In this town of traditional pottery, bell casting, Silk clothes… that No longer fabricate anything?
Who is Fawzi Fakhoury?
Note: Re-edit of “Last potter in Beit Chabab? In this town of traditional pottery? Who is Fawzi Fakhoury? June 22, 2013″
BEIT CHABAB, Lebanon:
Fawzi Fakhoury’s hands are calloused and brown. Hours of shaping tough clay and standing in front of a burning wood oven have stained them shades darker than the rest of his body and toughened them so they are like leather.
Fakhoury stand of potter. There were at least 6 families making a living from that art 3 decades ago, and their products were exported to the adjacent States of Jordan, Syria, Palestine and even Iraq.
Fawzi is rather short for a western standard, with salt and pepper hair and bushy eyebrows, and dressed in simple, mud-stained clothes.
His weathered hands stand testimony to the thousands of pots he has created for the better part of his life. He inherited that job from his father and the entire family helped in the family “factory”, until one of the members decided to resume the work.
Actually, it seems that Fawzi is the last working potter in Beit Chabab and pretty soon will retire: No vaible trade to export to.
I have posted many articles on Lebanon, and Michelle Ghoussoub has this latest.
Michelle Ghoussoub published in The Daily Star, this June 20, 2013: “Meet the last potter in Beit Shabab”
Fakhoury, left, works with his brother Assad, who helps out occasionallyin the shop. (The Daily Star/Mohammad Azakir)
The scenic village is nestled in Lebanon’s mountains just 17 km outside of east Beirut.
Sixty years ago, dozens of Beit Shabab families produced traditional pottery, and the heat from 40 burning ovens could be felt on the streets during the summer, Fawzi explains.
The town’s name was synonymous with pottery, and people came from around the country to purchase the artisanal clay pots, used for storing everything from arak to grains, olive oil and wine.
Now, he is the only one left.
Fakhoury’s workshop resembles a hermit’s cave.
Though dark and dusty, it remains well used and loved.
Perched precariously on the edge of a small but steep ravine, Fakhoury’s working space has a crumbling old stone facade nestled into the mountain itself.
An elegant stone archway frames the entrance, with rusted scrap metal and broken pieces of mortar piled on top to prevent rainwater from flooding the small room. Bits and pieces of fragmented pots are piled haphazardly in a back corner.
A traditional stove, or babour, for kerosene burner, commands the center of the room. It doubles as the only heat source during the winter months, as nighttime temperatures can occasionally drop below freezing.
An old television set crackles in the background, the colors and shapes on the screen disfigured by poor reception. A fine, white film of dust covers every surface, and it puffs out of antique pillows on the faded couch when it is sat upon.
No one knows or remembers exactly how long the workshop has been running.
Fakhoury believes the family folklore. He says that Roman potters trained his forefathers when they came to construct the ancient, colonnaded citadel of Baalbek in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley around 300 B.C. (Baalbak is as ancient as 7,000 years, before Rome or Athens existed)
When the Romans left, his ancestors searched for the purest clay in the country, and eventually settled in Beit Shabab to be close to the best natural source: a small and muddy lake in the forest beneath the village (the mawsel).
Fakhoury’s creased wrinkles deepen and his brown face cracks into a crooked smile as he recalls a childhood of running among the clay pots.
He’s worked as a potter for 60 years. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather all worked in this same space before him.
At no moment in his life did Fakhoury, now 66, wish for an alternative career path. He loves this job, he says.
Years of hard labor have given him a worn appearance and demeanor, but they have also kept him strong and tough.
Toiling in the workshop where he was raised, he cuts the figure of a surviving Chinese terracotta warrior, stained by the mud that has defined his livelihood for half a century.
Fakhoury left the village temporarily during the Lebanese Civil War and worked in trade in West Africa. He always dreamt of returning to his workshop to continue his family’s legacy.
“I lived there, but I dreamed in Lebanon,” he says with a smile.
Fakhoury returned to find a wall of the workshop blown out by a bomb, but his tools intact. He wasted no time in repairing the room and reopening his business.
His wife and he have three daughters, all of whom are married and have long since left the house.
Women don’t do pottery, he says, at least in Beit Shabab.
His face falls, however, when he reveals that he has no heir to continue Beit Shabab’s trademark industry when he retires.
“This workshop has been running for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and when I go, it may all have been for nothing,” he lamented, looking wistfully around the chamber.
Though customers used to flock from across the country to hand pick his pots, the advent of plastic containers has slashed demand massively.
Nowadays, customers are often decorators seeking a rustic look, or tourists looking for authentic Lebanese craftsmanship.
He still ships a couple of hundred pots every year to a Jordanian arak producer, who uses them to store the anis-flavored liquor., like Ouzou in Greece
Producing pottery is like cultivating a crop, he muses. The clay is collected in the spring when it has the right consistency, then handspun into pots using a potter’s wheel.
