So I admit, even I know what and where Bar Farouk was. Right next to AUB, in the days when I was a student there, and Hamra was a no man's land after 7 P.M. at the time, it was only normal to see the light in front of it while going out of the late biology lab sessions. For the newbies, if you are to locate it, just look at the shop signs next to it in the photo. "Candel light" no more.
The bar was an "old rent" - meaning the kind it is impossible to evict - from the family which owned the villa on the corner there (I will not name them but they are actually quite well known and have a huge dealership in Lebanon). The "bar" was indeed quite famous in its time, but as with everything related to old Beirut, and with it "not being Modca or Wimpy" as Youssef Hajj Ali says (the two being two of the major cafes in Hamra), it will close down like a nobody, with no protests or whatever.
This is not a lament, but just another part of the Beirut fabric that goes down. Forever.
2 comments:
Hi Tarek,
Hamra (maybe also other parts of Beirut) is witnessing these irrevocable changes.
When a shop is the same for decades and decades, you have the impression that it will stay forever. And then in one day it is no longer there... You feel let down... Photo Noubar, Lingerie Sowan, la Brioche...
I know this is the pace of life, but nothing wrong with documenting the past and the memory. Just for the sake for those who lived it and for whom it meant something.
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