Stir the pot

Painter and teacher Ghada Saghieh has a bone to pick with Beirut. I look behind the muted, angry art and into the outspoken angry woman.

Why are the women in your paintings so, well, repressed?

In my paintings there’s always a woman going out and smoking; but she would rather not smoke, she’d rather bash heads in and throw cold water on people. She’d rather wake people up. People just don’t care, you see.

Don’t care about what, exactly?

In the Renaissance, when the world was awakening to beauty, what did the Romans do? A society of bankers – even the popes came from these banking families – and what did they do? They beautified Rome. Art! For God’s sake art! What do we do here? If we’re lucky someone will build a hospital and name it after their parent, or a stadium or something. I love Ziad el Rahbani; I might not agree with his politics but the man has a point: we have a problem here, one that won’t go away by itself. You need people to wake up to it.

OK let’s slow down; what problem is that?

We are not sufficiently diluted; the melting pot isn’t melting enough, or maybe the fire is too strong and we’re just burning it all. You want to import Arab culture, mix it with Byzantine civilization, mix it with a hundred other civilizations that have left their mark here. These schools of thought have to have something in common: the love of Lebanon. Look at the Americans, tens of varying civilization came together under the love for freedom, the love for a country they called America.

We love our country, I think, we just disagree on expression…

Really? I’d like to meet someone that would help me clean up this street right here, for instance. If I tried I’d get laughed at. If I walked you through Mtayleb and all its upper-class glory, you’d be surprised at the amount of garbage you can spot. They hide it, sure, they throw it down the cliff or into a back alley behind their houses. This is the Lebanese way, I believe.

I don’t agree…

You don’t know what Lebanon was like! Lebanon was a melting pot. Places were clean, you could see beautiful homes and beautiful spaces. We’ve been living in turmoil for 30 years; could you live in a garbage-ridden home for 30 years? You have to clean up the country, the environment.

But all the turmoil just makes us more ready for change…

I don’t know, I hope so. Lebanon is sacred. It’s beautiful, and if God didn’t love it, it wouldn’t be so beautiful. He gave us this haven, everything we could use in a small country, and all we had to do was be happy. Love each other. This is not the Lebanon I loved! My neighbor cut down a tree the other day, because when it’s raining and he has to park, the branches wet his shirt. Will he change?