The kiln, an oven designed especially for pottery, is fired up in August, the hottest month of the year, to accelerate the baking.
During these scorching weeks, Fakhoury stays up throughout the night to monitor the ovens and rotate the pots, making sure that months of intensive craftsmanship and exertion do not go up in flames.
The work is hard, and the fruit of his arduous labor much less plentiful than it once was.
While his father would light the oven 8 times in one summer, he now only produces one batch of pots a year.
A pottery festival and exhibition in Normandy, France, once invited Fakhoury to learn different pottery techniques.
He says it was an honor to be recognized, but that he found himself underwhelmed by the developed industrial techniques of French potters. Having made thousands of pots in his life, he says he prefers to stick to what his father and grandfather taught him as a child.
Nassar Fakhoury, Fawzi’s neighbor and former landlord, says “Fawzi is a part of this village in the same way that these streets are. He’s always in his workshop and his family has always been there. The children call him ‘the pottery man.’ There’s just no other way to describe him,”
Nassar shares Fawzi surname but is not sure exactly how they are related. Family lineages and histories go so far back in the village that they are sometimes impossible to keep track of or untangle.
When asked what has changed about the business since he began over half a century ago, Fawzi’s answer is simple: “Nothing. I still do business the way my father and grandfather did.”
It’s a legacy that may end without an apprentice or heir devoted to following in his forefathers’ footsteps.
It is almost impossible to picture the village without its main attraction, and for now, Fawzi will continue to fill that role. He says he cannot imagine himself anywhere else.
“My grandfather and father died here, and one day, I will join them,” he says. “What I want is to die here.”
Note 1: In my childhood, I visited and was acquainted with three families of potters in the lower part of Beit-Chabab, like the Tannous family. The entire family members participated in the production, especially in summer time. Traditional pottery is vanishing quickly in Lebanon, and not even replaced by mass production facilities. There are a few potters in Rashaya Fokhar, and are closing shop for no family members are willing to replace the older ones.
Note 2: A couple years ago I assisted in one of these night vigil. It was supposed to be the night the fire in the kiln (oven) for the pots to be suffocated. Annish played the guitar and sang Lebanese songs. We were a dozen gathered around the oven and a few kept joining in. Fawzi would get up from his couch and check on the readiness of the pots and add a few more woods. Around 2 am Fawzi decided it was time to kill the fire. We joined in bringing to the entrance of the oven the special “bumblebees” to stuff in to kill the fire.
Note 3: A couple centuries ago, pottery was started in the upper quarters of Beit Chabab, but the clay was whitish. The potters in the lower part of Beit Chabab had the reddish and better clay to use, and they supplanted the upper families in that art and industry.
Poster Collection
Political posters collected between the 1960s and the 1980s (Ps:1960-1980s/1 to 364)
These posters were collected from their original sources or from the American University of Beirut campus where they were posted. This collection covers two main topics:
Lebanon: ICTJ Study Shows Viability of a National Commission to Uncover Fate of the Missing and Disappeared
BEIRUT, January 27, 2016—Twenty-five years after the end of the Lebanese Civil War, the families of the missing and forcibly disappeared in Lebanon are still waiting for answers about the fate of their loved ones.
A new report by the International Center for Transitional Justice says the country seems to be ready to address this issue through an independent national commission and lays out the features of a successful future commission.
In 1992, the Lebanese government reported that 17,415 people went missing during the war.
It is thought that most were kidnapped by Lebanese or Palestinian militias and held on Lebanese territory. But there is no authoritative record of the names of the missing or their ante mortem data.
“The long years of waiting since the end of the war are an ongoing breach of the families’ right to know the truth, as recognized in international law and by Lebanese courts,” said David Tolbert, President of ICTJ. “The establishment of the commission would be a major step towards fulfilling that right.”
Many in civil society and victims’ groups believe the discussion in Lebanon on this issue is changing. Momentum is building toward addressing the issue of the missing and the forcibly disappeared.
Draft legislation to create a commission for the missing and forcibly disappeared is now before the Lebanese Human Rights Parliamentarian Committee, a judicial decision in 2014 recognized families’ right to the truth, and work is already underway to collect data on missing persons.
The Consolidated Draft Law for Missing and Disappeared Persons would establish an independent national commission to work as the primary institution responsible for coordinating an effective, meaningful response to the need of families to know the truth about their missing relatives.
“We are seeing an opening now for a national process to look for answers and clarify the truth,” said Nour El Bejjani, ICTJ’s Program Associate in Lebanon.
For the study, Lebanese and international professionals provided technical, operational and fiscal analysis and inputs on what it would take to establish a commission for the missing and forcibly disappeared.
