It might be shocking to know that there is no definitive biography of Fairouz's early days. The fog enveloping when and where she was born and raised is just as thick as that around her personal life, or rather, lives. No one agrees on whether Fairouz was born in the village of Dibbiye in the Chouf mountains, or in Zoqaq el-Blat in Beirut, nor do they agree on her father's origins. Was Wadie Haddad, husband to her mother Lise al-Bustani, from Palestine? From Aleppo? From Mardin, Turkey? Or of different extraction?

"…And Lebanese" is an evolving essay exhibition based on UMAM D&R's documentation work that explores the disparate roots of many of the country's most Lebanese public figures, and thereby questions what it really means to be Lebanese. From Iraqi politicians to Palestinian brothel-owners, national icons to Mercedes magnates, an array of colorful figures have gained Lebanese citizenship in the country's short history as a nation-state. Not shying away from a critique of the idea that to be Lebanese is a God-given gift of the most exalted kind, the exhibition investigates how the Lebanese differ over the question of who gets to be Lebanese? Which aspects of "Lebaneseness" are privileged or pushed under the carpet?

After waves of immigration and emigration in the decades since gaining statehood, Lebanon's defining moment – the civil war – concluded with hundreds of thousands being brought into the national fold through a controversial naturalization decree, devoid of rationale and still the subject of a legal challenge today. Even in the present era, the community of Lebanese is an approximate one, subject to additions and subtractions according to the political needs of the hour, and the question of who enters the records as Lebanese remains integral to the country's very being, to its own self-chronicles in peace and in war. However, as the Syrian refugees steadily become as embedded into Lebanese society as the Palestinians, the unstable mixture of fact and fiction upon which these chronicles are constructed stand the risk of being torn apart and rewritten. 

But the real problem lies not in the status of Lebanon's refugee communities, nor even in the practical issues generated by their presence, but in the shortsightedness and politics of panic this attitude produces. Many prefer not to dwell on the circumstances that rendered Lebanon what it is today. No wonder, in a country shaped by war, catastrophe, and the games of other nations where a history of bloodshed always threatens more violence, that some prefer to avert their eyes from the past and its implications for their future. Anyone searching for explanations for this reluctance will not come back empty handed, but nor will they necessarily get to the full truth of the matter, if one exists. Looking back at Lebanon's history with its newcomers – and the many inter-Lebanese differences and disputes over their presence and identity – will help us to understand both the competing self-images of Lebanon as a nation, and the country's current grappling with the Syrian refugee presence, as well as future arrivals yet to come.

Exhibition & graphic design by Abraham Zeitoun.

The exhibition is part of the Most Welcome? Lebanon Through Its Refugees initiative and was made possible thanks to funding from the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa).