Sarah Yassine
CREATIVE WRITING: RAILWAY STORIES
Contents The Hidden Landscape: Mar Mikhael Railway Station Tripoli's Sleeping Beauty Terminus
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The railways have always fascinated me. In 2009 I came across Beirut’s derelict train station. Ever since, I have been writing about Lebanon’s railways. The remaining stations have evolved into beautiful wilderness gardens and their rail yards into green corridors across cities and towns. They await to be used as museum-gardens I invite you to read my railway stories.
The Hidden Landscape: Mar Mikhael, Beirut’s Railway Station Featured in Mashallah News Publication Beirut Recollected
Expected 2014 Meeting Along The Rail Line Every morning for years, Bechara Hana Assi gazed at the moving landscape through a train window on his work commute. Five days a week, he waited for the train at Hadath station, north-east of the city, and by ten past six, he had started his rotation at the traction control room in Mar Mikhael, Beirut’s former railway station. One Friday in May 2012, I traversed the disused narrow gauge rail yards looking for him. His office door was shut, and when I asked about his whereabouts, I was told that the President of the Railroad Workers Union had retired this very last winter. I walked towards the SLM, a Swiss-made steam locomotive– perhaps the one that took the very first journey from Beirut to Damascus that day in August of the year 1895. And there I posed, and nearly began to weep. I sat in the shade of a ficus tree, amidst butterflies and wild flowers, looking at the railway disappearing in the ground, and remembering how my story with the railway station began. Our path crossed one autumn afternoon in 2009 when Bechara took me for a ride on the pump trolley cart around the rail yards at the Mar Mikhael train station. It was through him that I discovered this hidden landscape, where nature coils around an obsolete infrastructure, as if to protect it from the passing of time. Ever since, the story of the railway began unfolding to me in layers. Through the years and the seasons, I gathered archives, stories, pictures, and maps in an attempt to reconstruct the narrative of a railway system that once was. Therefore dear reader, what follows is an elegy to one of the very first railways in the Middle East, its people, the landscapes it traverses, and its places. It is the story of Mar Mikhael railway station and that of its Guardian.
Reading the Railways Beirut, August 3, 1895. The very first train left Mar Mikhael railway station for a nine-hour and 147-kilometre journey to Damascus, across hilly terrain. With stops at Hadath, Baabda, Aley, Bhamdoun, Sofar and Dahr al Baidar, amongst others, the 1.05 m narrow gauge AB rack railway descended into 1
the Bekaa stopping at Rayak Railway Station and Railway Works, where crowds had gathered in an official celebration to mark the beginning of the railway history in the Levant. From there on, the railway continued to Damascus, its final destination. In 1891 the Ottoman Empire had granted the French established Société des Chemins de Fer Ottomans Economiques de Beyrouth-Damas Hauran, a concession to build the first railway in the Middle East. Earlier, from 1839 to 1876, the Ottoman Tanzimat reform era had witnessed the establishment of the first post offices and the first telegraph network, part of series of administrative and infrastructural reforms throughout the empire to secure territorial integrity in response to its slow decline. The French envisioned the railway as an opportunity to connect Beirut’s port to the Syrian hinterland, thereby providing the city of Damascus with transit access and an opening onto the Mediterranean shore. This came as a response to the proposed Jaffa – Damascus British railway project. Had the plan gone through, the Beirut Port would not have acquired the status of primary port of the Northern Levant, at the forefront of Haifa, Saida, and Tripoli. Clearly, both French and British forces had foreseen the opportunity of investing capital in the region, and in acquiring concessions to construct a railway network connecting strategic trade and pilgrimage routes throughout the empire. Beirut’s urban geography witnessed a turning point in 1860, with the onset of rural exodus after a brief period of sectarian unrest. It was a time of change. Beirut became an Ottoman provincial capital in 1888, and the port was enlarged in 1890 following the formation of the Compagnie du Port, des Quais et des Entrepôts de Beyrouth in 1888. Urbanisation was expanding eastward and westward into the surrounding suburbs, and beyond the city’s seven gates and ramparts. The railway added yet another layer to the changing urban landscape. In the Bonfils photographic series on Beirut of the late 1800s, the land use for the area east of the historical centre was coastal rural, with mulberry plantations, orchards and olive groves.
