Executive Magazine

Striking a balance

by Jeremy Arbid June 9, 2015

written by Jeremy Arbid

“This law is a step aimed at achieving justice, and after 30 years without a law this step has become necessary and inevitable,” said MP Robert Ghanem, chair of the Parliament’s Administration and Justice Committee, according to the minutes of April’s rent law meeting. The committee had met to amend the law after the Constitutional Council ruled three of its articles invalid. Yet after decades of deliberation and several years drafting and amending the law, Lebanon seems no closer to balancing the tenant–landlord equation — the amended law requires a vote by Parliament and the passing of the budget to make it effective. The long march towards Ghanem’s so called justice is now on hold indefinitely.

[pullquote]The long march towards Ghanem’s so called justice is now on hold indefinitely[/pullquote]

After stumbling through years of debate, Parliament, in April 2014, ratified a new rent law. Many legislators opposed the bill, arguing its outcome was unmeasurable — to this day there is no government data on the number of tenants and units that might be affected — with those in support citing the overdue need to rectify the rent market. Despite passing, it remains a contentious law receiving only mixed support from legislators across the political spectrum.

The Legal Agenda, a nongovernmental organization addressing Lebanon’s legal issues, reported that then-President Michel Sleiman, with 10 members of Parliament, challenged the law, arguing that it did not protect tenants’ constitutionally granted rights to housing. A review later by the Constitutional Council in August 2014 ruled three articles of the law invalid — one article concerning the formation of a committee meant to arbitrate disputes over the value of apartments and the correlated rent, and two articles relating to how the committee would mediate disputes, highlighting a lack of procedure for appealing the committee’s decisions. The law’s scheduled implementation for December 2014 was shelved — its validity in question — and instead was sent back to the committee’s drawing board for amendment.

It now awaits a vote in Parliament’s general assembly — an unpredictable prospect given the stalemate over the presidential void. “It all depends on the political parties,” says MP Nadim Gemayel, a member of the Administration and Justice Committee. “Some are saying we’re not going to legislate before having a president,” he says, leaving everyone in limbo, waiting for a clear indication as to where renters stand and how landlords will react.

MP Ghassan Moukheiber had told Executive that he was expecting hundreds of lawsuits when the law’s implementation was scheduled for December 2014; were renters to refuse to pay increased rents, reasoning the law was not applicable, landlords would be filing suits in droves. Those lawsuits have not materialized, says Gemayel, mainly because the continued uncertainty of the law and its implementation timeframe have left tenants and landlords wondering how the proposed amendments will apply.

[pullquote]“The owner will stay and be protected, the law will be applied, but we will give more advantages to the tenant”[/pullquote]

Gemayel says there were two approaches within the committee to fix the rent law’s shortcomings. The first, he says, was only to correct the law according to the Constitutional Council’s ruling on the three articles before sending it up to the general assembly for a vote. Instead, the committee opted to expand the law’s amendment to include a wider set of articles, says Gemayel. “Since the law came back to us [the committee decided] to amend these articles in order to give more advantages to the tenant,” he says, adding that “the owner will stay and be protected, the law will be applied, but we will give more advantages to the tenant.”

Referring to April’s meeting, Gemayel says the committee proposed amending multiple articles to “place the tenant in a better position, while not increasing the liability of the owner.” Some of the committee’s proposed amendments include extending the period in which the new law goes into effect — 12 years for those whose household incomes are limited and nine years for everyone else; a 15 percent increase over the first four years in the difference between current and new rent, and 20 percent in the last two years; setting the current rent at 4 percent of the sale value of the rented home; limiting who can assume the rent contract if the primary tenant dies; and creating incentives allowing lease-to-own agreements through the stimulus package.

A rent-to-own agreement would require a separate law, Gemayel says, indicating that such a bill has not yet surfaced from the subcommittee. He adds that a rent-to-own law is very important “for those who cannot take a loan or pay the [downpayment] in the loan, so this will make it easier for them to rent with the option to buy.” How it all might work is still unclear. Rony Lahoud, director of the Public Corporation for Housing (PCH), who attended the April committee meeting, suggests the PCH might be the implementer of a rent-to-own law, though he says the agency is not currently involved in the rental market.

The number of tenants renting under the old law remains unclear. Ministry of Finance figures, published previously by Executive in May 2012, indicate around 140,000 properties were rented before 1992 throughout Lebanon, meaning they would fall under the old rent. Some dispute these numbers. Joseph Zoghaib of the Association of Landlords in Lebanon told Executive in 2012 that, using taxation records and copies of rent contracts, the association estimated that old contracts numbered 81,000, while new contracts stood somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000. Since the law was first proposed in 2012, no government body has been tasked with collecting these statistics.

Gemayel bluntly acknowledges the government’s dearth of quantitative data available to plan the law. “We don’t have any documentation — any official documents — the Ministry of Finance doesn’t have numbers, the Public Corporation for Housing only has new numbers, so we had to work very blindly,” he says. The number of those falling under old rent contracts is vital for predicting the impact of the new law, particularly since it calls for establishing a fund at the Ministry of Finance to pay increases in full for those tenants that cannot afford the price increase.

The proposed amendments to the law stipulate that for those tenants whose household income does not exceed three times the minimum wage (a household not earning more than LBP 2,025,000 [$1,343]), the government would pay the entire increase over a nine year period. For households whose income does not exceed five times the minimum wage (LBP 3,375,000 [$2,239]), the government will cover 80 percent of the increase in the same period. This fund, according to minutes from the Administration and Justice Committee April meeting, would not exceed $1.5 billion over the nine year increase period.

“We’ve created the fund on paper,” says Gemayel but, practically speaking, it does not exist. In December, Moukheiber told Executive that such a fund remains theoretical because it would require funding mechanisms, as it will be a new expense for the government, meaning a new budget law must be passed. It is under Parliament’s purview to approve the government’s budget, though it has failed to do so since 2006. In mid May, the Council of Ministers began debating the 2015 draft budget, but, in an email exchange with Executive, director general of the Ministry of Finance Alain Bifani confirmed that the draft budget does not consider funding for the rent law.

[pullquote]The amended law is plagued with deficiencies[/pullquote]

The amended law is plagued with deficiencies. There is no accurate government data on the number of rent contracts that fall under the old law, indicating lawmakers have no idea how many total households will need funding assistance, whether full assistance or 80 percent coverage. Furthermore, this lack of data raises questions as to whether the proposed $1.5 billion funding amount is sufficient and, in the event that Parliament passes a budget, where that money might be sourced.

Committee chair Ghanem, in outlining the intention of the law’s amendments, stated that, “In order to not make the error of giving preference to one side over the other (i.e. between owners and tenants), we endeavored to create a real formula called balance, which ensures for the first side — the tenant — a minimum of justice, represented by not allowing his forced displacement from his house, thus losing the roof that protects him. On the other hand, in terms of the owners, [we seek to] ensure they obtain the minimum of constitutional rights to their property after justice was frozen for 30 years in which no law fair to owners was issued, knowing that many owners were sometimes paid a rent fee per month equivalent to what the tenant paid for cable or a similar service.”

While Ghanem’s words and the committee’s intentions may be pure, the legislative process to reform rent contracts reflects an opposite attitude to that of Lebanon’s lawmakers. Over three years have passed since the bill was first introduced and, with the law back in the general assembly, it will now languish further because of the presidential void. Yet some of the components needed to implement the law — including the fund to help low income tenants pay rent — require a new budget. In addition, the proposed rent-to-own option would require unique legislation. The balance that rent law reform might strike is not likely to help those most in need in the immediate future — Lebanon’s renters and owners will have to wait quite a while longer to know how they stand to be affected.

June 9, 2015 0 comments

Artists

Ayman Baalbaki

by India Stoughton June 9, 2015

written by India Stoughton

Ayman Baalbaki’s studio is located in one of Beirut’s busiest neighborhoods, above one of its busiest cafes, on one of the most congested streets. Inside the hangar like space, however, the outside world recedes. To the left of the entrance, a series of wooden pallets form a raised seating area, complete with embroidered throw pillows and two curved sofas covered in shaggy sheepskin. Behind it, there’s a stand-alone breakfast bar in polished metal. Framed paintings and sketches of all shapes and sizes adorn the walls. But none of these details sink in until later. For the first couple of minutes after I enter the space, my eyes are fixed on the canvases that lie half finished on the floor, propped against the walls to dry.

