They were displaced during the Civil War. The PLO [3] took Tarik Al Jadidah as a military and popular base [4]. Whenever circumstances worsened, Um Yumna and her children fled. They spent the period of the war moving among Barja, Beqaa, and Beirut. But whenever the situation calmed and the roads to Beirut opened, they went back to Tarik Al Jadidah. At first, they stayed in Barja. They saw a glimmer of hope in Bachir Gemayel’s election as president, so they went back to Beirut. But then he was assassinated [5], and they fled to Um Yumna’s relatives in the Beqaa. That is when she would begin building a house on the Mushaa’ (Commons) near her parents’ house, leave it unfinished, and return to Beirut. The house in Tarik Al Jadidah was looted in their absence. Not a single thing remained.

The war came suddenly and lasted 15 years, during which they never fully abandoned the house. The eviction disputes lasted nearly five years. A warning came that the houses must be vacated – all of the tenants’ homes on the ground floor and the upper floors – with a notice from the court, but no financial compensation was offered to the tenants. The warning came as no surprise to the residents. They were aware that the heirs intended to sell the property because they needed the money, and also because of the building’s deteriorating state, and their inability to restore it ever since the reconstruction period and the urban boom that followed the war. Some of the heirs lived in two of the upper floors of the building. They did not have close relationships with the tenants, and in the period that preceded the warnings, the tenants felt that the heirs had been “predatory” in their efforts to complete the investment deal. They “inventoried the estate” and orally informed the tenants that the property would be sold and that they had to look for other housing options. The neighbours hired a lawyer to take their claims to trial for compensation that would allow them to secure alternative housing. The judicial proceedings and trials lasted nearly five years, ending in 2012 when the tenants were paid modest compensation.

[3] Palestinian Liberation Organization

[4] Public Works Studio, Mapping Beirut from its tenants’ stories: Tarik Al Jadidah.

[5] Bachir Gemayel, elected president on 25 August 1982, assassinated on 14 September 1982