Situated east of the Beirut Souks and the Burj Square (today Martyrs’ Square), but also on a plane between the two hills of Ashrafieh and Ras Beirut, and in close proximity to the port, Karantina and the Beirut River, Mar Mikhael was chosen to serve as Beirut’s central railway station in 1895. The railway station with its repair workshop and rail yards extended over a surface area of 62,000 m2, forever imprinting the story of the train station neighbourhood. Later on, the railway network expanded along the old routes of Beirut: the Damascus road, the Old Saida Road and the Tripoli Road, shaping the landscape and connecting the hinterland to coastal cities. By 1906, another railway track was built and operated by the Société des Chemins de fer Damas-Hama et prolongements (DHP) connecting Rayak to Homs, Hama and Aleppo. In 1911 a standard third gauge railway was built between Tripoli and Homs and later on in the 1930s, the Orient Express arriving from Paris terminated at Istanbul. From there on, the Taurus Express took over terminating in Tripoli. Between the two World Wars, the railways were profitable with daily passengers and regional freight transport between Beirut and Aleppo and two Beirut –Damascus return daily trips. I remember asking my grandfather, who was born in 1906 and was a shareholder at the DHP, about his recollections of the train. He once told me that “on the way to Damascus the railway grazed orange fields, children would jump into the orchards to pick up fruits and hop back on the train.” When he took the train in the 1920s and 1930s, the train stopped at every village and merchants would run to the windows with fruit baskets, labneh (strained yogurt) and markouk (bread). When I asked him if he read on the train he answered: “Yes. There were also children selling newspapers, magazines and translated novels, and if I remember correctly, an Arabic version of Sherlock Holmes.” In the 1940s, the allied troops extended the railway from Tripoli via Beirut to Haifa. A direct link was envisioned by the British between the standard gauge railway from their base in Haifa and the northern Syrian railway terminating in Tripoli. And as of 1942, regular military traffic began on the Haifa-Beirut-Tripoli line. Today, an inscription from 1942 still stands on the coastal railway viaduct at Nahr El Kalb River, North of Beirut to commemorate the historical event. From Haifa, passengers could 2
continue their journey to Cairo and therefore rail travel between Europe and Africa became possible. As of 1948, the NBT railway station in Furn el Chebbak east of Beirut served as the terminus to the Naqura – Beirut – Tripoli railway line. With the onset of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Haifa connection was discontinued and trains no longer crossed the border into Haifa, but rather terminated at Naquoura, south Lebanon.
The Guardian of the Railway In the 1950s, a young boy from Jezzine, a village south of Beirut, stepped into a railway station for the first time. It was Bechara’s very first visit to the city. He accompanied his uncle Karim during his daily chores as a railroad worker at Mar Mikhael railway station. That day, Bechara discovered a magical place bustling with movement, life, people, goods, cattle, children, fumes and noises. It was then that he decided to train as a railroad worker and follow the footsteps of his uncle. Therefore, in 1963 and at an age of 15, Bechara began working at the Office des Chemins de Fer et des Transports en Communs (OCFTC), Railway and Public Transport Authority RTPA] a semi-autonomous subdivision of the Ministry of Transport and Public Works. Back in 1961, the Lebanese state had acquired the entire railway network and CEL, Chemin de Fer de l’Etat Libanais had been established. During the 1960s, freight transport between Beirut and Damascus generated high profit. Bechara recalls that the coastal railway transported around one thousand tons of fuel on a daily basis between the Zahrani power plant south of Lebanon and Beirut power stations. Cement also came daily from the plant in Chekka to be distributed in Beirut. Although passenger ridership began decreasing at that time with the advent of cars and buses, the OCFTC still operated a daily passenger train between Beirut and Aleppo, and two return trips a day between Beirut and Damascus.