Ayman Baalbaki

Baalbaki moved into his new Hamra studio almost a year ago. Designed by up and coming young architect Paul Kaloustian, the cavernous white space is punctuated by rough concrete pillars. At the far end is a work in progress capturing the burnt out carcass of an airplane with the Lebanese flag on its tail. The enormous painting is a frenzied mass of overlapping lines and daubs of paint. So is the floor. For five or six meters in front of the canvas, blobs and smears of paint almost obscure it, fading out slowly in a semicircle. “Most of the time, I don’t do preparatory studies,” says Baalbaki, surveying the scene. “I start to paint spontaneously and the painting takes over. It’s very violent. I don’t think that’s necessarily an advantage, it might be better if I did research and prepared. But that’s how I work.”

When people discuss Baalbaki’s work, the emphasis is often on his subject matter, linked to war and displacement, loss and destruction, identity, amnesia and collective memory. Face to face with one of his paintings, it’s his impeccable technique and the undeniable beauty of his work that is most apparent.

Born in 1975, the year the Lebanese Civil War began, Baalbaki’s early years were shaped by conflict. His family is originally from southern Lebanon, but fled to Beirut where they were displaced numerous times by the violence. His installations often attest to his memories of this displacement. Many of them consist of bundles of luggage and belongings tied together with rope, conjuring up the hasty packing of a family forced to flee with the bare essentials.

Baalbaki’s father and uncle were artists, as are his brother and cousin. He didn’t follow in his family’s footsteps unquestioningly, however. “It was definitely a choice,” he says. “When my brother Said and I decided to study art at university, they weren’t sure it was a wise choice. They told us it was a very hard way of life.”

In spite of this, Baalbaki enrolled at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA), graduating in 1998 and moving to Paris, where he continued his studies for five more years.

“In 1995, when I was at ALBA, we were refugees in downtown,” he recalls. “I made a little painting of a destroyed building that faced ours, with laundry hanging on the line outside … at university, it was like there was this schism — they tried to avoid the subject of war. I was determined to break away from this general attitude in the country that this was something we didn’t talk about.

“In France, the theoretical or conceptual aspect of the work was much more important than it had been in Lebanon. Most of the subjects I work on now are themes I started tackling when I was there in 2000 and 2001. People always ask ‘why the war?’ I belong to a generation that has a duty towards remembrance.”

Baalbaki is best known for his Al-Mulatham or freedom fighter series, paintings capturing men with their heads and faces wrapped in the feda’iyeen’s kuffiyeh, their eyes shadowed and defiant. These works, in particular, have skyrocketed in value over the past decade, as collectors have bought and sold them at auction. In April 2013, a piece sold at Sotheby’s for $377,000 — more than 12 times the estimate of $20,000 to $30,000 for the 2009 work. The artist’s gallerist, Saleh Barakat, says that he prefers not to sell at auction, but will occasionally sell a piece from another series, to ensure that Baalbaki doesn’t come to be seen as a one trick pony. “We want his representation to be driven by quality,” he says, “not price.”

Baalbaki’s paintings of war damaged buildings, often curiously contrasted with floral backdrops that recall the colorful dresses worn by women in southern Lebanon, or a Monet painting, range from the iconic shell of the Holiday Inn to a series documenting the damage inflicted on Beirut’s southern suburbs during the 2006 war. But Baalbaki also tackles lesser discussed aspects of Lebanon’s turbulent history, such as the repeated bombing of the Beirut airport by Israeli forces, the subject of the painting currently propped against his studio wall.

Though his technique is classical, Baalbaki’s subject matter and satirical approach are distinctly contemporary. He’s not interested in painting water lilies, no matter how beautiful they might be. He often uses neon lights to spell out words that add a textual dimension to his paintings or installations. The title of a 2009 solo exhibition in London was encapsulated in a neon work marrying Dan Flavin and René Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas la Suisse” — Switzerland, it ain’t.

In Lebanon, Baalbaki’s work is confrontational, thanks to the country’s postwar policy of amnesty and amnesia. Regionally, he has found that some countries prefer not to exhibit pieces from his Al-Mulatham series, seeing their own rebels, dissidents and troublemakers in his freedom fighters. Overseas however, Baalbaki’s images feed into a perception of Lebanon as a country perpetually at war.

“I believe that any action has a political dimension,” he says. “Not in the sense of party politics, but politics with a big P. Sometimes I want to provoke in my work, but I’m never direct about it. Sometimes, when I paint something like the destruction of the MEA fleet during the Israeli invasions, it takes people back to realities that they had forgotten … there are people who tell me, ‘I shot at that building during the war.’ Others say, ‘it’s a self portrait of me.’”

It’s not only those with personal memories of the war that identify with Baalbaki’s work, however. Barakat is laughing as he tells the story of one client, an extremely wealthy, right wing French investment banker, who bought one of Baalbaki’s freedom fighters to hang on the wall of his enormous suite of offices in Place Vendôme.

“I asked him, ‘Why?’” Barakat recalls. “He said, ‘I am like this guy. I am a rebel.’”

June 9, 2015 0 comments

Theatre

Zoukak sidewalks

by India Stoughton June 8, 2015

written by India Stoughton

In April 2013, Lebanese opera and theater fans were given the rare opportunity to interact with American opera and theater director Peter Sellars, he of the gravity defying hair and controversial, cutting edge, politically engaged performances. Clad in a colorful floral shirt and beaded necklaces, Sellars wandered among the audience as he spoke, discussing the need for theater practitioners to create space for dissident or marginalized voices to be heard.

Peter Sellars

Sellars’ talk was part of Zoukak Sidewalks, the program of monthly talks and workshops by international artists, organized by Lebanon’s Zoukak Theater Company and Cultural Association. But as to how Sellars came to visit Beirut, it goes back to a partnership formed in 2011, when actress, director and one of the founding members of Zoukak, Maya Zbib, was recruited by the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, a philanthropic program launched in 2002 to pair prominent artists around the world with gifted emerging artists working in a related field.

In February, Zbib invited other Rolex protégés to visit Beirut and work with Zoukak. “When you’re part of the program, you really become part of the family somehow,” she explains, “and it’s not like a one year thing.” The Rolex team worked with Zoukak and local artists over five days to create a work in progress public performance, focusing on issues central to Zoukak’s practice, including the necessity of making art collectively and the politics of what it means to be an artist.

“It’s really a very big prestige, somehow, but that’s not what’s interesting — the interesting thing is that Peter Sellars is amazing!” the dark haired, fair skinned actress enthuses one sunny morning in Sodeco, over a steaming coffee. “I was so lucky, because I know a lot of other protégés who were with really good names [but] they didn’t get a real experience, because their mentors were not available. Peter came here three times, I think, and I went with him to the Congo, the US and Germany. But it’s not a project, so we didn’t end up doing a show together, and this is not the point of the program. It’s more about exchange … we became friends, essentially, and we still are. I call him and he calls me and we try to meet.”

Sellars’ focus on re-tuning the opera for a more diverse crowd made him a perfect candidate for Zoukak Sidewalks. Furthermore, his approach to performance ties in with Zoukak’s own unique collaborative ethos and democratic attitude to theater making. Founded in 2006 by a group of six young theater studies graduates from the Lebanese University, Zoukak set out to explore modes and meanings of performance, and to find an alternative way of working that eschewed the traditional hierarchy of the local theater tradition.

