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I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached5/12/2023 ![]() ![]() How big did the world seem to you at the time?Ībirached: We lived on Youssef Semaani Street, with a high wall of sandbags intended to protect us from snipers. But in between was the demarcation line, the frontline of the war. The distance between you and the western half of the city was less than three kilometres. You were living in East Beirut with your parents and your brother. ![]() In your graphic novel A Game for Swallows, you take the readers back to one night in the midst of the civil war. What was difficult then was to go deeper and deeper into situations and to link them up. Talking to my mother unleashed a flood of memories, and one story led to the next. I had very little understanding of what was happening to us at the time. I was just a child when the war was going on in Lebanon. My parents said they hardly remembered anything. On the contrary: adapting also means fighting and resisting."Ībirached: The conversations were very slow and difficult to begin with. But when people talk about adapting, it doesn’t mean we ignore reality. Zeina Abirached: "People say that the Lebanese can adapt to almost any situation. ![]()
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