Beirut’s Water Narratives: Resurfacing a Forgotten Water System – S. A. K. Y. E.

Abstract

We tend to forget that every water stream, has a source, an initial point of emergence, and an end point. Instead, most texts and research deal with the protagonist (The River) as the only actor within the landscape. In reality, this river, is a result of streamed water, from the point of expulsion (source) to where it spills (end). These two points, initial and final, rise as the main concern to the forgotten morphology of the Water Network. In Cities, we deal with these “final”, as the space of water expulsion and communal use, where the water network is further funneled into a sub-network, that leads to the household. In order to further, elaborate on these typologies, I first categorize a heading, under which all these morphologies fall. This research seeks to formulate a connection between water and space, to prove to the audience that Water itself is a landscape typology, and that no matter the scale of the latter, it can perform as a cultural landscape telling tales of the children that have rampaged through the ripples and dipped a toe or two. But also, seeks to preserve these waterscapes, and re-juvinate the Memory, and Maybe, just maybe then re-integrate the Original Function, of the Waterscape. Similarly, Beirut, the city of Water, caters for its own subnetwork of water typologies, classified by the “Sabil”, “Hawooz”, “Ain”,”Sakye”, “birke”, that similar to the step wells, have become but a mere story that our grandparents tell, or simply a mere Name of a location, or a street that the local taxi driver uses to drop off his passengers!