“The main idea was to have a structure that enables us to deepen our research of tools and topics,” Zbib recalls, “and what needs to be talked about today. For us, it was about working horizontally and trying to create a non hierarchical structure, and I think we’ve succeeded in that. There is leadership, but it’s not directing. So when somebody proposes a play, they direct it but they’re not ‘the director.’ Their work is questioned, and this means that the work is pushed to a better place, because you can’t take things for granted.” Zoukak places emphasis on presenting work to a diverse audience, rather than the cultural elite, touring the country and bussing in audiences from across the country to see their shows in Beirut. Having developed their own system of drama therapy, pioneered by founding member and clinical psychology graduate Lamia Abi Azar, they frequently work with marginalized groups, from Palestinian refugees in Lebanon’s camps, to incarcerated youth, children with disabilities and victims of domestic violence.

The collective also frequently perform overseas. This year alone, they have traveled to India, where they participated in the International Theater Festival of Kerala in January, and to Houston, where they were invited to take part in the CounterCurrent Festival in April.

When asked if she sees Zoukak as an intrinsically Lebanese creation, in spite of its international outlook, Zbib says, “We have an identity as a company, but it’s not necessarily Lebanese,” she says. “It’s our mixture of people that makes our unique Zoukak style.”

June 8, 2015 0 comments

Wellness

The state of yoga in beirut

by Stephanie D Arc Taylor June 7, 2015

written by Stephanie D Arc Taylor

When I first came to Beirut from New York to teach yoga, I was discouraged by the chaos, the disorganization, and the lack of respect for others,” says Danielle Abisaab, owner of Union Square Yoga in Beirut’s Ashrafieh district, just down the hill from ABC Mall. “But after a while, I reached a point where I thought people needed me more here,” the lithe fortysomething with intricate tattoos and huge green eyes remarks as we sit in her penthouse apartment near Sofil. “They pick up the different layers; it’s a war torn country, with wounds. Yoga has been around for thousands of years for a reason: it works.”

It certainly seems to be working for an increasing number of people in the city, as yoga studios pop up seemingly everywhere in Beirut’s wealthier corners, and classes are being offered at gyms everywhere else. People of all ages and both genders can be seen toting rolled yoga mats up and down Gemmayze and Hamra’s main streets, wearing yoga pants and serene smiles, more so than ever before.

Pip Usher

Further, more and more yogis are exploring the idea of sharing their practice as a way to earn a living, as well as spread a message of calm and serenity in what can be a messy, unpredictable city. “Yoga is definitely becoming more popular as a career choice in Beirut,” newly certified instructor Pip Usher tells me. After a six week yoga certification course in Bali, the British expat has begun officially giving popular private and group yoga lessons out of her Mar Mikhael apartment. Abisaab agrees, “Whereas there had been only around 10 or 12 of us when I moved back to Beirut in 2005, there are now 220 yoga teachers in the city,” she marvels.

Both Abisaab and Maria Pamoukian, a longtime teacher at NOK Yoga Shala, the high ceilinged, airy studio in Saifi Village that closed at the end of April after three years (following the death of its director), trace the beginning of the local surge of interest in yoga to mid 2013. At first, the growth was gradual, but then, “over a period of a couple of months, my classes went from 15 to 35. I started getting recognized on the street all the time,” Pamoukian laughs, curled up over a chai latte at a Gemmayze cafe. The groundswell was conveniently timed for Union Square, which opened its doors in May 2013. “Growth was exponential from the beginning,” Abisaab recalls.

The rapid growth of Union Square, NOK, and private practices including Usher’s, speaks to an untapped market in Beirut for the kind of thoughtful, meditative, and calming practice that yoga can provide. “There was definitely a need for a community yoga and Eastern philosophy space,” Pamoukian says; the opportunities for reflection and exercise that NOK and other studios provided “filled that need.”

NOK Yoga Shala

During this period, as Beirut’s second generation of teachers (as Pamoukian calls them) began building communities of regular students, different types of people began showing up at the studios. Whereas before, “it was a lot of women in their 30s and 40s,” Pamoukian says, now there were “more men practicing, more university students, more people 25 and under.”

But turning to yoga as a profession hasn’t meant having to abandon other interests. Abisaab, who was a New York based architect in a previous incarnation, jumped at the opportunity to design her own studio when the space became available and her practice had developed enough to support it. The result: an open plan space with affirmations in English and Sanskrit subtly painted on the walls, silk hammocks hanging from the ceiling for Abisaab’s signature aerial yoga classes, and Hindu statuettes and fragrant incense at the studio’s entrance. It is as much a reflection of her personality and design philosophy as it is an attempt to create a space of stillness. “I wanted to create an urban space; not a new age‑y ethereal space, but one with which people could identify, while still feeling comfortable and relaxed,” Abisaab explains.

Maria Pamoukian

As Beirutis began practicing yoga more regularly, studios flourished, as did teacher trainings, with fresh graduates looking to dip their flexible feet into the pool of yoga instruction. For NOK’s part, Pamoukian (who spent several months managing the studio after its director Hisham Hert died in a motorcycle accident) believes that the studio “gave courage to a lot of current teachers to do their own thing and not work out of their living rooms; it showed people that having their own space was a sustainable option.”

In the past year, several former NOK and Union Square teachers have launched their own spaces: Aaed Ghanem quit teaching at both NOK and Union Square to launch Beirut Yoga Center last year, near Monot (which features Bikram yoga, practiced in a heated room, and yoga-Pilates hybrid classes); Mrad Mouawad launched Barefoot Studio in Monot this April, which will offer both yin, fusion yoga and pilates as well; and former NOK teacher Sarah Warde opened Hamsa Yoga Space in Sassine in May, focusing on “traditional” yoga that includes hatha, vinyasa and ashtanga styles.

Hamsa Yoga Space

Looking to the future, Abisaab is cautiously optimistic. Despite its popularity, she reasons, yoga has still only reached a limited number of people in Lebanon. Perhaps that is because yoga still reaches those who are aware of its different forms, or those with a way of life that can accommodate regular yoga. Yet she is adamant that, “every single person in this country needs it.” As the number of studios that are sprouting and the diversity of classes on offer attest, yoga doesn’t seem to be just a trend but part of an expanding, sustainable practice that’s become a lifestyle.

Photographs By: Tanya Traboulsi

June 7, 2015 0 comments

Architecture Design

Nadim Karam

by India Stoughton June 6, 2015

written by India Stoughton

I think Nadim Karam is as surprised as I am when our conversation about art, architecture and the links between them morphs seamlessly into the story of how he once spent weeks playing daily doses of soothing music to a cow. It was 1987 and Karam was in Tokyo, studying for his Ph.D. in architecture and experimenting with large scale installations and performance art.

“When you do a Ph.D., you have some free time, some leeway to do other things, and I used that to get into the art world,” Karam reminisces. “I did crazy performances. We brought a cow into a building, and we had to train the cow. It was not an easy process. We played specific music during the performance and we had the cow listen to it every day, so that it didn’t get shocked when it came to an urban context. We brought her from Kitakaruizawa, a faraway village.”

Karam convinced a farmer to travel with his cow all the way to the big city, where the artist’s stunning painting, depicting a funeral and measuring 21 meters long and 3.3 meters high, was being displayed. Karam had hired a team to wait on standby in order to ensure the animal didn’t make a mess of the fancy venue where the performance was going to be held.

“We had to put a bucket under her from behind, so that if suddenly the cow decides to…” Karam pauses coyly, carefully selecting a word, “pee, or whatever, it had to be controlled. If the tail goes up, it means everybody has to be ready to jump on the cow.”

He chuckles at the memory, evidently reliving an experience he hadn’t thought of for some time. “The performance was about the story of a funeral and rebirth, I asked the ambassador of Lebanon to participate. He had to know how the music went … so he was also trained,” Karam laughs.

Born in Senegal in 1957, Karam studied architecture at the American University of Beirut (AUB) before moving to Japan, where he lived for 10 years. After completing a Master’s and Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo, he spent a year in France, then moved back to post war Lebanon to teach at AUB. Soon devoting as much of his time to art as to architecture, Karam began creating what he calls urban interventions — huge public sculptures, inspired by local culture and history.