To maximize the commission’s efficiency and sustainability, proposals in the study reflect international best practices, while remaining thoroughly tailored to the Lebanese reality and sensitive to Lebanese law, politics and history. The financial estimates that accompany the study offer only an initial estimate of the cost of establishing and operating such a commission.
The study’s modeling confirms the viability of the independent national commission, as envisaged in the consolidated draft law, in Lebanon today.
ICTJ hopes the study will help dispel the doubts of those who might oppose the commission on financial or operational grounds, and prove useful to overcoming future challenges in operationalizing a commission, for example, in preparing bylaws and operational budgets.
“It’s wrong to ask the families of the disappeared to continue to wait indefinitely for answers,” said Tolbert. “With this future commission lies the best hope of addressing the issue of the missing and forcibly disappeared in their lifetimes.”
The study, funded by the Embassy of Finland in Beirut, is intended to assist those advocating for the Lebanese government to fulfill families’ right to know the truth.
The full report can be downloaded in English and Arabic.
Note: Many military leaders of the Lebanese Forces who are speaking out have confirmed that they never kept records of those assassinated in their prisons: They didn’t even care to get their names.
This article is part of an in depth special report on the Lebanese in Brazil. Read more stories as they’re published here, or pick up July’s issue at newsstands in Lebanon.
Photo of Beirut Port with ships used for migration (Credit: LERC Archives)
Two years ago, Amin Maalouf — perhaps the most famous Lebanese author in France and a social scientist — made a trip to São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city. Speaking at a prominent club for Lebanese expatriates, he declared that for many, Brazil was the materialization of the Lebanese dream.
It is hard to disagree with him.
Perhaps more so than any other country outside of their homeland, the Lebanese run Brazil. In virtually every sector of the economy, some of the most powerful individuals can trace their lineage back to the Cedar country.
Though the exact number is disputed (see box), it is clear that there are at least 6 million Brazilians of Lebanese origin. In business, economics, culture and many other fields, Lebanese people sit at the top of Brazilian society.
Despite making up less than 5% of the population, 10% of parliamentarians have Lebanese origins.
Yet these migrants were not always so successful.
Arriving in the late 1800s, much of the first generation brought with them nothing but the clothes on their backs. The story of how they came to make up the Brazilian elite is one of free markets, risky decisions, stigma, and above all, hard work.
What’s in a number
It is widely known that there are more people of Lebanese descent in Brazil than there are citizens of Lebanon itself. Yet how many more is a matter for ongoing debate in both countries. Some estimates have put the number as high as 12 million, while others are as low as four or five. That puts the Lebanese–Brazilian population somewhere between 3 and 6% of the country’s total population of 200 million. Trying to get a reliable estimate is a lot harder than it may initially appear.
The first issue is documentation. There are no reliable estimates for the number of Lebanese people that arrived in Brazil in the late 1800s and early 1900s. And when they were recorded, because their documents came from the Ottoman Empire, they were called turkos— making no distinction between Lebanese, Syrians and other groups.
As Oswaldo Truzzi writes in the book by Roberto Khatlab “Lebanese migrants to Brazil: An Annotated Bibliography,”
“For a long time, the data on immigration flows from the region was classified under one category ‘other nationalities’ in Brazil. Only in the state of São Paulo, where immigration services became more effective after 1908, were these immigrants registered as Turk, Turk-Asian, Lebanese, or Syrian. Between 1908 and 1941, these groups amounted to 4 percent (48,326 individuals) of the total of immigrants that entered the state.”
In 1920 and 1940 the national censuses offered the first official estimates of the numbers of Lebanese and Syrians in the country.
Strangely, despite ongoing immigration, there were officially fewer in 1940 (46,614) than in 1920 (50,246). (It is recorded that immediately after WWI, as the maritime routes were reopened, more than 250,000 Lebanese, out of less than half a million, immigrated in the early 1920’s. Lebanon suffered a famine hecatomb and diseases related to weak physical conditions)
In recent years that number has fallen still, “becoming statistically of little significance” according to Truzzi. Yet this is likely due to reporting methods — Brazil’s census does not differentiate between Brazilians whose parents or grandparents are of foreign origin. Lebanese have also intermarried with other Brazilian groups, with many losing their Arabic name in the process.
Guita Hourani, director of the Lebanese Emigration Research Center at the Notre Dame University near Beirut, says she believes the number is between 6 and 8 million, but certainly not higher.
“Lebanon’s population in 1900 is estimated to have been 380,000. Hence, it is scientifically impossible that the emigrant population would increase to 12 or more million, while the remaining population in Lebanon would increase to 3.8 million.”
Hourani points out that some of the overestimates have come from the prominent role of Lebanese in Brazilian society. Some, for example, have extrapolated that because around 10% of Brazilian parliamentarians have Lebanese roots, they make up 10 percent of the population, a point she says is unfounded since “parliamentarians are elected by everyone regardless of their origins.”
