“Born in Lebanon” Lebanese creativity through 16 figures who shone globally

Prepared by: Jeanne d’Arc Abi Yaghi
It is taken for granted that there is no meaning to the existence of any homeland, no guarantee for the continuity of its entity, and no maintenance for it without deep awareness and correct understanding of the basic components that form the basis of existence and entity, and these components are: land, people, and heritage.
Given the importance of heritage in shaping the identity of the homeland and the citizen, and in preserving and continuing its historical memory, the “National Heritage Foundation” was established, which this year also, as every year, revived the Heritage Week entitled “Born in Lebanon” under the patronage of the Minister of Culture, Dr. Tarek Mitri, and in the presence of the Foundation’s President, Mrs. Mona Hrawi, members, and a crowd of those interested in heritage, at the “Planet of Discovery” building in downtown Beirut.

Pictures and words

The exhibition included the careers of 16 Lebanese figures who achieved remarkable success in the world, hoping that the event would give students and young people a dose of optimism for the future and hope to achieve an accomplishment they dream of.
In the halls of “Planet of Discoveries”, several pavilions were distributed, topped by huge pictures of prominent Lebanese men and women who became celebrities in the world of business, arts, literature and science, and whose news fills international newspapers and magazines. Their contributions, each in his own field, contributed to raising the name of Lebanon abroad and to the renaissance of their country and injecting health into its entity. On the platforms, there were distributed pictures of these people in color and in black and white, from their childhood, youth, work and the world of expatriation, and models of their achievements, inventions and innovations, and writings and texts about their lives and adventures: in one wing, Abdul Rahman Al-Basha’s piano, the environmentally friendly car and clock designed by Nicolas Hayek, Professor Michael DeBakey’s pump for the heart and lungs during open heart surgeries, and in another, scenes from films produced by Mario Kassar, the works of Amin Maalouf, a model of Jacques Saadeh’s ship, and many others.

From Lebanon…to the world

The selected figures who were born in Lebanon and have shone in the world, from Fairuz to Abdul Rahman Al-Basha, Michael DeBakey, Mario Kassar and others. Those chosen and honored by the exhibition are:

• Mario Kassar: A film producer who stormed the doors of Hollywood and founded the company “Caroloco”. His films achieved great successes such as the “Rambo” series with Sylvester Stallone, “The Terminator” with Arnold Schwarzenegger and “Basic Instinct” with Sharon Stone, which he launched and established its fame. Some of his films won several Oscars and achieved fantastic profits exceeding two billion dollars.

• Casey Kasem: The most popular radio host and DJ in the United States, and the founder of the music stock market in the world, he has a star in his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and has won more than 50 medals and awards.

• Michael DeBakey: His early brilliance made him the first to establish the foundations of open-heart surgery, and the first to perform surgery to open a blocked artery in 1953. He has performed 6,000 operations, including one for former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

• Carlos Ghosn: Nicknamed the “miracle manager,” Fortune magazine chose him among the ten most important businessmen in the world. He saved Nissan from bankruptcy and is currently its chairman and the chairman of the French company Renault.

• Abdul Rahman Al-Basha: A world-class pianist, at the age of six he played spontaneously for the first time, and at the age of ten he gave his first concert accompanied by a full orchestra. He won first place among 80 international pianists in the most difficult and largest international award, the Queen Elizabeth Award in Brussels in 1978. He has 40 pieces of his own musical compositions.

• Nicolas Hayek: Industrialist, saved the Swiss watch industry from collapse, invented the Swatch watch and received the Economic Savior Medal, and invented the Smart environmental car in cooperation with Mercedes.

• Ray Dirani: Researcher and scientist, managed to obtain 150 patents for cleaning products and pesticides, heads one of the most important companies in the world, Occidental Petroleum.