A 1994 exhibition at the Sursock Museum featured 15 human sized sculptures of stylized human and animal figures, which crossed the courtyard, climbed the façade and paraded across the roof, whispering in Arabic, French and English to symbolize the country’s multicultural identity. In 1995, two years before the war-damaged National Museum reopened to the public, a 15 meter high sculpture called The Carrier was installed outside the newly restored façade, capturing a man with one arm raised, bearing the weight of Lebanon’s history.

Beirut

Karam founded his own studio, Atelier Hapsitus, in 1996. Working with a team of young architects and designers, he began entering his architectural designs into prestigious international competitions. At the same time, he expanded his repertoire as an artist, creating urban installations for cities including Prague, London, Melbourne and Tokyo.

Today, Karam works simultaneously on high profile art and architectural projects, from buildings, to urban installations, to smaller sculptures and paintings exhibited in galleries. Has he ever considered choosing to do just art or just architecture, I ask him. “One or the other?” he muses. “You’re right, this is a question that comes to my mind. Architecture or art? Or public art, or urban art, or sculpture or painting? I think they feed into each other, that’s what’s interesting. I cannot stop doing architecture, because architecture is creating my sculptures. The structure of having an office helps you create sculptures that nobody else can do.”

Beirut

Anywhere between 20 and 30 different people can work on one of his enormous pieces of urban art, he explains. Like a building, each design needs to be cleared by structural engineers.

Just as Karam’s sculptures require architectural know how, his more ambitious buildings are closer to the vision of an artist than an architect. Take The Cloud, for example. A project designed specifically for Dubai, it’s a 100 by 200 meter platform, surrounded by a diaphanous glass structure resembling a cloud, and supported nearly 300 meters off the ground by a series of slanted pillars that look like falling rain. Intended to present a public space to counterbalance the exclusive high rises that define the city’s skyline, the design is finished and Karam is now waiting to present the plans to local authorities.

Prague

Another project, Elephant City, is an enormous office and apartment complex designed for a client in Lagos. The design resembles the silhouette of an elephant, a recurring motif in Karam’s art. With a waterfall in the trunk, a rollercoaster along the beast’s back and a ferris wheel in its round eye, the building is somewhere between a sculpture, an apartment complex and a theme park.

In the meantime, Karam’s experience in creating public installations has led to work as a consultant. “Now we’re becoming quite well known in the strategy of public art,” he explains. “In Doha, we’re doing the artscape strategy for the central area of the city. In Abu Dhabi, we’re doing the public art strategy for a park. In Shenzhen, we’re also trying to create a public art strategy. That’s very much my interest: how to give cities a moment of dreams.”

Japan

Baby Phoenician on a Camel

I think back to the last exhibition of his work I saw, at Beirut’s Ayyam Gallery last November. A steel sculpture, humorously entitled “Baby Phoenician on a Camel,” tying the diverse selection of work to Karam’s homeland. The squat figure with its rounded belly — quite the opposite of the tall, thin metal figurines sold in tourist shops across the country — was at once endearing and a little sarcastic, the ubiquitous symbol of the camel as representative of “Arabs” at odds with the image of the seafaring Phoenicians, with whom some Lebanese prefer to identify. It’s ironic, I suggest to Karam, that someone so passionate about public art should live in a city so bereft of monumental art or public sculpture. He nods in acknowledgement of the contradiction. “I think it’s time to start something new for Beirut,” he says. “I don’t know what yet, but it will come. I’m confident we’ll do something for Beirut again.”

June 6, 2015 0 comments

Leaders

Save your reputation

by Executive Editors June 5, 2015

written by Executive Editors

Last summer, landowners erected a barrier separating Dalieh, along Beirut’s western coast, from the city and its inhabitants. It set off a tsunami of public criticism, protest and activist organizing — likely not the owners’ intent.

But just as those who erected the barrier were clearly misguided — this beast of barbed wire, chainlink fencing and concertina wire is more suited to a prison than a city — the ensuing tizzy of activism has also stepped outside the bounds of proper debate. In their zeal to protect one of the last vestiges of Beirut’s coast from development, some activists have fallen afoul of the truth, wittingly or not. The vast majority of Dalieh is not public property. Owners’ claims to the land and development rights are, as currently legislated, valid.

Most insidiously, a narrative has emerged that evil (read: rich) forces are oppressing the poor, defenseless fishers of Dalieh. Nothing could be further from the truth — a fact that became glaringly apparent when several of the fishers accepted huge settlements in return for leaving the land. At least one other, as our report on page 20 shows, is holding out for more — more cash, not more justice. Yet after police-backed bulldozers arrived in the early morning of May 2 to demolish fishers’ homes, this narrative of the oppressed fishers of Dalieh gained new currency (see “Tales from the sea“).

Make no mistake, this magazine stands with the preservation of Dalieh and the expansion of public spaces. Beirut is already suffocating from a lack of public space, and sanctifying this scenic gathering point for families, friends and lovers through formal government stewardship would be in the best interests of the city. What mystifies us is that despite the immense popular support for a public Dalieh — find a random person and ask what should be done with the land — some feel they must resort to distorted narratives to justify their position.

Such falsehoods are completely unnecessary, and not just because the public already agrees with the activists’ position. Last month’s brutish early morning demolition was hugely unpopular — and perhaps illegal. A spokesperson for the ISF ludicrously told Executive that this extraordinary operation was “normal.” When we requested the order for the bulldozing from the public prosecutor’s office, we were told we had no right to see it, if it even exists. We are left to conclude either that landowners ordered it, or an overzealous public servant did it in hopes of ingratiating themselves with the landowners. Such opaqueness — and incompetence — only calcifies the deep distrust the public has in Dalieh’s current owners.

Listen to the masses

At this point, it is clear that both sides are playing a little dirty. But activists shouldn’t — espousing falsehoods only undermines their quite reasonable position. Activists must first realize that in the court of public opinion, they have the landowners’ backs up against the wall. Then, offer a square deal: owners invested money in their lands, they should get something in return. That is, activists must come up with a deal that allows landowners to do the socially conscionable thing. The specifics of such an agreement would likely need to be worked out between owners, the government and activists representing the public.

For their part, owners should realize the perilous position they’re in. The Hariris in particular should recognize that their name brand would be irrevocably damaged if they fail the public on yet another important public space — they are already widely blamed for Solidere’s disastrous ‘redevelopment’ of downtown. Instead, they should harken back to a better example of their family’s public service: Rafik Hariri’s laudable gift that helped rennovate the Grand Serail in 1998. If the Hariris commit to giving the land back to the public, other owners will have no choice but follow. If government stewardship is untenable, a trust could be formed to rehabilitate and maintain the area.

But if owners are not yet ready to make such a sweeping commitment, they could at least begin to show good faith. To begin with, tear down the barrier.

June 5, 2015 6 comments

Art & Culture Artists

Maqamat

by India Stoughton June 5, 2015

written by India Stoughton

In 2002, Omar Rajeh returned to Beirut from Surrey, England, where he had just finished a Masters in dance studies. Trained in contemporary dance and choreography, he found himself in a city where the genre was almost completely absent. Undaunted, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He founded Lebanon’s first contemporary dance company, Maqamat, recruited a small team of dancers and began to create his own productions. In 2004, he launched the first edition of BIPOD, the Beirut International Platform of Dance, an annual festival featuring world class performances by international and regional choreographers.

Omar Rajeh

Now, more than a decade later, the cultural landscape has changed profoundly, and it’s largely down to Rajeh. When I ask him to tell me about the dance scene in Lebanon before Maqamat, he laughs gently, then apologizes. “It was non existent,” he says. “There wasn’t a dance scene — or more specifically, a contemporary dance scene. Maybe there were a few attempts by companies to do modern dance. I’m laughing because, for me, it’s a kind of nostalgia. There’s a huge difference between today and 2002, when we did the first performance as Maqamat; people are more familiar with contemporary dance. They’re more familiar with the artists, with the international scene.”

Mia Habis

We were chatting in the wake of the press conference to announce the 11th edition of BIPOD. After a decade of running the show, Rajeh has just handed over direction to fellow dancer Mia Habis, who is also his wife. “After 10 years, Omar just wanted to focus on his work as a choreographer — I think it was about time to take BIPOD to somewhere new — so he composed this board with people from the cultural field and they nominated me,” she explains, “because I’ve been in Maqamat for a very long time and I’m a dancer myself.”