There is also the problem of self-identification — many who are perhaps just one-eighth Lebanese will often feel proud of their roots, yet they have little realistic claim to Lebanese nationality.
Hourani believes that the Lebanese successes in Brazil are even more impressive when put into the context of their relative size. “Exaggerating the numbers eclipses the success of this small population … that has a high level of exposure in their immigration countries.”
Humble beginnings
Cheap Chinese goods flooding the market, undermining profits and forcing businesses into bankruptcy — it may sound a distinctly modern story, borne of an era of rapid globalization. Yet for those with knowledge of Lebanese history, today’s crisis in the West is merely an echo of the events that helped provoke the first wave of mass emigration in the late nineteenth century.
Eliane Fersan, a researcher on the history of Lebanese migration, has documented a number of factors that led to a huge wave of migration in that period. Among these was, perhaps unsurprisingly for a fragmented region, violence.
In 1860, a war between Maronite Christians and Druze communities led to the deaths of thousands of people. The lack of Ottoman protection for the Christian community, coupled with the fear of conscription into the Turkish armies, convinced the first few pioneers to seek safer shores.
But the exodus was really accelerated, not due to politics, but to economics — in particular the collapse of the Levant’s economy.
From the late 1870s onwards, the silk trade — the most common export of the predominantly Christian regions of Mount Lebanon — collapsed as European consumers took advantage of cheaper transport to buy Chinese and other East Asian goods instead.
As the academic John Tofik Karam noted in a paper on the period, the Chinese takeover left Lebanese exporters with no market. “Reaching its zenith in the early 1870s, the price of silk spiraled downward to nearly half its value in the 1890s,” he wrote.
The cumulative effect of a collapse of business, worsening security and few job prospects was the start of a rush for the nearest exit.
From 1860 to 1914, between a third and a half of Mount Lebanon’s population is believed to have emigrated — while well over 90% of all emigrants from Lebanese territory are thought to have been Christian. They fled across the world looking for a better life, becoming the first generation of the Lebanese diaspora.
A new start
Of these emigrants, around a third are estimated to have reached the Brazilian coast. Quite how so many ended up making the country their new home is a matter of debate.
The popular story, particularly among the Lebanese–Brazilian community, is one of divine providence. In this particular version of history, Brazil’s last emperor Dom Pedro II plays a sort of Cyrus the Great, the hero to an embattled community — offering them the chance to start again in a new land.
The reason for Pedro’s hallowed status is two trips he made to the Middle East in the 1870s, the latter of which involved an extensive tour of Lebanon. An enlightened and kind man, legend has it that on the road to the ruins of Baalbeck he stopped at the side of the road to talk to some peasants. After hearing of their woes, he implored them to abandon the Bekaa’s arid ground in favor of more luscious climes in Latin America.
Lody Brais, president of the Lebanese–Brazilian Cultural Association, believes Pedro’s actions provoked the rush to Brazil. Three years ago, she organized an exhibition to mark 135 years since the emperor’s visit. “We are here thanks to Dom Pedro II, because when he went he encouraged people to come to Brazil,” she says. “There was already a small working community and he was pleased with them so when he went he invited [the Lebanese] with open arms.”
Yet the truth may have been less clear-cut. Information traveled slowly in that period and it is unlikely that Dom Pedro’s call would have had a profound effect across the country. In fact, far from being pre-determined to reach Brazil, it seems that most Lebanese were more concerned about leaving than selecting their destination.
Fersan, the researcher on Lebanese migration, points out that many of the first generation had little idea where they were going.
“Most emigrants wanted to reach Amerka wherever this might turn out to be, before actually choosing their specific destination,” she says. “When they were refused entry to the United States (for health or legal reasons) they used to travel down south instead of returning home, and landed mostly in Brazil or Argentina.”
(It is reported that captain of ships would drop the passengers in any country that optimized the turnover of his shipment, like in Africa or Latin America)
Lebanese peddlers in São Paulo, 1960
Peddle me this
Those that arrived in Brazil found a country reaching out to the world. The rubber industry was booming and Brazil’s leaders realized that the population of only a few million people meant a need for new manpower.
In the latter period of the 19th century they invited people from across the world to help build this new nation. Swathes of migrants from Germany, Italy, Japan and other nations flocked to Brazil to help make it the array of nationalities it is today. Among these were tens of thousands of Arabs, mostly Lebanese but also Syrians and Palestinians.
Yet the Arabs distinguished themselves in one key way from the other new arrivals — they shunned agriculture in favor of trade.
This was partly because they faced higher barriers to entering the sector. Due to agreements between the Brazilian rulers and their European counterparts, those who emigrated from Europe often had prearranged work in Brazil, with the vast majority going to work on farms.