• Amin Maalouf: Journalist and writer considered one of the pioneers of historical novels, won the Goncourt Prize in 1993, the highest literary award in France.
  Elie Saab: Fashion designer whose fame has crossed the borders of the Arab world. Hollywood stars flock to wear his designs, and his ready-to-wear collection is sold in more than 70 countries.
• Jacques Saade: Owner of the number one shipping company in France and the second in the world, which includes 11,000 employees.
• Rony Seikaly: The first Lebanese to play and achieve championships in the National Basketball Association (NBA), faced Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and other great players in the world.
• Gabriel Yared: A creative musician in the field of films, he has composed music for more than 60 films, and has won international awards, most notably the Oscar for the film “The English Patient” in 1998.
• William Sawaya: His designs for home furniture and artistic pieces are a pleasure to the eye, as they carry a modern and distinctive look. He has won more than once in competitions organized by the FIFA Committee with his design of the Women’s World Cup trophy and the FIFA Club World Cup trophy, and his designs have occupied the museums of the International Federation of Football and are displayed in more than 70 museums around the world.
• K-Maro: One of the most famous rappers in the world, he won the Music Award for Best Hip-Hop Song, and has ten gold records to his credit. He will launch his own fashion collection next fall under the name “Baalbek”.
• Fairuz: Our ambassador to the stars, she sang on the most famous stages in the world. Fifty years of giving resulted in 16 theatrical works, three films, and countless wonderful songs, as well as international awards and honors.
• Maher Attar: A photographer whose photos have been featured in the most important international newspapers and magazines such as “The New York Times”, “Le Figaro” and “Time”. His lenses have followed important figures and entered intimate moments of their lives.

Joseph Abi Daher in: “Before the Flower Blooms”

The poet and artist Joseph Abi Daher signed his new book “Before the Flower Blooms” in the cultural hall of the Mar Elias Monastery – Antelias, at the invitation of the Cultural Movement – Antelias. On this occasion, a symposium was held about the book, attended by the Secretary of Internal Affairs in the Movement Hanna Abi Habib, Suhail Matar, and the poets Henry Zgheib and Issam Al-Abdullah.
The symposium’s host, colleague Nada Eid, began the meeting with a speech in which she said:
“Before the flower blooms… and where will it bloom? Aren’t the beloved ones still there, with their lanterns full of oil and their hearts filled with eagerness, to meet the new born… Before the flower blooms… and how will it bloom when Joseph Abi Daher has built a garden of poems surrounded by the plucked word and the symbolic image that shines like lightning…”
Professor Hanna Abi Habib said:
“A collection of poems attacks you all at once, you think you can take it easily, but it slips away from you, seducing you with the magic of its letters and the coquetry of its words, but beware of touching the honor of the fragrance emanating from it, inhale it and do not try to contain it in a vessel, for its fragrance is too vast to fill jars, or to perfume the face of light with it…”
Poet Henry Zgheib said:
“In my autobiography, it occupies a bright light coming from poetry, and a lifetime companionship that is among the most precious in the fabric of life. Joseph Abi Daher, my half-brother… has been twinned with him for a long time, since the first beginnings, since the small abilities and big dreams… His new work today, before the flowers fade, comes from a new place, from another place, from a different dawn for a surprising tomorrow, neither in the love affair nor in the usual that comes to mind.”

In turn, Professor Suhail Matar said about Abu Daher:
“… He collects his words from the forest of Harissa, where basil and thyme have stories and secrets, and steals them from the mouths of birds, butterflies and children, gathering them from the remains of his grandfather’s old house and the hem of his mother’s dress, fragrant with purity and poverty… Congratulations to him for his freedom, congratulations to him for his ability to escape from prisons… He writes as if he were outside the shackles and outside the corruptions of time.”
In the words of the poet Issam Al-Abdullah, it was said:
“This is a stubborn poet, who turns his back on civilization and throws his words at the mountain. He throws his words at the garden and cares about the seasons… In classical Arabic and with clear brevity, he composes the short poem and surrounds it with wild saffron. And in the familiar colloquial dialect, he brings the river, the sky, the trees and everything that moves and creeps into the paths of the active imagination that quickly and directly goes to extract the pearl of speech from the abundant prose…”
The last word was for the poet Abi Daher, and it included:
“At dawn, she ran to gather the flowers. She picked the sweetest flower, hid it in her white notebook, and held her heart tightly to the notebook. My eyes are on the calendar, the last day of its blossoms does not seem to fade, the flowers do not seem to fade.
These days are dragging the horses of ugliness, and in the litter sits a one-eyed executioner, sewing a black cloak for the eye that looks at me. And the tribe is happy with the sounds of the runners behind him, and they are fighting and gathering dust, filling the bags for the clear days.”
Oh… if they scattered on the ground, the ground would become a desert, sand covering sand, no flowers, no birds, no river, not even a cloud in the sky. A boy would tie them to a thread, and they would make a colorful paper airplane…
… before he left and scattered, he said:
“Keep planting flowers, so that a day does not come when you will be scattered… And the more the plants grow, the ugliness disappears, they see the ones who wronged me, the sand on the ground decreases, and the desert shrinks.”

