January 18, 2020 #LebanonProtests
The revolution’s open theatres
Documented by Claudine Boeglin & Sherine Geagea
In Al-Monitor,
Euan Ward describes the bunker called The Egg in Downtown Beirut as such: "A reminder of a war-torn past, an eyesore, a concrete landmark to unfulfilled promises and broken dreams. For people who grew up in Beirut, even a fleeting glimpse of the infamous dome-like structure next to Martyrs’ Square evoked feelings of discontent and anger. Then came the revolution…"
18 January 2020. At 1 pm, the brutalist empty theatre designed in 1965 by
architect Joseph Philippe Karam to become a cinema, was thickly silent. The light was silver, the moment eery. A dark presage of the later events. So was the shell of the opera defying the parliament. The people of Beirut drummed their anger against the government with stones against its facade.
