I was born in 1977, two years after the Lebanese “Civil” War erupted and thirteen years before it officially “ended.” But for me, it never really did. It just changed form. The warlords who tore the country apart became our political leaders. The militias traded fatigues for suits. And the systems of violence mutated into economic exploitation, social hierarchies, sectarian conditioning, and everyday corruption. There was no reconciliation, no justice, no reckoning. Just a quiet, national agreement to forget. A false peace built on unspoken wounds. A collective amnesia that I could never abide with.

My earliest memories aren’t made of toys or cartoons. They’re made of shelters, sirens, and candlelight. I remember being rushed down stairwells as bombs fell, my small hand clenched in my mother’s. I watched her perform calmly the way an actor might, deliberately, shakily, trying to protect me not just from death but from fear itself. I remember the stillness after an explosion. That charged, sacred silence that followed, the kind where everyone holds their breath, listening for the next one. That silence taught me more about tension and release than any textbook or film school ever could.

War became my first language. Before I could read or write, I was fluent in danger. I learned to measure time through terror. To sense shifts in the atmosphere. To read the micro-expressions on faces, to listen not just to words but to the hesitations between them. Before I was ever diagnosed with dyslexia, I already knew I was different. I wasn’t decoding syllables like the other kids, I was decoding shadows on the wall, the tremble in someone’s voice, the way footsteps changed when they carried fear.

That sensitivity, both neurological and emotional, wasn’t a weakness. It was a survival skill. It became the foundation of my artistry.

Because when the bombs eventually stopped, the fragmentation didn’t. Lebanon rebuilt itself on shaky, unresolved ground, both literally and figuratively. There was rubble beneath the new concrete, trauma beneath every conversation, a scream beneath every smile. I grew up in a country pretending everything was fine, gaslighting itself, living in denial of its past, its present, and its stolen future. Denial is something that we Lebanese excel at. 

These so-called leaders, who should have faced justice for what they did to our people, instead crowned themselves the custodians of our confessional “balance.” But the only balance they’ve maintained is one that secures their own wealth, their own immunity, their own monopoly on power. They speak in the language of sectarianism, but what they protect isn’t faith, it’s profit. What they fear isn’t instability, it’s change. And what they’ve preserved isn’t peace, it’s paralysis.

For five decades now, they’ve robbed us, first of our childhoods, and now of our country. Through calculated corruption, systemic mismanagement, and utter disregard for human life, they’ve collapsed our economy, hollowed out our institutions, and driven our youth to flee. And in one of the most violent symbols of their negligence, the 4 August Beirut Port explosion, an atomic wound at the heart of our capital, they showed us, again, how little they value our lives. Over 200 people killed. Thousands injured. Half the city turned to rubble. No accountability. No justice. Just more denial. More silence.

We weren’t taught to process grief or demand accountability, we were taught to be resilient. To be grateful for electricity, even if it came in two-hour intervals. To treat survival like a privilege. And to never, ever look back.

But I did. I looked back. I listened back. I studied the silence. I asked the questions no one wanted to ask.

Because I could still hear the war. Not just in the distance, but in people’s bodies—in their anxieties, their addictions, their parenting, their politics. I saw it in the way we divided ourselves, in the way we tolerated injustice, in the way we normalized inequality. In the way we feared difference. In the way we elected our abusers again and again, mistaking the familiar for the safe.

Denial is something we Lebanese excel at. We bury pain beneath pride. We dress our trauma in fashion and poetry. We write songs about love while our streets fill with hunger. We smile with perfect teeth while our hearts rot from unspoken grief.

But I wasn’t built to forget. I was built to remember. To reflect. To feel.

And so I became an artist.

Not because I wanted to escape my past, but because I needed to translate it. To find a language for what was unspoken. To build a grammar out of images and sounds. To create a space where people could look and finally see. Hear and finally listen. Feel and finally grieve.

Because sometimes, remembering is the most radical act of all.