The dialectic of pulpit poetry in Henri Zogheib’s “Platform”

Poet Henri Zogheib signed his new poetry collection “Platform” at the Lebanese Press Syndicate. It is the ninth part of the complete poetry collection that is being successively published by “Dar Dynamic Graphics”. The meeting was attended by the representative of the Army Commander and a number of poets, writers, journalists, media professionals, academics and friends.
This ninth part comes after eight previous ones: “You… and Let the World End” (2001), “Rhythms” (second edition 2002), “Intimacies” (2003), “Symphony of Falling and Forgiveness” (second edition 2004), “From the Dialogue of the Sea and the Wind” (second edition 2004), “Friend of the Sea” (second edition 2005), “Love Poems in Forbidden Times” (in Arabic and English, second edition 2005), and “Details on the Rhythm of Your Face” (2005).
The new collection “Platform” includes an introduction to the pulpit poem: its occasions, the circumstances of its writing, the elements of its continuity after the occasion in which it was said has passed, with other details about poetry and its essence in pulpit and writing.
Regarding the poet’s question in the introduction to the collection: “Which pulpit poem? And what occasion? Is the pulpit poem destined to end when it is recited on the pulpit? And does every pulpit occasion fade away with the departure of the audience from the platform?” He answers: “It is self-evident that it is difficult for a poet to choose the occasion in which he would be willing to participate in standing on the pulpit, so he does not accept any occasion and write a new, special poem for it. Not every occasion is worthy of the honor of having a poem said on it. The criterion for this selectivity is that the occasion rises to the level of poetry, not that the poetry falls within the context of the occasion, whatever it may be and wherever it may be. By “occasion,” I mean the honored person or the celebrated memory. By “raising the occasion to the level of poetry,” I do not mean diminishing the importance of the occasion, but rather that the poet makes the occasion worthy of entering into the sanctity of the poem and his poetic history. There may be an occasion for a great honor or a precious memory, which the poet is below, so he exploits it for his own prominence rather than to highlight it, and his poem comes as a free glorification and praise below the level of poetry that is intended to immortalize the occasion and consequently its owner or its circumstances. There may be an occasion below the honor of poetry, and there may be a poem below the level of the occasion. It is enough for me, in this collection, to say that the poem of the occasion – when it is in poetry – does not end with the end of its recitation on the platform and the passing of the occasion, but poetry composes it for the future in time. And here is the genius of poetry. I ask forgiveness from poetry if, on a platform, I have wronged it by “luring” it to where it is not appropriate.
The book contains 14 new poems recited by Henri Zogheib on various platforms: in Jordan (The Poet and the Words), Beirut (Centennial of Karam Melhem Karam), Zahle (Poetry Festival and the Memory of Riad Maalouf), Abu Dhabi (Gibran Week), Baakline (Amin Takieddine Festival), Jounieh (Cedar in the Sea), Army Days in Lebanon (Your Sound of Silence), Sidon (An Opening to the People of Palestine on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Nakba), and Sweida – Syria (Ancient Window), or sung by the voices of: Majida El Roumi (Qana), Hiba El Kawwas (Memory of the Future, Extend Your Hands to Me), Julia Boutros (Oh, You Great Ones).

Meeting about June rain by Jabbour Douaihy

The Cultural Movement – Antelias held a symposium on the novel “June Rain” by Jabbour Douaihy. The symposium was moderated by Dr. Antoine Seif, with the participation of Drs. Boutros Labaki, Sami Sweidan, Misbah Al-Samad and Melhem Chaoul.
Seif welcomed the attendees and discussed the formation of Douaihy’s consciousness as a child, saying that Douaihy resolved the duality of the novel and history without excluding either of them.
Then Dr. Boutros Labaki spoke, discussing the writer’s ability to describe situations, things and people.
For his part, Dr. Sami Sweidan presented a reading of the novel’s text, focusing on what the text narrates, who narrates it, how it is narrated, and why it is narrated in this way.
Dr. Misbah Al-Samad’s intervention was entitled “The Novel and the Meaning of the Term,” pointing to the term as a linguistic phenomenon in Douaihy’s novel, and its richness, depth and ability to extract new meanings.
The last intervention was by Dr. Melhem Chaoul, who spoke about two scenes in the novel (the first and the last) that are the most expressive of the lived drama.
It is worth noting that the meeting included readings from the book by Dr. Antoine Seif.