The City of Scars

The misterious building across the street kept me wondering for almost a week. I kept asking people about it. Nobody knew what had happened to it. They all had found it they way it was, almost lifeless. Only two or three windows lit at night. The rest submerged in darkness. I filmed it from the balcony, trying to keep my camera steady while zooming inside. It looked like a fire had taken place there long ago. I stared a lot at the scars in the old curtains. The whole city is full of scars just like this. As you drive by Beirut people would tell you “oh, it’s here where Hariri was killed”. The place is not marked with a monument as you expect it to be. The crater is no longer and the street appears to be normal. But that is still a scar, the deepest scar the Lebanese people carry with them. Rafik Hariri has a shrine. His tomb is covered with white fresh chrysanthemae. His picture is everywhere in the city. People put it on walls, they write his name all over the walls, they put his picture on their houses together with the Lebanese flag. We make statues for writers and kings. They make statues for assasinated journalists. Those are scars too. We put concert anouncements and commercials on billboards. They put there the pictures of assasinated deputies. And if you happen to pass by the stadium, you’ll have to find out that somebody died there too.