Participants: Dunya (6 years), Ylan (6 years), Ivy (6 years), Nai (6 years)
Facilitators: Maha Mousa (Lead KG2 Educator), and Dunya’s father, Ghassan Halawani (Visual Artist and filmmaker)
In Horsh Beirut, our children spend significant time playing in the archeological columns area. The columns, once forgotten, are transformed by the children’s imaginations into ships, airplanes, and ice-cream shops. The children sit, climb, and jump on these columns, embracing them with all their senses and vast imaginary inner worlds.
This project is about the children telling a story of an ever changing state of being.
We embarked on a journey that binds the past to the present only to reimagine a long forgotten past from the children’s perspectives of what might have existed once upon a time.
How It Started
During a visit to Baalbek, Dunya was introduced to the three temples of Bacchus, Jupiter, and Aphrodite, and to the concept of offerings to gods.
Dunya chose to give offerings to Bacchus. She made drawings of the god, grapes, and glasses of wine, and put them in a slit in the temple wall that she deemed as a mailing post for the gods.
When she went back to Horsh Beirut, she started wondering about the columns she and her friends play around. Which temple do these columns come from? To which god do they belong?
Phase 1: Archeological Sampling
The children studied the columns by looking at their size, color, texture, and form.
Size
Materials: jumbo paper clips, colored sticky notes
Using jumbo paper clips as a measurement unit, the children measured the diameter of the different columns. They also marked the columns of the same size with colored sticky notes and made an inventory of their findings.
Texture
Materials: A4 papers, 6B pencils
The children used paper and pencils to scratch the surface and make impressions of the columns’ textures.
Color
Materials: gouache paint (white, black, red, yellow), thick paper, clip boards
Each child chose a column and observed the detail in its colors. They mixed their color palettes based on their observations and then represented the color patterns of the stones.
As they were sampling their findings, the children noticed different pieces of stone that had carvings on them. They drew the stones from observation and discussed the patterns they saw. They also noticed metallic labels with the acronym BCD.
What does BCD mean? Could this code lead us to a place?
The children suggested words that came to their mind that start with the sounds B, C, and D.
| B | C | D |
| BAHR | CATS | DIAMOND |
| BATROUN | CD | DEBALA |
| BEIRUT | SEA | DUNYA |
| BABA | CAMERON | DANEMARK |
| BARCELONE | CENTER | DA’ROU’ |
| CANADA | DETROIT |
After having discussed the viable possibilities to the children’s suggestions and upon building on prior experience, the children decided to start with “Beirut” and “Center” to track the columns and find more clues to answer their initial question.
Phase 2: The Expedition
The next step was to go to the Center of Beirut in an attempt to find clues related to the columns in question. As the children ventured into Beirut Central District, they came across the Roman Baths site. They did not find anything that matched their sampled columns. Instead, they found ‘The Great Plate of a Giant that overlooks the maze of the Dwarves’.
After extensive contemplation and observation, Nai noted that the repetitive and numerous piles of small clay columns supported an elevated floor. She realized that the floor covered the whole area. It was then when the children started making connections and expressed some insight into the layering of time. Something that may be described as the verticality of history. They concluded that the current city of Beirut has changed over time. it is no more the way it WAS. Hence, people in the past did not use concrete to build their cities, and each civilization used different materials. The discussions at this point were circular and repetitive. With the site at hand and the visual archeological posters that provided intriguing information, our inquiry started to take more shape.
We walked the streets looking for more clues and insights. Our second stop was the site located behind Saint George’s Orthodox Cathedral. To the children’s surprise, the site had loads of columns. They were so excited about their findings and they identified the granite, marble, and sand columns that they sampled in Horsh Beirut. They noticed the relatively corresponding sizes and ornamental patterns. Everything was there!
Again, with thorough deliberation, drawing conclusions and utilizing provided maps and information on the site, the children discovered that the columns did not belong to a temple. The columns lined Cardo Maximus Street. Around the Roman era, people took this big street to go to the sea.
Phase 3: The Drift
Reimagining and recreating a long gone space
Our journey ‘back in time’ started. We imagined the site near Saint George’s Cathedral without buildings. With the aid of digital tools, we recreated the landscape by removing the contemporary buildings. We went back to the year 300 A.D.
1700 years ago, Earth was probably cooler with less heat, humidity, and pollution. As we removed the elements of our current city, we were amazed to see that the old city is still evident and near. It was striking to see the vastness of the sky that the dwellers of the city beheld.
We archived the collection of columns that we sampled. Using our archive, the children used the different columns and stones to build an abode on the site.
In Mansion in Zoukak el Blat, we used a sunset sky as a backdrop to our reconstructed landscape and projected it on a huge screen. The children inhabited their monumental abode. They entered it, and in its hall, under the haze of the setting sun, they danced to the tunes of Mohamad Ramadan’s “Boum Boum Boum Rayheen Nes’har” as a tribute to Mohamad, our community’s cherished driver.