Interestingly, on stage, Rajeh and Habis couldn’t be more different. Where Rajeh breaks down the movement in chaotic gestures, falling twists and rolling turns or intense shifts in direction — hallmarks of contemporary training — Habis adheres to the almost rigid grace and poised elegance of more traditional techniques, despite the fact that she has moved from classical forms of dance to contemporary. I only ever remember Rajeh taking part in shows he choreographs himself, but not necessarily as a central figure, because these are productions with many dancers moving on stage at once. As for Habis, you’re more likely to see her as the star of a solo show.

Though she started dancing at a young age, specializing in ballet, Habis studied French literature, marketing and advertising at the Sorbonne. Her dance training came mainly from workshops in Lebanon, where she studied classical techniques with the Beirut Dance Studio before joining Maqamat. Heavily pregnant and full of energy, Habis explains that she has decided to take the festival in a more personal direction, programming accessible performances that locals can easily relate to. It’s an approach that harks back to Maqamat’s early days, and Rajeh’s first attempts to introduce Lebanese audiences to contemporary dance.

“With our first performance in Beirut in 2002, my feeling was that it was all very fresh,” he recalls. “It was talking about everyday things, things that were directly related to the audience. It was a very intimate performance about sexuality, about color, about religion, about our dreams as young people. From this perspective, it had a very strong impact.”

As well as training dancers who later went on to join the company, Maqamat has coproduced performances at home and abroad for a number of young Lebanese dancers and choreographers who’ve chosen to strike out on their own, gradually expanding the dance scene in Lebanon.

“I see it as something that we have to do in order to secure our sustainability,” Rajeh says. “If Maqamat remains the only contemporary dance company in Lebanon, and Omar Rajeh the only choreographer, people will get bored.”

In the interests of furthering the growth of an independent dance scene, Rajeh is focusing his energy on a new project. Beit el-Raqs, or dance house, which opened in April, is a unique residency and training hub, comprising two studios located in Baakline and Deir el Qamar.

“It’s a kind of hub where artists can come for a residency to do their own work, and parallel to this, if they want, they can do other things, like organize meetings, talks and workshops. There are also the regular classes and we’re hoping that, from these classes, we’ll have people who want to go in a more professional direction.”

The enthusiasm in Rajeh’s voice is catching as he discusses the future of dance in Lebanon and the region. “I feel with Beit el-Raqs this is the most important thing to be done today, not only in Lebanon but in the whole Arab world — we don’t have a dance house [anywhere]. Now I think it’s going to be more focused — clearer for us, clearer for the artists. Hopefully, it will start small and then grow.”

June 5, 2015 0 comments

Beirut's private coast Real Estate

Tales from the sea

by Venetia Rainey June 4, 2015

written by Venetia Rainey

This article is part of an ongoing investigation on Beirut’s coast, from Raouche to Ramlet al-Baida. You can find the other articles here.

***

It was 5 a.m. on Saturday May 2 when around 150 police officers descended on Dalieh.

“I was there when they came,” Mohammad Itani tells Executive, speaking from outside the pile of rubble that previously housed him and his relatives. “They came at 5 a.m. with Caterpillars [bulldozers] and got us all out of our houses … they handcuffed some of us, including my nephew’s wife.”

He pauses to beat back the mosquitoes that had gathered in anticipation of dusk in the hot early evening air.

“Everyone’s houses were bulldozed, all of [them]. But we are still living here for the moment, in cars, boats and caves,” he says defiantly. “The officer in charge said they had been told by a high ranking guy in the Hariri family to demolish everything with everyone in there.”

In this context, the ‘Hariri family’ refers to former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s widow and five of his children who collectively own a holding company called Irad Investment, which in turn owns or part owns companies that have bought half the land in Dalieh. They, along with GroupMed Holding, own shares in all of the 14 private plots of land that make up Dalieh, and there have long been suspicions that plans are afoot to build a luxury tourism complex on the shrub covered promontory that abuts the city’s national symbol, Pigeon Rocks, on Beirut’s western coast. To this end, several attempts have been made since early 2012 to clear the land of its occupants, previously around 200 fishers and their families.

[pullquote]It’s not clear who exactly asked for the demolition to take place[/pullquote]

It’s not clear who exactly asked for the demolition to take place, although a spokesperson for the ISF, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the subject, says it was “normal” and that the police were just “doing their job.”

Regardless, question marks remain over the legality of the operation. The ISF spokesperson was not able to provide any proof of a court approved permit for the operation and Executive was not able to obtain one from the Justice Ministry, although this does not necessarily mean it does not exist. Further, Beirut Governor Ziad Chebib — the person who typically must sign off on city demolitions — tells Executive, “No one asked me. They didn’t ask for permission.” Despite being a lawyer and judge, he says he is unsure whether permission would be necessary if the homes were illegal in the first place.

The events of May 2 have served to reinforce a simplistic narrative of an unwinnable battle between the helpless fishers of Dalieh and ‘evil developers’ bent on robbing Beirut of one of its last communal, free spaces. In fact, the fight for Dalieh is far more complicated, and the case of the fishers’ bulldozed houses — while highly irregular and disturbing — is a red herring; the real front lines are elsewhere.

‘Evil developers’

Legally, the Hariri claim to develop Dalieh is pretty strong. Public records show that they own more than 95 percent of five of Dalieh’s 14 private plots and hold significant stakes in three others. However, they have connections to companies that own much more of the peninsula — firms like Sakhrat al Bahr, the vast majority of whose ownership is not a matter of public record. In total, Hariri-linked companies own more than 90,000 square meters of the 110,000 square meters that make up Dalieh, which is estimated to be worth around $1 billion.

Explore Executive’s map of Beirut’s private coast from Dalieh to the southern city limits

The other shareholders are largely individuals, most of whom possess a small percentage of the 2,400 shares Lebanese law apportions to each plot of land, with a handful of exceptions. This collage of ownership means that any development would require significant negotiations and settlement sums being paid to several shareholders, or a court order in the case of irreconcilable differences.

Dalieh is in Zone 10 of Beirut’s Master Plan, with all but the largest plot falling under Section IV, which can be used for “sporting, maritime, swimming, entertainment, and restaurant activities.” No construction “of any kind” is allowed in plot 1113, the exceptional plot, but a government-granted exception could overturn this.

Although a representative for the owners told Executive there was “no movement on any development plans yet,” something is clearly afoot.

Beirut Mayor Bilal Hamad detailed to Executive a master plan under discussion for Dalieh that would involve a boutique hotel with an extended public sidewalk forming the roof of the property, a public access route around the property’s coastal periphery and public parking. He described the plan, which he said is still in the early stages and does not yet have a permit or contractor attached, as “a green project … a project which gives access to the people, free access.” The owners’ representative said it was just one concept under consideration.

Although this is far from the total ban on development many are campaigning for, Hamad believes this is the best case scenario: “Instead of going and speaking poetry and philosophy, let’s speak facts of life: this is a private property, so we are convincing the private owners to do an environmentally friendly project.”

Governor Chebib echos this sentiment: “We need to preserve these kind of areas … [but] when someone has his private property, he can apply for a construction permit, and no one can tell him no if it’s not based on a legal basis.”

But first, as the events of the last few years have made obvious, they have to clear the land of inhabitants.

‘Helpless fishers’

Looking out from his seventh floor office in Kantari, lawyer Ali Khalil finds himself pondering pearls — and betrayal.

[pullquote]“When they told me … it was an awkward situation for me. I felt like I was stabbed in the back”[/pullquote]

“When they told me, at first it was an awkward situation for me. I felt like I was stabbed in the back,” he tells Executive as he recounted the abrupt ending to his legal representation of nine Dalieh families in spring of last year. “Then I put myself in their shoes. Maybe if I were one of them, I would [have accepted the deal]. They live on [LBP] 20,000 [$13.33] a day; it was the deal of their life.”