Yet the Ottoman Empire had no such agreement, making access to the agricultural sector more challenging for Lebanese immigrants.
Elsa El Hachem-Kirby, an academic who wrote her PhD on the Lebanese community in Brazil, stresses that this lack of support was both a curse and a blessing. “Lebanese emigration was spontaneous, and there was no state behind them. This was initially negative as it meant they had little protection but it also allowed them freedom to work however they liked — rather than being forced to be farmhands like some of the European immigrants.”
Non-Christian migration
While the vast majority of Lebanese emigration to Brazil has been from the country’s Christian population, a smaller percentage of the population came from the Muslim and Jewish communities. Reliable numbers are unfortunately unavailable, but estimates suggest that between 10 and 15% of Lebanese–Brazilians are of non-Christian descent.
The Muslim community Hussein Kalout, a Lebanese–Brazilian academic who is currently a visiting professor at Harvard’s political science department, comes from a Shia family. His father emigrated to Brazil in the 1960s but he speaks Arabic and has lived part of his life in Lebanon.
He describes 4 main waves of Lebanese emigration:
The first of wave— from the 1870s until the mid 20th century — was overwhelmingly Christian. Muslim immigration, he says, really began during World War II and picked up during a third wave in the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90. The final wave, he says, started after the war as Israel’s 1982–2000 occupation of southern Lebanon grated on the local population — with many from the Shia population moving for economic reasons.
For Kalout, Lebanese–Brazilian Muslims remain more connected to Lebanon and particularly to the Arabic language than their Christian counterparts. “The Lebanese Muslims are more connected to the land, to the religion and to the language,” he says. “If you ask how many Lebanese–Brazilian Christians speak Arabic, compared to the Lebanese–Brazilian Muslims, the difference is huge.”
This is partly due to chronology, as they emigrated later. Yet Kalout also thinks the connection to the region is greater. “I don’t think the third generation Shia will become equal to the third generation Christians [in their connection with Lebanon] because they are more linked with the country, more linked to the situation,” he says.
While Kalout thinks that many, like himself, have become largely irreligious in Brazil’s more secular society, Lebanese–Brazilian Muslims remain politically aware of events in the Middle East.
Lebanese–Brazilian Muslims are prominent in many areas of Brazilian society — in particular academia and medicine. Kalout adds that the distinction between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam has not historically replicated itself in Brazil, with shared mosques and a unified Muslim federation.
Underscoring the importance of language, there are a growing number of Arabic-language educational bodies in the country. “In some cities in southern Brazil they have started to create Arab schools — not just a school to teach Arabic but a school to put your children to learn in Arabic.”
The Jewish community
The Lebanese Jewish emigration to Brazil was predominantly in the latter half of the 20th century. Since the Nakba and concomitant birth of Israel in 1948, Arab Jews across the Middle East have often faced animosity and violence.
Sheila Mann was just 13 in 1967. Her family had been in Lebanon for “generations and generations,” but when the preemptive Six Day War started between Israel and Jordan, Syria and Egypt, hostility grew toward the Lebanese Jewish community. “When we found out Israel had won the war, the Lebanese army was worried the people would attack the Jewish district [of central Beirut] so they closed it off. We had blackouts at night so nobody knew we were in.”
“One day they had a demonstration near my home. From my veranda I could see one protester putting a photo of [Egyptian leader] Gamal Abdel Nasser on the barricades to provoke us,” she says. Scared for their children, her parents decided to leave the country — initially for Israel. Within a decade, she says, all the Lebanese Jews she knew had left the country.
Yet her parents never liked Israel and would constantly bemoan their refugee status, longing for a return to Beirut. Mann, too, was never happy in Israel and at age 18 moved to Brazil with her new husband. “For me Lebanon is part of my life, my being. I cannot imagine not thinking about Lebanon. It was a happy time, my childhood,” she says.
Lebanese–Brazilian Jews are relatively few but very successful. Perhaps foremost among them is the Safra family — owners of the Safra Group. The head of the family, Joseph Safra, is estimated by Forbes to be the second richest person in Brazil, with a personal fortune of $15.9 billion. (Executive contacted the family for an interview but they were in mourning over the death of Safra’s brother, Moise.)
Mann says she thinks that the forced nature of their emigration has made many members of the Lebanese–Brazilian Jewish community skeptical of other Lebanese–Brazilians. “I have a lot of difficulties to convince them to be more open and they consider me a fool.” She now runs an organization called Peace on the Table, which brings together Muslim and Jewish women of Middle Eastern descent to break down barriers over food.
The vast majority of these new immigrants began to work as mascates — peddlers. As Kirby explains in an article on the topic, this typically involved travelling the country carrying a crate of goods for sale. “The mascate would replenish his stocks in the city, in this case São Paulo, but he would sell his products in the [rural] interior of the country.”
