexpertthe Kawaja 47 whom the billionaire nor-mally employs in his business and his politics totarget the consumer. The difference here is thatthese marketers instead target a political market-place tautologically constructed as none other thanthemselves. In short, they are the consumers (self-)targeted to consume images of their own confec-tion. This constituency shapes itself to be the onehe would have them be. As they do so, this groupinhabits an image projected upon them byanother, so as willingly to elicit the continuedinterest of the politicians gaze (as well as to disguisethe reality of their social condition and the inescap-able fact of their decades-long unrepresentability).

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One might say, following the Lacanian line, that theposter the quarter chooses physically to inhabit com-prises a split between potent expressive image and

covert, protective screen, ingenuous portrait anddisingenuous disguise. Jean-Paul Sartre wouldlikely decry autoassimilation like this as opportunis-tic, and a collective act of bad faith. I would prefersimply to call it a contract, an arrangement, anegotiation. 48

Ain El-Mreisseh characterises, it seems to me, apragmatic construction of wishful thinking for allparties involved, paid for at a certain personal andpolitical costand bringing with it a certain debtfor all contractual participants. Among the people

of Ain El-Mreisseh, there exists the cherishedbelief, fostered over the centuries, that the machina-tions of masoubiye will entail benets far outweigh-ing the existential lossesand that their solicitationof symbolic capital 49 , and the debt they assume indoing this, will eventually be repaid in spades . . .

and in shovels . . . and in sh.

E. Historys eyeAt this time, when Lebanon seeks so desperately tocarve out a sense of national identity, perhaps thegreatest of all Lebanons debts may well be calledthe countrys debt to history. Here, the constructionof political Self-identity is fabricated out of a deep-seated relationship to history as an articially con-structed and gaze-endowed Other. The culturessometime submission to, and sometime refusal of,the historical gaze is illustrated in Solide `re by twospecic instances. The rst illustrates the construc-tion of ethnic identity out of the connection that a

political minority (though perhaps a confessionalmajority) fabricates across a specic work of historicarchitecture in the affair of the Mazar Ibn-Irak

(Fig. 24). The second entails the denial of oneorder of the historical gaze even as the PrimeMinister constructs his own.

The rst case study revolves around a smallMameluke structure exposed to the public eyeduring the destruction of the Ottoman souks, abuilding that was rst known as the Mazar Ibn-Irakand then the Zawiya Ibn-Irak al-Dimashki. Thesmall domed structure, previously invisible withinthe accretion of post-Mameluke construction inthe souks, resembles the multitude of madrasas, or

schools devoted to the study of Islamic law, in theold Mameluke capital Tripoli north of Beirut. Madra-sas like these were in fact philanthropic foundations,commonly attached to the tomb structures of theirdonors. And so it was with the similar Beirutexample.

The mazar was slated for destruction in 1992,along with most of the damaged souks, to bereplaced eventually by Solide `re. Nabil Beyhoumrecounts a strange series of events set into motionas demolition commenced. First, the bulldozerchain pulling at the intractable building broke,then, the machines driver suddenly experiencedparalysis in one hand, and, nally, miraculously, amysterious gure appeared at the structuresdoorway entreating the workers, Do not kill me asecond time! 50 Because of these uncanny occur-rences (to say the least), the building was immediatelyproclaimed a sacred and miraculous site, and as thisoccurred Ibn Iraq became more than an historicalname but a holy man from Iraq, the Shiite hallowed

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Figure 24. Mazar Ibn-Zawiya Irak al-Dimashki:the structure dates fromthe early sixteenth

century. (Source:author.)


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land, and the mazar his domicile. For the areas Shiitepopulation, the dwelling immediately became a siteof religious pilgrimage, and to lay their claim to it,

theyappropriated it, attaching to it loudspeakers con-tinuously shouting Koranic verses, and mounting ahuge photograph of the Ayatollah Khomeini on itsstreet side. For the rst time, the locales Shiite popu-lation, so they argued, had a religious site in the BCDequal to the Sunni, Maronites, Greek Orthodox,Roman and Armenian Catholics, Protestants andJews.

Beiruts Sunni population bridled at the idea thatthis site, long attached to their confession, mightbe redesignated, sanctied, and appropriated. This

was nothing less than religious squatting. So theypromptly embarked upon their own historicalresearches into the building. They genealogicallydetermined that Ibn Iraq was in fact a celebratedattorney and devout Sunni Muslim and that hecame from Syria not Iraq; they signied thisdescent by afxing the sufx al-Dimashki (fromDamascus) to his name. The undeniable saintednessof the siteso foreign in feel to secularised SunniIslamwas explained away by arguing that IbnIraq was a su , and that this mazar , or residence,was infacta zawiya, or place of religious instruction,wherein mystic suc rites were practised and popu-larised by its perhaps overzealous Sunni inhabi-tant. 51 Archaeological excavation also revealedthat there was a tomb attached to the structure,not Ibn Iraqs, however. 52 Case closed. The zawiyawas then encased in barbed wire, discouragingfurther Shiite pilgrimage. And then a sign bearingIbn Iraqs correct genealogy was afxed to thebuildings most visible side, the place where

Khomeini had been, dispelling historical or politicalambiguity once and for all.

In practical reality, though, the Sunnis rectication

of the historical record is beside the point in this case.What is most interesting to me is the degree to whichthe local Shiite community felt the need both toattach itself to a work of architecture so as to evi-dence itself spatially, and to legitimate that connec-tion by constructing an authenticating history. Thisvalidating saga would have had the collateral effectof naturalising the local Shiite population, and ofimbuing it with some kind of God-given right trans-ferable to its domicile, that is, the nearby BCD prop-erties (buildings like the recently demolished Hilton

Hotel) in which the Shiites were in fact squatting. Itwould also have reinforced their claims to nancialcompensation for any expropriation from this place,especially as Solide `re had begun its more than halfa thousand million dollar payout to relocate the inter-lopers. 53 The Sunnis, however, would have noneof what they regarded as religious and politicalposturing, norwould they allow a social legitimisationvia religion that would cost them capital, real orsymbolic.

Whatever their rationale, Sunni counter-argu-ments do not invalidate Shiite historical or spatialclaims within the now vacant BCD by attachmentto a heretofore undesignated and now newly signi-cant religious monument. For the fact remains thatthis buildings signicance originates in the verydemands that the Shiites made of it, stemmingfrom their insistent need to render this place, some-place, meaningful here. Furthermore, Shiite con-struction of a legitimating history stems from whatthe Shiites would argue was a social need to be

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rendered visible. Such visibility is accomplished bygiving what they believed to be their history an his-torical face, with eyes capable of viewing them and

of constructing them as the objects of its gaze.Lastly, the hostility with which the Shiite (mis)read-ing of history was met among the Sunni electsuggests less the degree to which this secondgroup felt a responsibility to maintain historical accu-racy (for certainly Sunnis are fully capable of rewrit-ing history in their own best interest as we shall see)as the degree to which such social and legiti-mating spatialisation might threaten Sunni domi-nance here.

My second case study centres on an urban space

at the head of Beiruts bank district, the Place RiadEl-Solh (see Figure 6). This square, once attachedto the city gate Bab Yaqoub, was renamed in the1950s in honour of the Sunni leader whoco-engineered Lebanese independence in 1943.Like most places in the BCD, it was extensivelydamaged during the War, and what remainedafter the War was slated for demolition in theBCD reconstruction. The present-day, reconguredSquare presents itself in stark contrast to itspre-War appearance, lacking spatial enclosure,amenity, or attendant urban functions. Today it islittle more than a landscape ornament, a pink a-mingo, lending a little cachet to the leading edgeof a parking area.

The historical raison de tre of the post-Mandatespace was commemorative; here thankful Beirutiserected a portrait of one co-founder of themodern Lebanese state, reconguring the spacefrom utilitarian to ceremonial. Rene Naba, in hisrecent biography of the current Prime Minister,

explains that the space was to be deled and theremains of the sculpture to be removed underHariri, exiled with no hope of return. This was not,

so Naba argues, the rst time the Prime Ministertook aim at the Sunni political hero. Rather, thiserasure was but the last in a line of similar efface-ments of Solhs memory that Hariri had effected inBeirut and elsewhere in the country over thecourse of a decade. 54 Perhaps the most notableinstance of such eradication occurred in his home-town of Saida, where the Prime Minister hoped toremove his predecessors name from the Ring Roadencircling the city, substituting his own. As the twosagas played out, Hariris plans in both instances

were thwarted. The sculpture was returned to theSquare as one of the last civic acts of Hariris long-time political opponent, the then-Prime MinisterSalim El-Hoss55 , and it was restored as an act ofrespect by Solhs own grandson, Prince AlwaleedBin Talal, a Saudi-Lebanese businessman like Hariri,only much richer. 56

