Articles

Access to the state in Lebanon no longer follows the direct path it ought to follow in any modern political system. A relationship that should rest on clearly defined rights and mutually acknowledged obligations has gradually transformed into a complex web of informal channels, in which the citizen no longer deals with the state directly, but with whoever 'grants access' to it. Yet the mutation has not stopped there, for intermediation has ceased to be a mere bridge between citizen and state and has become, in many cases, an outright substitute for it — through the construction of parallel structures that reproduce the state outside its own boundaries.

Moustafa Farroukh ranks among the leading pioneers of modern Lebanese painting and played a major role in shaping the country’s artistic landscape. He was born in 1901 in the modest Basta neighborhood of Beirut, into a Sunni family, and died in 1957. From an early age, he was encouraged and trained in the studio of the modernist painter Habib Srour. In 1927, he left Beirut for Rome, where he studied at the Regia Accademia di Belle Arti (San Luca), graduating the same year. He later continued his training in Paris, notably under Paul Émile Chabas, then president of the Société des artistes français. He began exhibiting in major artistic events, including the Paris Salons, the Rome Biennale, and later in Venice, New York, and Beirut.

1 – Facing erasure In a prologue to this series of texts — “From Eternal Darkness to Histoire… de Raphaël” — I explained why, in these dark times for Lebanon, I decided to turn toward History with a capital “H,” as well as toward small-h history: namely, the story of my son, Raphaël. To summarize, it is first of all to salvage from oblivion what can still be saved, at a moment when Lebanon as we know it is threatened with disappearance. Then, because at the global level, we are living in a time that gives full meaning to a quotation from George Orwell, taken from 1984 : “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

It is, in many ways, a world turned upside down in the standoff between the United States and the Islamic Republic, with the key question now being whether a second round of talks will take place in Islamabad this Tuesday. On the surface, the Iranian regime – more specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (the Pasdaran) – appears keen to cultivate the perception that it is dictating its terms to Washington as a precondition for resuming negotiations between the two sides. By that logic, it would be the defeated party imposing its will on the victor! Yet, at some point, things must be called by their name and “the truth must be told, however harsh it may be” – in the words of President Béchir Gemayel. In this conflict, it is Iran that has suffered heavy losses to its military, nuclear and economic infrastructure, and it is the Iranian political, military and security leadership has been decimated on a large scale. At the same time, it is the American armada that is effectively encircling Iran, and it is the maritime blockade imposed in recent days that is choking its economy; and it is the United States and Israeli air forces that, over the past 40 days, have dominated the skies, carrying out round-the-clock strikes on key strategic sites across Iran.

As part of its ongoing effort to broaden its scope and deepen its coverage of major geopolitical issues on the international stage, “Levant Time” has entered into a close partnership with the media platform “ European Security ”, centered on the exchange of editorial content. Founded by a group of leading experts and academics, the European-based platform – independent of any state institution – focuses primarily on defense and security affairs in Europe and the United States. It aims to provide civilian and military decision-makers, as well as researchers, journalists and industry professionals, with authoritative texts, analyses, studies and articles addressing current challenges in the field of defense and security. Led by Joël-François Dumont, the publication also seeks to build connections and foster debate among all those concerned with these issues.

— What happened? — Something is going to happen. — They said something would happen. — Who said that? — I don’t know. But something will. This exchange, in its apparent simplicity, recurs in innumerable variations across the textures of everyday life. It condenses into a mode of being, one that does not so much transmit the event as it reproduces it in the form of a perpetually deferred anticipation, sustained by its own repetition, carried forward by language without requiring the stabilizing force of realization. Sentences no longer arrive to report what has taken place; they work instead to suspend possibility, to keep it in circulation, as though their function were no longer to refer to the real, but to shape our relation to it—drawing us toward it even as they disperse it.