My Square: Who Stole Saht-el-Burej?
It floored me when I looked at and compared the before, during and after shots of Burj Square. It’s like a living, breathing city center and public space had been torn clean off, and in its place an asphalt tarmac, a huge emptiness, a gapping hole in our city and our collective memory.
We are the lost generations of Lebanon, we can’t find our bearings and it’s not because we are faulty or defective in any way, but because we have been robbed of our center of gravity, of the city we never had a chance to know. They stole Saht-el-Burj (Burj Square) from us and replaced it with an alien looking landscape and at its center, an armless, bullet riddled statue. They removed the name ‘Burj’ from the urban Beiruti dictionary and with it any sense of national cohesion that Burj once represented.
I came back to Lebanon with my parents in the early 1990s for a visit; the first place we went to, the ruins of ‘el-Burj’ and ‘el-Aswaq’, the trouble was my parents couldn’t find them at first, all landmarks had disappeared. We drove through bombed out streets through deserted concrete shells until we arrived at an open space with a statue at its center. I snapped away, taking pictures of what was left of a once bustling city center. But at that time many of the buildings around the square were still standing, bombed out and badly damaged, but still there, and so was the square, the layout of the square the way it was originally designed, it was clear to see.
Today, it’s hard to tell where the old Cinema Rivoli building once stood, or the Savoy Hotel or the Empire theatre. It never bothered me before because I did not know the value of having a central square before. But seeing Lebanon still divided into de facto sectarian cantons, with each community having its own central squares and market areas, I realized finally that our wounds would never fully heal until Burj square is rebuilt.
Tripoli still has its Square, in the UAE, Dubai’s Baniyas Square known as Nasser Square in Deira was the beating heart of the city in the 70s and 80s and still is a busy commercial hub. In Sharjah, Rolla Square serves a similar purpose.
But beyond the Arab world, think of Postdamer Platz in Berlin, or Trafalgar Square in London, think what those cities would be like with out those squares. Unthinkable! But they did it in Bahrain, bulldozed Pearl Roundabout into the ground. In Bahrain the purpose was to take away a geographic rallying point for the rebels. In Beirut, the purpose, I suspect, was to remove 'the' geographic rallying point for the Lebanese, our Burj, what we need to find our bearings and sense of common purpose. They removed Burj so we may remain lost and so we may never take charge of our own country, and take it away from the corrupt and corrupted political elite.
Instead of a place were the Lebanese can meet, interact and trade with each other, we have a confluence of roads leading to other places. The name Burj, what ordinary people called Martyrs Square, is rarely if ever spoken anymore. No one ever thinks of it as a destination, not like it was. Even the clear shape of the square has been paved over creating an elongated, empty rectangle with just the statue in the center and some buildings to one side. The huge parking lot on the other side of the square emphasizes an urban desert: flat, dead, environmentally unfriendly, asphalt everywhere.
Solidere spent a fortune to rebuild the city center, why did they leave the most important part of the city flat and lifeless? Why wasn’t the war-scared statue placed in a museum and a full size replica, minus the bullet holes, made and put in its place in the square? If parking is a problem, why wasn’t an underground parking built under the square? Why wasn’t the commercial feel of the area restored? Why, at least, weren’t the old iconic buildings of Burj rebuilt? I can’t find answers to these questions maybe someone out there can.
An American friend of mine in fact asked me if the present urban geography and design of Burj Square was intentional. My answer to that was: in view of the fact that I am an Arab and I am therefore partial to conspiracy theories, I think it was intentional and the powers that be were very conscious of what they were doing. The only logical reason I can think of for what they did is to keep the Lebanese divided down sectarian lines, to keep us separate. In fact, driving past the awful tarmac there is a sense of crossing a border of sorts, especially when you move past the Phalange Party HQ and move into the down town. Geography, even on a small scale, has an immense psychological impact.
(My thanks to all the sites whose pictures I downloaded and put up on this blog to help illustrate my point)
A rare picture taken in 1978, in the midst of civil war
We are the lost generations of Lebanon, we can’t find our bearings and it’s not because we are faulty or defective in any way, but because we have been robbed of our center of gravity, of the city we never had a chance to know. They stole Saht-el-Burj (Burj Square) from us and replaced it with an alien looking landscape and at its center, an armless, bullet riddled statue. They removed the name ‘Burj’ from the urban Beiruti dictionary and with it any sense of national cohesion that Burj once represented.
I came back to Lebanon with my parents in the early 1990s for a visit; the first place we went to, the ruins of ‘el-Burj’ and ‘el-Aswaq’, the trouble was my parents couldn’t find them at first, all landmarks had disappeared. We drove through bombed out streets through deserted concrete shells until we arrived at an open space with a statue at its center. I snapped away, taking pictures of what was left of a once bustling city center. But at that time many of the buildings around the square were still standing, bombed out and badly damaged, but still there, and so was the square, the layout of the square the way it was originally designed, it was clear to see.
Today, it’s hard to tell where the old Cinema Rivoli building once stood, or the Savoy Hotel or the Empire theatre. It never bothered me before because I did not know the value of having a central square before. But seeing Lebanon still divided into de facto sectarian cantons, with each community having its own central squares and market areas, I realized finally that our wounds would never fully heal until Burj square is rebuilt.
Tripoli still has its Square, in the UAE, Dubai’s Baniyas Square known as Nasser Square in Deira was the beating heart of the city in the 70s and 80s and still is a busy commercial hub. In Sharjah, Rolla Square serves a similar purpose.
But beyond the Arab world, think of Postdamer Platz in Berlin, or Trafalgar Square in London, think what those cities would be like with out those squares. Unthinkable! But they did it in Bahrain, bulldozed Pearl Roundabout into the ground. In Bahrain the purpose was to take away a geographic rallying point for the rebels. In Beirut, the purpose, I suspect, was to remove 'the' geographic rallying point for the Lebanese, our Burj, what we need to find our bearings and sense of common purpose. They removed Burj so we may remain lost and so we may never take charge of our own country, and take it away from the corrupt and corrupted political elite.
Instead of a place were the Lebanese can meet, interact and trade with each other, we have a confluence of roads leading to other places. The name Burj, what ordinary people called Martyrs Square, is rarely if ever spoken anymore. No one ever thinks of it as a destination, not like it was. Even the clear shape of the square has been paved over creating an elongated, empty rectangle with just the statue in the center and some buildings to one side. The huge parking lot on the other side of the square emphasizes an urban desert: flat, dead, environmentally unfriendly, asphalt everywhere.
Solidere spent a fortune to rebuild the city center, why did they leave the most important part of the city flat and lifeless? Why wasn’t the war-scared statue placed in a museum and a full size replica, minus the bullet holes, made and put in its place in the square? If parking is a problem, why wasn’t an underground parking built under the square? Why wasn’t the commercial feel of the area restored? Why, at least, weren’t the old iconic buildings of Burj rebuilt? I can’t find answers to these questions maybe someone out there can.
An American friend of mine in fact asked me if the present urban geography and design of Burj Square was intentional. My answer to that was: in view of the fact that I am an Arab and I am therefore partial to conspiracy theories, I think it was intentional and the powers that be were very conscious of what they were doing. The only logical reason I can think of for what they did is to keep the Lebanese divided down sectarian lines, to keep us separate. In fact, driving past the awful tarmac there is a sense of crossing a border of sorts, especially when you move past the Phalange Party HQ and move into the down town. Geography, even on a small scale, has an immense psychological impact.
(My thanks to all the sites whose pictures I downloaded and put up on this blog to help illustrate my point)
A rare picture taken in 1978, in the midst of civil war
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