What was it, though, that caused the PrimeMinister to take such umbrage and aim at thisspace and its sculpture specically? I look at oneof my recent photographs of this place from itsfocal pointand feel an uncanny sense of de ja vu. That meeting of gazing gure and landmarkas a compositional strategythat interconnectionof face, place, and monumentIve seen thembefore and in none other than Hariris own politicalposter at the Mina. And as I argued that thatimages visual dynamics operated there, so do Ithink they work herewith the gaze of state-making Solh phenomenalising the Serail in thebackground, the house that Hariri rebuilt for the

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Prime Minister, that is, to say, for himself. And asHariri charged the community of Ain El-Mreissehto follow his lead, so, it seems, does the memory

of Solh instruct his Sunni issue, that is, whoever itis that inhabits that house on the hill, to follow inhis footsteps.

Solhs lessons, however, would be difcult for thisparticular successor Prime Minister to follow,especially after having violated the spirit of thePrime Ministers National Pact, the unofcial accordbetween confessions and a proclamation of interre-ligious cooperation. 57 Whats more, Hariri at presentseems less state-builder than potential state-destroyer, holding the country hostage to a debt

burden produced by his capital spending pro-gramme that exceeds 40-fold the debt the countrywas forced to bear even at the Wars worst. Inpoint of fact, Hariris policy of decit spending haseffectively led to the withering of the civil stateand its services as Lebanese debt nancingdemands ever-larger portions of the GDP, nowreaching almost 70%, so Georges Corm hasreported. 58 And, as if this werent enough, Cormargues that Raq Hariri, hugely successful business-man, stands to benet richly from his countrysnancial woes and civil collapse, proting from hisown banks 59 funding of the nations debt by pur-chasing the lions share of the Lebanese governmentjunk bonds (at an interest rate that has at timestopped 30%, incidentally). 60 The gaze of history asembodied in that statue at the Place Raid El-Solhwould demand that Hariri respond to the ethicalcalling of his illustrious forebear; but this challengeof history must be politely, but rmly, declined. Inthe face of such moral authority, all, it seems, that

Hariri can do is to look away, or, better still, toremove the eye of history entirely.

F. Re-colonialism in Hariris BeirutSolide `re, the most visible in Lebanons array of newpublic works, promotes itself on the basis of moder-nised images borrowed heavily from the experienceof modernity in the West. The intention, I argue, isfrankly ideological, designed to reassure a Westernmarketplace of the countrys returning civil order,economic stability, and Westernised social identity.This is a good place, so its images imply, for you todo business. Part of the role these images have toplay is to construct a productive narrative for the

city of capital re-emergent, the Switzerland of theLevant. This rhetorical agenda, however, is accom-plished at the expense of another narrativetheWar itself, which, dreadful as it was, constitutesthe single shared experience to cut across all ofLebanons social divisions. Ironically it is the singlenarrative today with which all Lebanese can readilyidentify.

A columnist for The New York Times, John Kifner,recently wrote an article headlined The Beirut IKnew Wasnt So Different. 61 His description of thecity following a long absence concluded that thecity seems to be returning to the same place it wasbefore the War. For someone who has lived inBeirut recently, much of what I understand to haveexisted in Beirut then does seem very muchpresent todayrestaurants, bars, boutiques,discos, gaming, prostitution, drugs. Every diversionthat made this place the luxury destination of thegogo jetset during the 1960s and 1970s appearsagain to be in ample supply if somewhat less

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immediately visible (Fig. 25). Beirut is again a (if notthe ) playground of the Middle East, although inter-

lopers in the Gulf States have assumed somethingof a cultural lead. Certainly Solide `res new-foundimages of limpid seas, sparkling skyscrapers andboundless leisure have a major hand in promotingthe idea of the city resurgent, and of turning backthe clock.

But along with the surplus come the real values ofBeirut social life, among them, glaring disparities ofwealth, dramatic and recalcitrant class stratication,the increase of interconfessional disputes that arealso intractably class-bound, the erosion of the Leba-nese middle class, and the disturbing rise of poverty.A recent painting by noted Lebanese artistMohammed El Rawaz points directly at these pro-blems in a decidedly cynical milleniallistic mixedmedia assemblage Third World Utopia, where asleek and bouncy, Gehry-esque house on a hillhovers above a collection of what seem to bebeach-side shanties (Fig. 26). 62 The image hasdenite staying power. Although putativelycontemporary, this urban landscape harks back to

pre-War settings of architectural high style irremedi-ably contaminated (so those of a certain social classwould argue) by the plethora of squatter dwellingsthat proliferated in Beiruts so-called Misery Belt.Sadly, this kind of pre-War architectural view persiststoday in the largely Shiite informal sectors of SouthBeirut like Ouzai, Jnah, and Saint-Simon (Fig. 27).