He leans back in his chair with a sigh. “All fishermen, their stories between each other, [are all about] are you going to find the pearl today? In the end they found a pearl, but it was not in the form they were hoping for.”

Khalil (full disclosure: he occasionally represents Executive in legal matters) believes he was on the cusp of winning a case to allow the families to stay in Dalieh when, the night before the final appearance before the Court of Urgent Matters, his clients received calls offering them money to drop the suit and move elsewhere. All of them accepted.

Khalil says that his clients were offered around $3 million, while a fisher still living in Dalieh estimated that around 11 families — possibly including others not represented by Khalil — were given on average $500,000 each. This tallies with the figure provided by the landowners’ representative, who said more than $5 million was paid out in total.

One of the families that accepted the deal was the Itani family, whose houses were bulldozed, several members of which are now angling for more compensation by refusing to leave Dalieh. Because of this, Khalil says, they are not pressing charges over the demolition of their homes.

A LEGAL HISTORY OF DALIEH

Order 144, 1925: Defines what is coastal public property in Lebanon and is still in effect today. Categorizes the sea as public maritime domain that, according to Article 2, reaches up to the furthest high-water point on the coast. States that the public has a right to access all natural resources, including the sea.

Decree 6285, 1954: The Beirut Master Plan introduces the zoning still in place today. Dalieh falls in Zone 10. All construction is forbidden along the coast.

Decree 4711, 1966: Amends the regulations for Zone 10, creating four sections with varying degrees of building allowed. The northernmost part of Dalieh is put in Section III, where no construction “of any kind” is allowed and “it is also prohibited to change or alter the natural landscape.” The rest of Dalieh is put in Section IV, which can be used for “sporting, maritime, swimming, entertainment and restaurant activities,” with a 15 percent surface exploitation ratio (relationship between total land and ground property size) and a 20 percent general exploitation ratio (relationship between land and total property size, including all floors).

Decree 4810, 1966: Allows owners of property by the sea to legally exploit the public maritime for the first time if the project is approved by the government and contributes to the tourism and industrial sectors of the economy. Includes a stipulation that 25 percent of the private property should be given to the municipality for public use. Excludes Zone 10 of the Beirut Master Plan.

Decree 169, 1989: Annuls the ban on exploitation of Zone 10’s public maritime domain, as well as the requirement that 25 percent of the development should be given to the municipality. Paves the way for the Mövenpick Hotel to be built (2000–2002) just south of Dalieh. Never published in the Official Gazette, say activists, a requirement for all legislation.

Law 402, 1995: Enables owners of more than 20,000 square meters of land who want to build a hotel to double their general exploitation ratio and quadruple their surface exploitation ratio. In Section III of Zone 10, which covers Dalieh, this means the exploitation ratios for large property owners become 40 percent and 60 percent respectively. Although it expired in 2000, it was renewed for 19 years in 2014.

Decree 7464, 1995: Reconfirms the right of owners of property by the sea to privately exploit the public maritime domain in Zone 10.

Law 444, 2002: Reasserts right of every Lebanese citizen to free and open access to the seashore.

Khalil’s case rested on one central tenet: that the fishers’ homes lay in public maritime domain, defined by Article 2 of Order 144 (1925) as reaching up to the furthest high-water point on the coast. That order, still in effect today, dictates that this public domain cannot be bought or sold and also rules that the public has a right to access all natural resources, such as the sea.

“To cement this argument, we delivered to the court some old judgments issued by criminal courts in Beirut fining the fishers for building on public property,” Khalil says with a smile. “This was in the ‘70s and ‘80s … we still have the receipt proving that [the fishers] paid them.”

The counterargument of the lawyer representing the landowners, who served eviction notices to the nine families in October 2013, relied on a map showing that ownership of all the land in dispute fell to his clients.

So far only one man has successfully managed to challenge this narrative: a lawyer named Dany Moussa who owns a warren-like large wooden shack built onto the sides of Dalieh’s southern cliffs, right by the Mövenpick hotel. According to Khalil, he argued that he was on public property and managed to stop the structure being destroyed, as well as safeguard the road leading to it. Moussa did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Agitators

Since the issuance of the 1954 Beirut Master Plan, which prohibited any construction along the coast, a series of laws have been passed to claw back landowners’ rights to develop that sea-drenched part of Dalieh, historically a gathering point for swimmers, fishers and families alike.

Passed in 1966, Decree 4810 allowed those who own property adjacent to the sea to privately exploit the public maritime domain for the first time, on the condition they give 25 percent of their property to the municipality for public use and obtain governmental permission. It excluded all of Beirut’s Zone 10, but this was in turn nixed by Decree 169, which was passed in 1989 when there were two rival governments vying for legitimacy against the backdrop of civil war.

It is here, among this jumble of legislation, that one of the activists’ major fronts of attack is underway.

“While the campaign [the Civil Campaign to Protect Dalieh] was doing legal research … we found out that Decree 169 was issued without the approval of several institutions or being published in the Official Gazette,” explains Abir Saksouk-Sasso, an architect and one of the campaign’s organizers, conspiratorially tapping a map of Dalieh in front of her. “This gave us the opportunity to challenge it legally.”

So with the help of lawyer Nizar Saghieh, who runs law watchdog Legal Agenda, they filed a suit through NGOs Nahnoo and Green Line to abolish the decree. Further legislation from 1995 means that this would not wrest back control of Zone 10’s public maritime domain, but it would reintroduce the 1966 requirement that any project give 25 percent to the municipality.

“If they decide to do a resort,” reasons Mohammad Ayoub, executive manager at Nahnoo, “then at least 25 percent of this place will be public. They already can’t build on the part that faces the Pigeon Rocks; they can’t build where the waves can reach … so this is the aim: to reduce how much they can build on.”

Much of this relies on the Beirut city council rejecting the expected request by developers to be granted an exception to build a bigger property than currently allowed.

Council member Rachid Achkar said they had already turned down an unofficial request to this end by the landowners. He was one of those who opposed it.

“This doesn’t mean they won’t be coming back to the council with an official request,” Achkar tells Executive, “but I’m not ready to give any exceptions. We are keen to have the sea open.”

Dreams and promises … and implications

Down in Dalieh, in a hidden crevice of the land where fishing boats knock solemnly against one another as they count the passing minutes, lives the core of what remains of Dalieh’s decades old community of fishers.

Shattered first by a half baked ministerial promise to build a new port for the families who lived off the sea here, and then again by the fistfuls of money thrown at them by the land owners, a haggard community of around a dozen people remains of the immediate port area’s 90 or so previous inhabitants.

Perhaps the darkest and most opaque chapter in the landowners’ crusade to clear out Dalieh — and one that Executive has previously reported on — centers on the last minute cancellation of a public works and transport ministry project to build a proper port for the fishers back in 2012.

It is not clear why the plug was pulled. The ministry got as far as demolishing the old buildings and homes, but stopped after half rebuilding just one structure. The marble plaque announcing the start of the project is still there, half obscured by overgrown grass.

Many suspect it was the result of pressure from the landowners, and in comments to Executive last year, their representative revealingly commented: “What would have happened, there would have been a port … and then you would lose your private land forever.”

The tradeoff was supposed to be the construction of another port somewhere between Manara and Riviera. Wafiq Jezzieh, president of the Cooperative Association for Fishermen in Ras Beirut, showed Executive a document from the ministry, dated December 19, 2013, promising that this would be done. So far, nothing.

These are not the fishers the public normally hears about. Their life depends on the sea, but they say they would leave Dalieh if a new port were built elsewhere. Their hopes of a proper port, a dream passed down from their parents and grandparents, means they have chosen to stay out of the Dalieh debate. “Of course I’m worried about the loss of this public space,” sighed Jezzieh, “but I’m also worried that if the people in power come against us, then the future is dark.”

The new green line

For many following the Dalieh case, the future seems dark already. The fence put up last year along the Corniche, although since breached, felt like the first nail in the coffin for the picnics, festivals, romantic liaisons and diving competitions Beirutis have enjoyed for years.

