STOP CALLING BEIRUT

There is a small city for sale, overlooking the sea, cheap, made of paper, flammable. 

Beirut is not just a city, it is an echo of its contradictions; ruin and beauty, memory and amnesia. It is the fleeting beauty of youth crushed beneath the weight of history, a melody lingering after the orchestra has left. A hangover after the party is over.

Beirut is a city built, burned, lived, lost, loved, and resold, with stories scattered like ashes along its shores. Stop Calling Beirut intertwines tales, layering memories to outline the Beirut we’ve lost. Like losing childhood innocence or a brother at a seashore, or a place that once felt like home but is now erased. Each story is a ghost haunting the city’s streets and forgotten corners, capturing fragments of a place slipping away even as we live in it.

Beirut is a mosaic of wounds, vanished faces, and fading souvenirs. It is a city of fire and paper, and through this play, three friends on stage try to capture its fragments before they disappear, before the child burns the city down, before the brother vanishes, before Beirut becomes only a word we once knew.

In loving memory of Ziad Abi Azar