Plus c a change. Rawazs image seems to make haywith its subject matter, and ironically to unsettle thespatial, temporal, and ideological distinctions thathis painting, and its title, initially describe. The ten-sions transmitted between image and caption giveus cause to wonder, Is this place Utopian, Is thisplace Third World? And with the unsettling, weare caused to ponder just how utopian, just howmodern, just how Third World is it? And if it is notprecisely modern, nor utopian, nor progressivist,nor Eastern, then this image may just as well

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Figure 25. Bliss Street,Hamra, Summer 2001.(Source: author.)

Figure 26. MohammedEl Rawaz, Third WorldUtopia, mixed mediaassemblage, 2000.(Source: Mohammed El Rawaz. )


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be . . . us, that is, we Western observers. Rawazspicture, which putatively seeks to abstract the

social realities of life in Beirut, cannot help but con-struct its Westernised viewers into its pictorial quad-rature, mirroring us in its shiny facets of metal.Which leads me to pose the following question. Ifit can said, to paraphrase social theorist GhassanHajj, that modernity is best characterised by whatkind of future the First World shows the Third,then might it not also be argued that postmodernityis best characterised by the kind of future the ThirdWorld shows the First, that is to say, our Westernworld? 63

And what of modernity and the colonial impulse?Surely Solide `re gives every impression that this placecan be interpreted as having been colonised byglobal, that is to say, First World capital. Indeed, itis precisely this colonisation that causes us to likenits emerging forms to New York, Paris, London,and the like. But where Beirut differs from thetraditional images of Empire conveyed by modern-ism resides in the facts that its forms are gene-rated not so much to manage global capital as to

attract it, and that they are primarily designed andexecuted by Beirutis for consumption by Beirutis.More and more is the target for Solide `re less

an international, than a distinctly national market.Formalistically, Solide `re might be likened to theBund in Shanghai, built by international investmentbanks like Lloyds or Barings to manage and directEnglish capital for purposes of exploiting an unmo-dernised China. However, such is not the casehere. Rather, these Western-style high rises arethe evidence of a Lebanese economy colonisingnone other than itself, a form of exploitation thatoperates by splitting Lebanese national identity,authoritative and submissive, dominant and sub-

altern at once.The places desire to draw a foreign market stemsfrom its historic role as international service centre,as hub of global banking activity. To attract, it oper-ates as a mirror of the Western capitalisation itdesires, becoming the Other quietly seducing thegaze of the West while outspokenly validating it.However, to build in this way, it also acquiesces toWestern demands for order, efciency, and transpar-encythere are to be no secrets here. Its formsinvariably perform in conformance with the termsdemanded by Western funding entities like theWorld Bank, always indebted to the West, ever pre-pared to submit to the terms of the deal and to repaythe debt, though not necessarily in kind, when theloan is said to fall due. 64

I contend that Solide `re presents an image of a per-sistent colonialism; the great irony here is that thecolonisers today are none other than the colonisedthemselves. This situation suggests that colonisationand its economic construction are more than a

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Figure 27. View ofOuzai in the SouthernSuburbs of Beirut,Summer 2001. (Source

author.)


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matter of nance but also, so Max Weber wouldargue, a matter of social psychology. 65 The compul-sively regenerative nature of capital is accomplished

by continually recreating the very circumstancesnecessary to engender itself, and these include pro-ducing a self-sustaining manner of thinking, anideology of capital. 66 So it is, I would argue, withthe colonised. I wonder if the colonial self-construc-tion survives into Beiruts post-colonial moment pre-cisely because this place can simply imagine itself noother way. It remains compulsively colonial becauseit can no longer, if it ever did, imagine itself as otherthan a culture consuming as it is consumed, anddeeply indebted as the consequence of its voracious

appetite, of its need to consume.One of the oldest originary myths of the world isset in the Levant. Hesiods Theogony recounts thetale of heavenly and earthly beginnings, not tomention those of time itself. 67 Not surprisingly,time here is described in outspokenly naturalistictermsas the genealogy of the greatest of theTitans, the god Cronos. Cronos, so we are told,upon hearing a prophecy that he is to be over-come by one of his children, devours each of hisoffspring as they are born. Chronoss wife Rhea,determined to thwart his plans and recover herchildren, substitutes a rock for the last child,thereby allowing one son, Zeus, to escape hisfathers appetite, and, in time, to return andconquer him. He does so by freeing his brothersas his Father Time sleeps, thus fullling the pro-phecy, thereby allowing time and life itself toresume their interconnected courses. Reluctantlyacknowledging the craft of his children, Cronosbequeaths to each of them a portion of the

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Figure 28. Palestinianchildren playing by thesea near Tripoli;photograph taken

c.1978. (Source: Reed,Beirut: City of Regrets,c.1988.)


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universe, that is to say, a different Levantine cityover which to rule, Byblos, Saida, Sour, amongthem. Poseidons was to be Berytus.

Hariris is to be Beirut.What goes around comes around. There are

curious parallels indeed to be found between thepolitical history of Raq Hariri and the Cronosmyth. Like Cronos, the Prime Ministers appetitefor monuments suggests at once his vanity and hisvulnerability to time, both aspects met by hisdesire that his Lebanese Grands Projets both glorifyhis name for today and retain his memory fortomorrow. Moreover, as with Cronos, the hungerfor immortality felt by this new nations father can

be guaranteed only by consuming his childrenssweat and life-blood as a nations indebtednesstransfers to its posterity. A difference emerges,however, with the absence of a saviour as agent ofsalvation. This time around, there is no Zeus. In themythic rewrite that Hariri and his political familylive, a new generation of offspring is expected toescape their paternal connes in the darkness andwithout a guide. Because of daunting obstacleslike these, we fear that the ending in the originarytales retelling may be less happy than it was therst time around. And that Hariris children maynever know the joyful warmth of the sun on theirfaces, or the exhilarating discovery of their bodiesoutlined upon the sand (Fig. 28).

PostscriptI am assuming that the events in Beirut surroundingRaq Hariris assassination on 14th February, 2005,well after the nalisation of this article, will prompta number of readers to visit this text in hopes

of better understanding its socio-political context.Hariris murder by parties unknown can only be con-strued as an abomination and regarded with the

deepest regret and sadness. For the Lebanese, ithas had the effect of rekindling the dread of return-ing sectarian violence while summoning up arepressed experience of the Civil War. In the faceof these issues, it should be recalled that noonewas more assiduously committed to putting sectar-ianism to rest than Hariri. It was, after all, he whoengineered the Taif Accords. It is also worth notingthat his postwar business practices, although criti-cised here for their empire building, were remark-able in their egalitarianism and confessional

blindness; as Prime Minister his advisers numberedSunnis, Shiites, Druze, Maronites, among manyothers. Whether in the business or the politicalarena, Hariris manner in this most contentious ofplaces was even-handedly to engage the bestpeople, independent of religious or ethnic aflia-tions. Indeed, he demonstrated that it was in thebest interest of all involved parties to do so. In thewake of Hariris assassination, the internationalpress reported on a returning atmosphere of culturaland political crisis in Lebanon. I can only hope thatthis is not the case. Indeed, it is my belief thatthere would be no greater affront to Hariris valuesof religious toleration or his practice of democraticstatecraft than for the country that he loved anddefended to retreat into a wartime condition ofinternecine suspicion, intolerance, and fear.

AcknowledgementThis paper could not have been completed withoutthe caring guidance of many friends in Beirut,

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including Abdul-Halim Jabr, Howayda Al-Harithy,Esther Charlesworth, Nada Moumtaz, and,especially, Marwan Ghandour. I am also indebted

to Helen Seeden, Assem Salaam, Georges Corm,and Angus Gavin for sharing their experiences inSolide `re with me. At Iowa State University, HowardShapiro, Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education,helped to fund this work, and Architecture col-league Lynn Paxson and graduate student LinliChen assisted me in preparing its images for publi-cation. As ever, I thank my wife Charlene Castellanofor her tireless reading and indispensable criticism ofmy work.