The conditions for these workers were extremely tough — they often worked 20–hour days, travelling with cases on their backs in the most inhospitable of climates. Yet the rewards were potentially large and, unlike those in agriculture, went into their pockets rather than those of agrarian landlords.
Carlos Eddé is now head of the Lebanese National Bloc party but he lived in Brazil until 14 years ago. He says the Lebanese emigrants like his grandfather actually felt something of a release on arrival in Brazil — leaving Lebanon’s rather stifling feudal economy for the frontier markets of Latin America.
“A fresh immigrant once said to me: ‘When we leave Lebanon and we come to this country we feel no tiredness, no cold, no heat, no thirst, no hunger — we just do it. And principally we feel no shame — in Lebanon we live in shame of not having the right house, the right clothes, not speaking the right way, not having the right education. This makes Lebanese in Lebanon ashamed of trying new things.’”
This work ethic and new found sense of freedom enabled the first generation to succeed quickly. Within two generations, peddling would be synonymous with Arabs — in 1895, Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians made up 90% of the official register of peddlers in the city of São Paulo.
The Arabs quickly gained a reputation for travelling to places that most other Brazilians wouldn’t go to — often trekking through the Amazon carrying goods for sale.
Alfredo Cotait, a former senator and the president of the Lebanese–Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, points out that this type of work means the Lebanese community is found all over the country — though perhaps over 50 percent are found in São Paulo. “You will find Lebanese in all domains. There are 5,300 cities in Brazil and in each one you will find Lebanese businessmen.”
That initial generation of peddlers often succeeded within one generation. Among them was Jorge Maalouf, who would later become head of the Lebanese community in São Paulo. His grandson Jorge Takla, one of Brazil’s most important theater directors, believes that the Lebanese succeeded due to a combination of an impressive work rate and natural salesmanship. “[The Maaloufs] came from a very important family in Lebanon but when they came to Brazil they had no money and there was hunger here. They all started as mascates, yet they made money very quickly,” he says.
Back in Lebanon this exodus was becoming a source of alarm for some in the Christian community. One Presbyterian church leader is quoted in the book “Lebanese migrants to Brazil” as saying:
“The emigration fever doesn’t appear to show any signs of decreasing … It’s become an obsession. It took from our churches some of its most useful members; many of the teachers are upset.” Yet in the same breath he reveals why attempts to hold them back failed. “An illiterate emigrant goes to America and after six months sends back a check for 300 or 400 dollars, more than a teacher’s salary or two years’ work of a shepherd.”
Crucially, Lebanese families also had a high propensity to save the profits and reinvest them in businesses. By 1907, not peddling, but wholesale clothes and dry goods accounted for 80% of the 315 Arab-owned businesses in the city of São Paulo.
Nowadays, wandering down Rua 25 de Marco you are perhaps as likely to meet Koreans as Arabs — hundreds of stalls selling knock-off Brazil memorabilia, painting the street yellow and green.
Yet look closely and the major São Paulo thoroughfare still shows signs of its Lebanese history — the odd street name or remaining Arabic shop name. For the first part of the 20th century, the street was the trading quarter for the Lebanese diaspora — where they both produced and sold a range of goods, with textiles the primary lure.
Jorge Maalouf’s family was among the pioneers, quickly switching from peddling to textiles and establishing a major factory near Rua 25 de Marco. Within a few decades, Maalouf had become such a success he was making trips back to the motherland for philanthropy, being received lavishly by Lebanese politicians.
This interaction with Lebanon also went the other way — as stories of success fed back to those in the Middle East, thousands more packed up and left. Lebanese–Brazilian companies at that time also tended to prefer to employ from within the community — when they needed a new peddler, they more often went back to Lebanon rather than employing a Brazilian. Sons, nephews, or cousins would be summoned — thus encouraging yet more emigration from the home country.
Stop sign
Yet the worldwide financial crisis started by the 1929 Wall Street Crash put a halt to Brazil’s growth. Demand for exports collapsed and thousands went out of business. Among those forced out of business was the grandfather of Francisco Rezek, later the head of Brazil’s Supreme Court.
“When the American crisis produced its effects in this country in 1929–1930, many of the businesses collapsed. Some of the most fortunate families required an arrangement with creditors in order to pay part of the debt,” he says. “My grandfather didn’t want to do it — he paid all the debts on his firms, closed up and moved to the countryside to live his last years modestly but very proud of his attitude.”
The 1929 crash and the destitution it created fed extremism across the world — not least in Germany where it led to the rise of fascism that would indirectly reshape the Middle East forever — and Brazil was no exception. As people struggled to feed their families, it became increasingly common to lash out at immigrants — with Arabs bearing the brunt of many attacks.