Much has been made of the long running public use of the land and its legal implications, but both Saksouk-Sasso and Saghieh admit there is zero basis within Lebanese law for either what is known as prescriptive rights or the right to public ownership based on long term usage.

[pullquote]“I think that if there wasn’t so much spotlight on the case they could [fence the area off]”[/pullquote]

However, the activists did score a victory recently when the Shura Council on May 7 approved a draft decree to classify Dalieh as a national site under the protection of the environment ministry. Dalieh’s biodiversity credentials include monk seals and fruit bats that use the area’s natural caves for shelter. The flat reefs also provide a nursery of sorts for various fish and some of Lebanon’s last remaining coastal plants, according to a number of local studies of the area.

The decree will now to go the Council of Ministers for a final vote. If passed, it would make any development in the area subject to approval by the environment ministry.

The landowners are clearly not happy. “To have the whole area as environmentally protected and prohibit any development would mean denying the property and ownership rights of the current owners,” their representative told Executive by email. “Hence, compensation would be warranted should that be passed.”

Activists are also ready to challenge any future attempt to re-fence the land, on the basis that this would violate the Lebanese public’s inalienable right to access the sea.

“I think that if there wasn’t so much spotlight on the case they could [fence the area off],” said Saksouk-Sasso, “but at the moment they know if they do do that, we would file a case based on several laws: Order 144 and law number 444. It’s illegal to ban access to the sea.”

Further, Beirut’s highest officials — Governor Chebib and Mayor Hamad — are increasingly vocal about supporting the idea of maintaining public access and space in Dalieh, which may prove key to limiting the scope of whatever project is eventually proposed.

Lebanon’s varied and scenic Mediterranean coastline has long provided easy pickings for developers, much to the ire of activists and civil society organizations seeking to preserve heritage, public space and the environment. Nowhere is this struggle clearer than in Dalieh. Historically, real estate companies have usually gotten their way, but with the kind of focused, law based action already underway, Dalieh may well prove to be an exception. The battle for the pearl of Beirut is not over — yet.

[media-credit id=1 align=”aligncenter” width=”590″][/media-credit]

June 4, 2015 1 comment

Real estate Real estate 2015: All puffed up Real Estate

Renting on Lebanon’s black market

by Joseph Ataman June 3, 2015

written by Joseph Ataman

Sitting in the gloom of the single room that is now her family’s home, shadows from the small candle placed between us — the room’s only light — played against the wall as Asmar spoke of her flight from Syria.

Asmar, who preferred not to give her surname, is just one of the estimated one million Syrian refugees now renting accommodation in Lebanon. Two years since she arrived in Beirut’s Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, a small bundle of clothes all that she brought from the rubble of her home, Asmar still lives in the room she first rented. With a lack of affordable rental properties, rental prices and eviction rates have soared, while unregistered tenancies, deliberately left without formal contracts to avoid taxation and legal regulation, appear to be the new norm. Since 2011, the influx of Syrians has brought new challenges to Lebanon’s rental market.

In an unlit, unheated room, sharing a bathroom and a rubbish strewn courtyard with four other families, for Asmar, the difficulties of this new market are all too clear. Her husband has been missing in Syria for over a year after returning for his father’s funeral. Without his $300 income to pay the $250 rent, were it not for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) considering her a vulnerable case, she and her two young daughters would be alone on the streets of Beirut: a victim of forced eviction.

It is the tragedy of her situation, rather than the abuse of a landlord, that threatened to force Asmar from her home. However, as a tenant in Lebanon’s rental black market, she is trapped in a regulatory vacuum that poses worrying consequences not just for Syria’s vulnerable citizens but also for Lebanon.

[pullquote]Without any formal legal agreement, refugees are easy victims of abuse[/pullquote]

Out on the street

When Asmar first arrived in Shatila, her husband never thought to ask for a written lease agreement. With no papers and no proof of her right to live there, when her landlord threatened to force her onto the street, there was little she could do. It is a situation worryingly common among Syrians in Lebanon. A December 2014 report on evictions by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Save the Children found that in three of the four areas assessed in Beirut and Mount Lebanon, less than 10 percent of households possessed a written lease. Where families had been evicted — and 6.6 percent have been since arriving in Lebanon — 98 percent did not have a formal rental agreement.

Without any formal legal agreement, refugees are easy victims of abuse. “Syrians feel vulnerable enough to accept these [informal agreements] or they feel that they don’t know how they’re going to stay so they take on these [leases],” said Nadim Houry, regional director of Human Rights Watch (HRW). “For them, there’s almost no tenancy security.”

Paper trials

But provision of rights is by no means guaranteed through written contracts. A 2014 UNHCR study found that most evictions of Syrian refugees are due to the inability of the tenant to pay the agreed rent. While a legitimate justification for action against the tenant, evictions frequently occur outside legal frameworks and in violation of Lebanese law, which requires a court order for forced expulsions.

When Asmar’s landlord started threatening to force her and her daughters out onto the street, she didn’t know what to do. Without her husband, who had registered them as refugees and received the standard UNHCR information about their legal rights, she was helpless, with no idea she was even entitled to any rights.

While going to court may not bolster Syrian tenants’ legal standing, such procedures could provide an opportunity for government intervention. Conceding that “the government has no intention to negotiate in the rental process,” Ahmad Kassem, senior shelter expert at the Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA), admits that interventions can take place. “When it comes to evictions over rent non payment, aside from NGO advocacy, we are able to lobby the Ministry of Interior, not to pressure, but to encourage municipalities to disregard evictions.”

[pullquote]“The state is just absent from the [housing] sphere completely”[/pullquote]

But even such actions depend totally on there being formal recognition of rental agreements. The positive result is negligible. “The state is just absent from the [housing] sphere completely,” said HRW’s Houry, “it’s leaving it to market forces and not just even that, but power relations. And in such power relations, Syrians are often the weakest.”

Vulnerable as they are, Syrians are rarely seen as blameless parties in cases of rent abuse. Talking exclusively to Executive, Nabil de Freige, minister for administrative reform, condemned renters who avoided registration. “For Syrians renting, it’s [to] their advantage to pay everything and to register the contract,” he said. “If no taxes are paid [on the income the landlord receives as rent], [the tenants] don’t have any rights. They can go to prison.”

However, de Freige made it clear that all fault cannot be placed on the tenant. “How can I expect to rent you my apartment without a contract? It’s against the law and against my interests.”

“If the tenant has any small problem with the landlord and they go to the authorities, if the contract is not signed or legalized, they will not pay attention to him,” he added. “It’s the fault of both but it’s much more the fault of the property owner.”

A taxing affair

For Houry, the reason behind unregistered, contractless renting is simple: “Landlords don’t want to pay taxes.” Renting to desperate Syrians may be a lucrative business, but it is also one that enjoys unparalleled privacy from the prying eyes of the state’s taxman.

Lebanese law stipulates that all tenancy agreements must be registered with the local municipality, thereby rendering the income taxable. In practice, however, according to Adib Tohme, professor of Law at Sagesse University, unregistered tenants are “invisible” to the authorities. While written agreements can be used as proof of occupancy, oral lease contracts are not unenforceable. “It is within the discretion of the court to decide whether there is a contract or not,” Tohme said, “Oral contracts can be proved by all means of proof — the proof rests on the claimant.”

Exact calculations of tax loss are almost impossible to find in a market in the regulatory shadows, however in the house Asmar occupies, eight other Syrian families pay $250 rent per month, with additional charges for electricity. Registering a tenant requires a written lease, something that Asmar’s husband was never offered, so her Lebanese landlord enjoys a monthly income of over $2,000, tax free — just from one property in a Beirut slum. In the two years she has lived there, Asmar hasn’t seen one government official inquire about who is living there; ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ seems to suit the taxman just fine.

The question of whether unregistered tenancies are policed is “one to be asked to the municipalities,” said MoSA’s Kassem. “Some do, some don’t. There is an interest to get the tax benefit from any lease agreement, but it totally depends on the willingness of the municipality to go through the process [of policing] — on the national level there’s no work on this.”