Notes and references1. For a brief discussion of the construction of patronage

in Lebanon, particularly the bargaining occurringamong Christian, Sunni, and Druze zuama , seeArnold Hottinger, Zuama in Historical Perspective,included in Leonard Binder, ed., Politics in Lebanon(New York, London, Sidney, Wiley and Sons, 1966),pp. 85 105. Samir Khalaf argues how these relation-ships transform from religious to political and commer-cial relations in Primordial Ties and Politics, Chapter 5in Lebanons Predicament (New York, Columbia,1987). For a working bibliography of clientelism inLebanon, see S. N. Eisenstadt and Rene Lemarchand,eds, Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development (Beverly Hills, London, SAGE Publications, 1981),p. 311.

2. It is commonly believed that Hariri commissioned theinternational advertising rm Saatchi and Saatchi todesign his political campaign. There is some truth tothe claim. Hariri is a major investor in French marketingconglomerate Publicis Groupe, which controls SaatchiandSaatchi. The advertising rm also works extensively

with Hariris media interests in Beirut, including news-papers and Future TV.

3. Interview 7 with Raq Hariri conducted by EstherCharlesworth, 15 May 2000.

4. Beiruts construction as a Western city is a recurringtheme in Christian national discourse in Lebanon,intent upon garnering a distinctly European ideologicalformation that valorises a particular strain of non-Arabcultural production. This mode of identication withthe West is powerfully problematised in works of con-temporary ction like Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose: aNovel , trans. Georgina Kleege (Sausalito, CA, USA,Post-Apollo Press, 1978), esp. pp. 467. See alsoThomas Foster, Circles of Oppression, Cities of Repres-sion: Etel Adnans Sitt Marie Rose, PMLA 110:1 (Jan1995), 5974.

5. Any discussion of Orientalisation must account for oneof the elds seminal texts, Edward Saids Orientalism:Western Representations of the Orient (Harmonds-worth, MX, UK, Penguin, 1978). This book is centralto the entire eld of postcolonial theory. See RobertJ. C. Young, Postcolonialism (Oxford, Blackwell, 2001),p. 383.

6. Forbes magazine regularly numbers Hariri among theworlds wealthiest people (108 in 2004, 83 in 2003,87 in 2002). His estimated net worth is said to rangefrom $2.5 billion in 1996 to $4.3 billion in 2004.Note that at a time when the face value of his property

ventures in Beirut is collapsing, Hariris personal fortunegrows by almost 75%. Forbes magazine website:www.forbes.com/lists.

7. The concepts Imaginary, Symbolic, Real describe thethree Lacanian dimensions inhabiting the process ofIdentication as outlined in the Translators Note prefa-cing Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sher-idan (New York, Norton, 1977), pp. ixx. The dyadicrelationship between Imaginary and Symbolic is furtherdescribed by Julia Kristeva in Revolution in Poetic

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Language , trans. Leon Roudiez (New York, ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1984), pp. 956.

8. This number does not include the 17,000 still recordedas missing.

9. Here Bauman quotes Klaus Offe, see Postmodernity and Its Discontents (New York, New York UniversityPress, 1997), p. 22.

10. One telling discussion of post-Mandate architecturalform occurs in Jad Tabet, From Colonial Style toRegional Modernism: Modern Architecture inLebanon and the Problem of Cultural Identity,included in Projecting Beirut: Episodes in the Construc-tion and Reconstruction of Modernity , Peter Roweand Hashim Sarkis, eds (Munich, Prestel, 1996),pp. 83115.

11. Similarly, Edward Said has spoken of three phases ofcolonialismmost important of these, a third periodwherein the East, now educated in the institutions ofthe West, is empowered to direct its appropriated criti-cal tools at the incipiently imperialistic bases ofWestern institutions, and their driving master narra-tives. The net result is a De-Colonial, Post-Moderncritical project that compels the West to consider thiscritique as gestated within a condition of radical alter-ity, and to internalise it. See, for instance, Saids Yeatsand Decolonialisation, included in Moustafa Bayoumiand Andrew Rubin, eds, The Edward Said Reader (New York, Vintage, 2000), esp. pp. 297302, as well

as his Intellectuals, Expatriates and Marginals,pp. 377381. See also Said, Representations of theIntellectual (New York, Vintage, 1996), pp. 2545.

12. Tabet, op. cit. , pp. 846. On the Frenchness ofLebanese architecture during the Mandate period,see Assem Salam, The Role of the Government inShaping the Beirut Environment, included in Project-ing Beirut , Rowe and Sarkis, eds, op. cit. , esp. pp.1245. More specically, on the Levantine experienceof French architect Michel Ecochard, designer of

Beiruts rst urban plan in 1943, see Marlene Ghor-ayeb, The Work and Inuence of Michel Ecorchardin Lebanon, also in Projecting Beirut , pp. 106121.Ecochards work was closely tied to the archaeologicalresearches of the French Institute in Damascus.