Herbert Levy, one of the country’s most powerful newspaper figures at the time, was among the most vocal critics. In one editorial he wrote that “the type of immigration required by the country’s needs is that of agricultural workers and the [Arabs] are not classified in this category,” being rather “dedicated to commerce and speculative activities.”
At other times, this hostility slid into all-out racism, with Edgar Roquette-Pinto, often considered the father of Brazilian radio, accusing Arabs of being a secretive and segregated group. “Although … they are obligated to enter into relations with the Brazilians, they live perfectly segregated in their race, in their norms, in their way of doing things.”
A land of dialogue?
At the end of May a rather extraordinary event occurred: Hundreds of Lebanese people flocked to a conference in Beirut. While that may sound far from unusual, for some of the attendees it was their first steps on Lebanese soil. For these were the diaspora, drawn from around the world in recognition of their shared roots — though some had little previous interaction with the physical state of Lebanon.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil opened the event, which had been organized by his ministry, with an ode to the powers of the Lebanese emigrant. “My dear friends,” he said, “you are the second wing of Lebanon, you are the wealth of Lebanon, you are the energy of Lebanon … you are the pride of Lebanon.”
Bassil stressed that he was seeking to engage more deeply with the Lebanese diaspora and that he was looking not merely for empty words of solidarity but for concrete measures to improve links.
“We did not organize this meeting just to hold an event or highlight an achievement. We want to start a collective journey together because each one of you has a success story,” he said. “This partnership means that we will have a dialogue, we will have an exchange and sharing. This is why we want to listen to you and draw on your experiences of success and rich experiences abroad.”
One concrete step forward is the Land of Dialogue among Civilizations (LDC) initiative. Launched by President Michel Sleiman in 2013, the LDC aims to encourage the United Nations to formally recognize Lebanon as a country of dialogue and coexistence, where those from many religions, sects and beliefs coexist.
Edward Alam, a professor at the Notre Dame University near Beirut and one of the organizers of the LDC initiative, says that the next step will include “an electronic petition addressed to the UN Secretary that will be signed by Lebanese, people of Lebanese descent, friends and people who believe in dialogue as a tool to nonviolent transformation,” as well as a “tour to promote the initiative in the main countries that have sizable Lebanese diasporas.”
Alam admitted that critics could find the idea of Lebanon’s deeply divided society being a model for dialogue strange considering ongoing tensions. “We are not denying that Lebanon continues to struggle for peace, but Lebanon continues to also see dialogue as an indispensable tool. Even in the midst of active warfare, there were efforts for dialogue inside and outside Lebanon … We feel that Lebanon is positioned historically, geopolitically, culturally to be that land [of dialogue] especially in our part of the world.”
So far, among other moves, a Brazilian branch of the LDC has been launched under the leadership of Denise Milan, one of Brazil’s top artists. She organized a conference last year — backed by the Brazilian government — that aimed to highlight the Lebanese diaspora and encourage dialogue.
“We didn’t want to talk about conflict, we wanted to talk about coexistence. [We aim to] highlight Lebanon in the Middle East as a place where coexistence exists — even with all the problems they have. If we can pass this message strongly, it can be very important for the Middle East.”
Victors of fortune
Yet the changing shape of both Brazil and the world was about to transform the Lebanese community from successful but stigmatized merchants into key pillars of Brazil’s society.
In 1930, Getulio Vargas rose to power. Recognizing Brazil’s predominantly agricultural economy was ill-suited to the modern world, the dictator set a course for rapid industrialization. In 1919, industrial production accounted for just 21 percent of gross national product, but by 1939 that figure was 43 percent, while the number of factory workers in São Paulo trebled.
No group was as well placed to take advantage of this as the Lebanese. They had by this time established themselves as the merchant class in São Paulo, the country’s economic hub. Small textile businesses were transformed into major factories, while national giants rose up in construction and other sectors.
By the early 1950s, the Lebanese diaspora had succeeded in becoming some of the country’s top industrialists.
In 1954 Lebanese President Camille Chamoun visited Brazil and was received in lavish fashion by a diaspora community that was both proud of its roots but also starting to grow beyond them. More importantly, there was recognition from the rest of the Brazilian society of their importance. No longer trading in the backwaters, the Lebanese integrated more, with intermarriage on the rise.
Yet while they were among the most powerful business powers of the time, those Lebanese were still far from the country’s elite; few Lebanese–Brazilians were in parliament or had reached the top of the professions. This was to change with the later generations.
For far from encouraging their children to take over their hand-built empires, many of these pioneers prioritized, above all else, the education of their children.
Antonio Chacra, a top Brazilian endocrinologist and former vice president of the International Diabetes Federation, is perhaps emblematic of this shift. “At the age of four or five my mother said ‘you are going to be a doctor,’” he says. “My father had a store selling clothes and his great dream was for his children to study. They worked and we studied.”