Quick fixes

This rental black market has not gone unnoticed and efforts are underway to bring greater security to Syrian renters in Lebanon. An interagency scheme led by UNHCR to encourage formal rental agreements has assisted around 15,000 displaced Syrian families through house rehabilitation since 2012. The project involves offering non structural home improvements to Lebanese landlords in exchange for 12 months occupancy free of charge or rent reduction. A formal rental agreement is a prerequisite condition for landlords to be able to access the improvements, even if it doesn’t force landlords to register tenants.

“Due to the limited availability of housing that most Syrians can afford, most refugees live in sub-standard accommodation,” Kassem said. “While providing obvious benefits to refugee tenants, this scheme reduces economic vulnerability and increases security for the beneficiary household. It’s good for both.”

[pullquote]“A landlord sees a desperate Syrian family and they’re going to try and make a quick buck”[/pullquote]

The home advantage

If the refugee experience is one marked by insecurity, then renting property to Syrians provides remarkable security to the Lebanese landlord. Even with this year’s visa restrictions for Syrians, there remains a steady — albeit significantly reduced — flow of refugees pouring across Lebanon’s borders. With a severely limited supply of affordable housing, the market is weighted heavily in favor of Lebanese landlords.

“Syrians are made to pay a premium to reside in the same place,” HRW’s Houry told Executive. “There’s real pressure on the housing market. A landlord sees a desperate Syrian family and they’re going to try and make a quick buck.”

Unaware of housing options available in the local market and with limited funds, many Syrians like Asmar are forced into what little is affordable: rooms in shared houses. For landlords this provides far greater returns, even at the cost of rising rents for Lebanese locals.

Providing far greater returns, landlords are turning to Syrians, not local renters to make their money, pricing Lebanese looking for full apartments out of the market — a situation that both MoSA and UN partners told Executive they see as concerning. But with UNHCR estimating that rent from Syrians contributes $34 million monthly to the local economy, from a Lebanese perspective there is more than enough incentive to keep rents high.

Ultimately, the willingness to allow tenancies to go unregistered is the foremost obstacle to enacting regulation of the rental market. “When it comes to the benefits of the Lebanese hosts, municipalities do not stand against rental abuses — simply because there is a benefit to the people,” MoSA’s Kassem said. “Municipalities think elections — there is always a political dimension to the decision made.”

June 3, 2015 0 comments

Museums & Galleries

A fresh start for the Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock museum

by India Stoughton June 3, 2015

written by India Stoughton

Walking across the Sursock Museum’s courtyard, my attention was diverted from its beautiful façade by a series of glass panels, set at regular intervals amid the neat stone paving. Looking down, I was surprised to see an enormous underground chamber. Beneath my feet lay the museum’s brand new, state of the art exhibition hall, part of an ambitious seven year renovation program that will cost an estimated $10 to $12 million, undertaken by architects Jean-Michel Wilmotte (who did the museography of the Louvre Museum in Paris, among others) and Jacques Abou Khaled (responsible for the design of Lebanon’s Bsous Silk Museum).

Built in 1912 by aristocrat Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock, the villa was given to the city of Beirut as an art museum upon his death. The Sursock Museum first opened its doors to the public in 1961, housing a permanent collection and hosting the annual Salon d’Automne, a juried exhibition of contemporary art, modeled on the French exhibition established in 1903 as a reaction against the conservative Paris Salon.

The museum’s mission was to educate audiences about the arts and to support local production. Prior to closing its doors seven years ago, it had partially fulfilled these aims, but failed to play a major role in Beirut’s burgeoning post war art scene. The work selected for the annual Salon d’Automne, though contemporary, remained steadfastly traditional in terms of media, and the quality was known to fluctuate wildly.

This may be about to change; the museum is set to reopen its doors on October 2. Not only does it now boast unparalleled facilities, but the new team seems ready to shake up its programming. The museum’s new director is Zeina Arida, cofounder and former director of the Arab Image Foundation. She will be working alongside head of programs Nora Razian, fresh from a job as curator of public programs at Tate Modern and Tate Britain. Obviously excited about the scope for reimagining the museum’s role in Beirut, the two women explain what attracted them to the project.

“I was very interested by the possibility of having such a space in Beirut,” says Arida. “For the past 20 years I’ve been struggling to find spaces for exhibitions we wanted to organize, so it was really exciting to get involved in this.”

“For me it’s similar,” adds Razian. “It’s this opportunity to kind of build an institution, to think about what a museum is to Beirut now, to rethink the museum’s role and its place — how it can support artists locally, but also be an international space. For me, it was really the excitement of starting something new.”

Arida gives me a brief history of the museum, joking that they’re still learning the details. The expansion project was initiated back in 2000, she explains, in part due to the fact that the museum lacked the infrastructure to hold temporary exhibitions and showcase the permanent collection at the same time.

“The museum expanded its premises — I think it’s four times the size it was,” she says. “Basically they dug under the garden and built four floors. There’s an auditorium, a library, a restoration workshop, a temporary exhibition hall and the ground floor gallery. So now the total surface is 8,500 square meters, whereas it used to be around 1,500.”

Alongside the cavernous underground gallery, the renovated ground floor now contains two smaller, interlinked gallery spaces, while the upper two floors have been renovated, ready to showcase the permanent collection. A glass annex to the left of the courtyard is set to house a restaurant and gift shop.

The new facilities may be unrivaled by any other Lebanese institution, but it’s the revamped museum’s curatorial direction that will determine whether it becomes an integral part of Beirut’s cultural scene or remains stuck in the past. There are certainly program changes in store. First of all, Razian says that the Salon d’Automne won’t be back in quite the same format. “We’re going to rethink it,” she explains, “and what it means to have an open call exhibition now, in terms of its history, how it can be relevant. Most likely, it’ll be every two years, not every year.”

Then there’s also the permanent collection. The museum currently owns around 700 works, dating from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. The new team intends to continue making both acquisitions and loans to fill in some of the gaps, rotating the display every quarter.

It’s the temporary exhibitions that will likely prove most interesting to the local community however, and in this respect, the museum seems set on taking on a more international identity. “We’re going to have three major exhibitions a year in the big exhibition hall downstairs, which will be mainly thematic group shows,” reveals Razian, “and on the ground floor, we’ll have four exhibitions a year for solo shows, dedicated to emerging and mid career artists, local and international.”

In spite of the museum’s delayed push into the 21^stcentury, the opening exhibition is focused resolutely on the city’s past. “Sylvia Ajemian, the curator who worked with the museum for 45 years, is curating the opening show, which will deal with Beirut,” says Arida. “It’s [entitled] ‘Views on Beirut from 1800 to 1960.’” Ajemian’s selection will consist entirely of works on loan and will be exhibited in the new underground gallery.

“The exhibition charts how Beirut went from Ottoman provincial town to the capital of the nation state, through landscape and orientalist photography and painting,” Razian elaborates. But where Arida and Razian are really making their mark is with their accompanying curatorial program. “In conjunction, we have a public program that investigates the city through different frames. We’ve commissioned artists to produce walks around Beirut, we’ve got workshops for children on architecture, creative writing workshops on the city, panel discussions — one is looking at gender and public space, one is looking at migration, one is looking at speculative cities in the future. We also have a curated film screening. On the ground floor, there’s a display that’s looking at mappings of Beirut done by artists and designers, and research based practice that moves more to kind of imaginary, speculative practice. The idea was to take Beirut as the theme of the opening few months, relaunch the museum in the city, and look at how art and artists produce knowledge.”

Though it remains to be seen whether or not the new and improved Sursock Museum will carve out a niche in a city that has changed dramatically since its closure in 2008, this renewed vision is as stimulating as it is ambitious. The Beirut Art Center, with a similar mixture of non profit solo and group exhibitions by local and international artists, and a museum like emphasis on education, context and discussion, has proven that an audience for thoughtfully staged contemporary art exists. The challenge faced by the Sursock Museum will be to continue to expand this audience — and to draw people back regularly once the novelty wears off, by offering something that’s different from the rest.

Photographs By: Jacques Abou Khaled & Nabu Productions

June 3, 2015 0 comments