13. Edde discusses his involvement with the reconstructionproject in his autobiography, Le Liban dou Je Viens(Paris, Buchet-Chastel, 1996), especially Annnexes:La Reconstruction du Centre-Ville, pp. 225 249.For alternative discussions of the two Edde projects,see Ossama Kabbani, The Reconstruction of Beirut (Oxford, Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1992), esp. pp.3147, and Hashim Sarkis, Territorial Claims: Archi-tecture and Post-War Attitudes toward the BuiltEnvironment included in Recovering Beirut , edsSamir Khalaf and Philip Khoury, introd. RichardSennett (Leiden, New York, Cologne, Brill, 1993), pp.101127. For a later critique of the Beirut reconstruc-tion see Sarce Makdisi, Laying Claim to Beirut:Urban Narrative and Spatial Identity in the Ageof Solide `re, Critical Inquiry 23 (Spring 1997),pp. 661705.

14. Perhaps nowhere is this myth of place more attachedto emergent Lebanese national consciousness than inCharles Corms La Montagne Inspire e, second edition(Paris, Editions de la Revue Phe nicienne, 1964). Thiscollection of French-language poems, dating from192034, is thoroughly Symbolist in feeling.

15. Angus Gavin, Beirut Reborn: The Restoration and Development of the Central District (London,Academy Editions, 1996), especially chapter 6 Gran-deur and Context. Gavins debt to Rowes theorieshas been suggested in the course of conversationswith the project architect. Rowes Collage City is alsolisted in Gavins bibliography for the book.

16. The competition programme for the Souks, to be builtby Solide `re, demonstrates this projects initial contex-tualising preferences. Its programmes brief included

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various style sheets of historical detailing which com-petitors were encouraged to consider in the courseof creating their proposals designs. See The Recon- struction of the Souks of Beirut: An International Ideas Competit ion (Beirut, Solide `re, 1994), especiallySouks of Beirut Condition and Program Kit. To hiscredit, the Souks winning designer Rafael Moneo didnot submit to the projects limited formal predilections.

17. Maria Eugenia Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West:Politics, Colonies, and Trade , trans. Mary Turton(Cambridge, England, Cambridge University Press,1987), pp. 1515.

18. Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge,MA, MIT Press, 1978), especially Chapter 1: Utopia,Decline and Fall.

19. It comes as little surprise that one of the main archi-tects sub-contracted to develop Gavins Solide `remaster plan was none other than Rowes collaboratoron Collage City , Fred Koetter. Koetter/Kims projectfor the hotel district, Beirut Central District: TheDevelopment Plan for Sectors B and CThe Hotel District and the Serail Corridor , dates from July1997. The rm also here afliated itself with Perkinsand Will, the US subsidiary of Dar El-Handassah.

20. Dubai has become the Middle Easts foremost market-place, its growth spurred by its tax-free status. The cityhas supplemented its shopping allure with unparalleledopportunities for entertainment. Beirut is seeking to

prot from Dubais formula for success by foreground-ing its leisure culture as well as by envisioning specictax-free zones near border points, including theLebanon/Syria border and the Beirut internationalairport. Beirut also imitates the tax-free zones onemonth a year during Fabulous February when statetax levies are temporarily suspended.

21. The latest instance of high-style architecture is therecently announced Landmark Building in RiadEl-Solh Square to be designed by Jean Nouvel. This

project, like its predecessor scheme by Rem Koolhaas,was commissioned by the Hariri-nanced urban designrm Millennium. See Tarek El-Zein, Building the TallestBuilding in Lebanon, The Daily Star (8 April 2004),Section I, page 1 . This building will be fundedlargely with Kuwaiti money.

22. I borrowthisapt term fromthe recent essay byNormanKlein, Architainment: LIndustrialisation du De sir,trans. Thierry Marignac, included in Au de la de laSpectacle (Paris, Centre Pompidou, 2001), pp. 7784.

23. Unfortunately for Murr, he was unable to leverage ahigher price from Solide `re, leaving the Ministerholding this truly unsalvageable, white elephant of acommercial building.

