Crossing Memory's Green Line—Contemporary Art in Beirut

Abstract

The Barakat Building, in Beirut's rebuilt Sodeco Square, sits precisely on the Green Line that, during the bloody civil war of 1975-90, divided East Beirut from West.1 Built in 1924, the building was a Deco neo-Ottoman jewel: encrusted with marble tiles and ironwork, it had views from every room through a curving portico onto the street. When the civil war broke out in 1975, the Barakat family retreated to the mountains, and the building was soon taken over by local militia. In the fifteen years of daily horror that ensued, the building served as boundary marker, outpost, sniper's nest, and worse. In the “cold civil war” after the end of factional fighting, the bullet-pocked building lurked as an uneasy reminder, with sandbags still in place and eerie silhouettes marked out in mud on the interior walls.