Image
Source
Hassan, a young resident of Bar Elias. With support from Hannah Sender, Miriam Orcutt, Joana Dabaj, Ramona Abdullah, Diana Boutelea, Rachel Btaiche, Yazan Nagi, Delan Devakumar, Fouad Fouad, Lebanese Union for People with Physical Disabilities, MultiAid Programmes. Taken as part of 'Forced migration and adolescent mental health' (2019).
Language
English
English
'When the pump is working, you look at the water, you know the soap
foam? Yes it is just like soap foam.' These are the words of a farmer who used to irrigate his land with water from the Litani River. The river is now polluted by factory waste flowing downstream into the town. The river's toxicity has reconfigured the social life of the town, for Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrians.
Discussions about the river is a marker of difference between generations. Older residents recall the river's former vitality: it watered the fields and provided for the entire country. They are attached to the river in a melancholic way: they feel its presence and yet register the river as somehow lost. Many try to turn their backs on the river, finding new ways of irrigating their fields, new kinds of work and new uses for their lands (including renting to displaced Syrians).
Hassan is a young man who took a picture of the Litani for a photography project about places that affect him in the town. Some young people have heard of the river's former vitality from older residents, and some who have lived near its banks for longer recall swimming in the river or playing on its banks. However, many say they still like to go there, but teeter carefully at its edge, afraid of falling in and yet lured by its gravity as a place to be, to hang out.