24. Interview with former Minister of Finance GeorgesCorm in Paris at Le Do me, 15 February 2001. Cormnotes that Jad Tabet conrms his claim concerningthe wanton destruction of the BCDs Jewish quarter.By contrast, Angus Gavin, Solide `res chief architect,argues that the buildings were demolished becauseof their extreme physical degradation. Physical con-dition, however, cannot explain the wholesale destruc-tion of this entire quarter.

25. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste , trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge,MA, Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 3667.

26. On the subject of the Archnet site ( www.archnet.org ),refer to my article, The East/West Web Site, Architec-

ture 90:7 (July 2001), pp. 534. Hariris teamresponded to the web sites visual diatribe with anew book, compiled by Ayman Trawi, using a similarBefore and After format favourably to spin the BCDreconstruction, Beiruts Memory (Beirut, Banque de laMe diterrane e, c.2002).

27. The 1998 Solide `re annual report disclosesthe companyto be the Radion Corporation, from Houston, Texas.

28. Beiruts Solide `re project epitomises the modernistdiscourse of urban hygiene while attaching itself

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ideologically to acts of historical cleansing like thatdescribed by Zygmunt Bauman in Modernity and Ambivalence (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press,1991), esp. Chap. III, The Self-Construction ofAmbivalence.

29. These include the United Nations ESCWA building byPierre El-Khoury, the power substation by Abdul-Halim Jabr in association with Bawader architects,the new Parliament Annex at Place de lEtoile andthe Forum building in Rue Maraad, both by BuildingDesign Consultants (Nabil Azar, principal), theBanque Audi beneath the Serail, by Kevin Dash, andthe nearly complete LOrient-le-Jour/An-Naharbuilding, also by Pierre El-Khoury, in the Burj Square(Place des Martyrs). To this list should be addedthe proposed Landmark Building, designed by JeanNouvel, to be erected in Riad El Solh Square, men-tioned above.

30. This is no idle comparison for an essential formal andpolitical actor in the Solide `re redevelopment is SaudiArabia. Raq Hariri was a developer for the House ofSaud and instrumental in constructing those grandsensembles with which the Royal Family has confectedthe national identity of the Saudi state. See Edde , op.cit., pp. 1424. His work for them even includes thevery conference centre in Taif where the Lebanesepeace accords were signed in 1989. Most importantare a redesign of the city of Mecca and the urban

ensembles built upon previously empty, desert landnot unlike the vacated tabula rasa created by Soli-de `rethat the Royal Family has built in Riyadh andJeddah, hugely modernised simulations of rural, andvillage peninsular culture (Naba, p. 32, citing GuilainDenoeux and Robert Springbord, Hariris Lebanon,Middle East Policy VI:2 [October 1998]). For a paralleldiscussion of the ways that contemporary Saudiculture both un-writes and re-writes its culture, seeElaine Sciolino, Where the Prophet Trod, He Begs,

Tread Lightly, New York Times International (15 February 2002), late edition: A4 and HowaydaAl-Harithy, Manufacturing Architectural Identity: TheWorks of Rasem Badran in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tra-ditional Dwellings and Settlement Review XII:1(Autumn 2000), p. 49.

31. The once and future Prime Minister announcedthis injunction at the ceremony at Martyrs Squarecommemorating the 25th anniversary of the outbreakof the Civil War. The Daily Star (14 April 2000),p. 1.

32. This project is included in the synoptic table of BCDschemes included in Henri Edde s two volumes prefa-cing his project for the reconstruction of Beirut. Themid-1980s plan transformed the dump into a peninsu-lar playground covered with a megastructure ofseaside apartments and hotels.

33. The legislation governing the creation of the develop-ment corporation limits share ownership by any indi-vidual to 10%. Hariri, who is a Saudi citizen, isallowed to own no more than 5000 square metres ofproperty by Lebanese law. Despite this restriction,Hariri publicly declares his investment in Solide `re at7%. He is in fact far more invested than this, usingfamily members and close business associates asproxies. Hariri also conceals Solide `re investment inctive holding companies and, of course, in his invest-ment banks. (Naba, op. cit. , p. 37.)

34. Patronage studies became an essential component inthe study of Middle Eastern social and political patternsas illustrated by one of the standard works on Leba-nese governance, Leonard Binder, ed., Politics inLebanon (New York, London, Sidney, John Wiley,1966). They also shape the work of Ernest Gellnerand John Waterbury in their edited volume Patronsand Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London,Duckworth, 1977), Samir Khalaf in Lebanons Pre-dicament (New York, Columbia University Press,

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