Old houses of Beirut as Objects/Subjects of attachment

Abstract

Beirut’s old houses have been gradually disappearing in order to make way for modern buildings. This has caused some Lebanese citizens a lot of pain and sadness, including my interlocutors. I did my fieldwork with a group of people who are absolutely fond of old houses. They go on house-visits around Beirut and beyond in order to photograph old and abandoned houses, and share their photographs on their social media pages. “We want to show people what we see in these houses, which they pass by every day without noticing,” claimed Roy. Through joining my interlocutors’ house-visits and interviewing them, I wanted to explore their connection with and experiences of these houses. My interlocutors claim that by going on these trips they are simultaneously “going back to the roots.” Old houses are the “real Beirut” according to them, and everything else is just a degradation and disfiguration of this Beirut. Old houses are rare traces of an urban experience they judge as better and more pleasant. Through “going back to the roots,” my interlocutors are not only going back to the original, untainted Beirut, but it’s also a return to one’s ancestry and to “nature” they claim. Old houses are more “natural,” “humane,” “soulful” than the other houses that make up today’s built-environment. They are humble because they are closer to nature in their colour schemes, textures, entanglement and so on. They experience old houses as “made of earth,” in contrast to the “artificial and soulless” Beirut. The houses’ materiality, along with the decay and transformation are important reasons for why my interlocutors experience them as “souls.” (which was a prevalent theme during fieldwork) I argue that this “meeting of souls,” is a reflection on the resemblances between them, the houses and nature, which is why I claim that my interlocutors are “ecologically aesthetic” (Bateson, 1979) My interlocutors visit these houses in order to feel things, which is why I argue that their house-visits are “emotional-practices.” These practices guide their pursuits of a different Beirut and open up other possibilities of how space can look or feel like. Through their house-visits, they are trying to connect to the city in their own way and to temporarily feel intimate to Beirut, something they do not experience in their everyday lives.