While the second and third generations of those original expats were now firmly embedded and moving into the professions, the continued struggles in Lebanon caused yet more waves of emigrants — with many following family members to Brazil. Yet this generation was no longer painting on an empty canvas — Brazil had grown and opportunities were sparser than a few decades previous.
While some more recent immigrants have managed to build empires, more often they have found themselves frustrated. The parents of Samir Yazbek, one of the country’s top playwrights, were deeply disappointed shortly after arriving in the 1950s.
In ‘The Cedar Leaves,’ one of his most famous works, Yazbek recalls how his father’s desperate dreams of making a fortune ripped the family apart. “He traveled all over the country looking for work, starting in São Paulo in textiles, then moving to the northeast to work in construction. In the end he went looking for gold in the north, leaving us behind in São Paulo.” Did he find any? “No,” he smiles, “he ended up working in a hydroelectric dam.”
Even if Yazbek succeeded, his father’s story of frustration and failure was typical of the later generation of immigrants. Relatively few that arrived in that period have risen to the upper echelons of society.
A new identity
Nowadays, the extent of Lebanese influence in Brazil is also matched by their integration. Far from being the closed community that critics called their forefathers, the Lebanese community is now highly mixed into society, intermarriage is incredibly common, while few speak even the basics of Arabic.
Kirby puts this transformation down to a process of emigration into an open society such as Brazil’s. She stresses that now Lebanese–Brazilian identity is more of a form of recognition that can help open doors with other members of the community but little more than that.
“At the start they organized as a community, as did the Italians, the Japanese and other groups. Over time they integrated into the economic and social fabric. Because they were successful, what was a community transformed into a network.”
In economics, politics, the arts and many other fields, those of Lebanese origin now occupy some of the top rungs of the ladder. Yet their primary identity is now that of Brazilian, with their family origins a secondary factor.
Ramiro Fajuri, sales director of Chams magazine that focuses on the Arab diaspora in Brazil, puts it another way. He says that while Lebanese–Brazilians are usually incredibly proud of their heritage, these roots are now only a small part of their identity.
Fajuri, who points out that his wife is Brazilian of Japanese descent, thinks this confidence in themselves makes them happy in their identities. “We couldn’t keep the language but we kept some culture, the traditions, the social clubs,” he says. “I guess this is what [Amin] Maalouf meant.”
We are Sabine Choucair and Chantal Mailhac. We are two independent Lebanese artists, and this is our storytelling company “Whispered Tales“.
We are touring countries with a show conceived with a compilation of 10 stories collected from every corner in Lebanon; ordinary people’s extraordinary stories…Whispered Tales has been performed in different Lebanese villages, Jordan and Portugal…
Our project is to include touring the USA with some whispered tales from Lebanon!
The tales were whispered to us during a one-month road trip through the villages of Lebanon… Actually, it all started when we heard the mother of our friend telling us:
“Once upon a time, Wadih and me met by the beach, fell in love and decided to get married. It was the 13th of April 1975 !” That’s the date the Lebanese civil war started … But they did not lose hope … and their amazing story began:
And despite all hitches and obstacles, they kept on trying, every month to get married…until…
Looking back at that story (that was just the beginning…), that same evening, it occurred to us how absurdly funny, yet dramatic it was, telling living stories.
Historical facts can always be found on the internet and in books. But the people’s truth is the reality they have lived, experienced and remember, that’s what we wanted to hear…
And that evening, we felt we needed more stories!
We felt the need to know about real people’s stories, their personal, extraordinary stories. We wanted to understand our culture, to archive the memories, gather them in a collective memory and carry them around the world…
So we went on a road trip across the villages and towns of Lebanon to meet people, collect stories that had happened over the last 50 years.
A month later, we had collected 150 stories, about love, hate, community, life and death. We chose 10 amazing ones to be the “Whispered Tales” of our show.
This August, we will be in New York to take part in the “Between the Seas” festival.
We also have invitations to perform in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco to tell everyone these amazing stories from Lebanon.
Performances are in English.
We figured that this touring project will cost us $5,000. This money will cover our flights to and from the USA, and the production of our show “Whispered Tales” in the different cities we will visit. It will pay for accommodation, food, props, etc.
Contributions are the only way this project can keep evolving.
We hope you can be part of this unique experience by pledging the amount of money that you think right for our endeavor.
Dates and venues:
New York: Between The Seas festival
@ The wild project, August 25th & 26th
(www.betweentheseas.org)
Chicago: Taxim restaurant; September 2nd
San Francisco: September 7th ( venue to be confirmed)
Atlanta: Alif Institute; September 14th & 15th @ 7pm (www.alifinstitute.org) Boston: CAC; Saturday 21st.
Sabine on the left and Chantal: Beauty is not that evident, need to meet them.
Adonis Diaries 