Beirut – Damascus line stopped running, and in 1979 the coastal railway suffered from a bomb attack. Militia groups occupied railway stations, using them as torture areas; they vandalised railway property and used locomotives to serve as barricades across conflict zones. As the war lingered and Beirut’s city centre gradually became a no man’s land, the OCFTC moved its administrative headquarter to Mar Mikhael railway station. Over the years Bechara and his fellow dedicated railroad workers continued their daily rotations at Mar Mihkael, where they strived to restore and repair parts of the damaged railways and to sustain its operations. The war went on, but the train kept on running despite an increasingly intermittent and scarce service through the 1980s. Despite the end of the Lebanese civil war in the early 1990’s, the railways were gradually silenced with illegal construction, severe damage to the tracks and a total absence of political decision making. According to Bechara, the very last train took the journey from Chekka cement works to Beirut in 1997. From that day on, Bechara and the remaining railroad workers have become the guardians of the railways and the keepers of their secrets. Today, Bechara also remembers the numerous nights spent in the bunker of Mar Mikhael, as he sheltered there amongst locomotives with other railroad workers waiting for a truce. In recent years, I have taken those wishing to listen to railway stories with me to Mar Mikhael. Every time Bechara would proudly point at a photograph of the Peace Train that hangs on his office wall since 1991. That day in October 1991, to mark the end the civil war, the OCFTC had repaired the coastal railway between Beirut and Jbeil. For Bechara and his peers at the OCFTC, this marked the realization of a dream, a dream that they had long wished for: that of witnessing the rebirth of the railway network through Lebanon and the region. Sadly, their dream was short lived. The Peace Train took a single journey and rail transport infrastructure was not integrated in national reconstruction and economic policies of the 1990s in Lebanon.
A Walk in Mar Mikhael The railways later witnessed the onset of the Lebanon’s civil war in the mid-seventies local newspaper archives offer a detailed chronology that portrays severe sabotaging of the railways during the 1970s. In 1975, the
Today, green prevails in the Mar Mikhael station. Suspended in time and pending rebirth, railway stations across Lebanon have progressed into
wild gardens and their rail yards into natural green corridors. Bechara is the perfect guide to that hidden landscape. The walk starts at the former ticket hall building where he points to the station clock, still in perfect working condition today. It is a 1929 design by Paul Garnier, the renowned French clock and watchmaker specialising in railway clock making. He also takes the visitor inside the different railway station buildings, and teaches railway terminology to whoever wishes to learn. He explains that the travellers’ hall was constructed in 1889, based on drawings designed by the Paris Lyon Railway Company (Service de la Construction de la Companie des Chemins de Fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée). Every once and a while he interrupts his technical description and tells a few anecdotes that took place in the station’s café. As the walk progresses and the visitor goes past the bullet-speckled steam locomotives, a romantic ruin unveils: A water-cooling crane, foundations of a railway turntable, now wildlife habitat perhaps, a pile of abandoned steel rail and concrete sleepers, carcasses – all debris of the past life of this magical place. Last winter I took a stroll in the train station neighbourhood. I followed the rusted railway bridge off Armenia Street, the main artery of gentrified Mar Mikhael today, and continued along the railway corridor. I walked through shrubs into a residential area following the narrow gauge track going slightly uphill. Through the years, construction had mushroomed downhill and uphill and the railway, disappearing and reappearing into the ground, had become a sort of waste dump for neighbouring houses. I kept going until I hit a highway and a desolate scene: the end of the railway, shattered and suspended in the void, allowing for the rapid way construction. That same day, I bypassed the 400-meter-long concrete wall that surrounds the station site, and as it was getting late I decided to drop by Bechara to say hello. By the time I arrived on Ibrahim Pacha street, where the station entrance is located, I saw him putting on his beret hat and getting into his car. It was the last time I saw Bechara in Mar Mikhael before he retired. To find him, I followed the course of the Beirut – Damascus railway and went asking for him in the neighbourhood of the former Hadath station. In the 1970s during the civil war, Bechara was asked to move his personal residence to the Hadath station to protect it from vandalism. Ever since, he
drinks his morning coffee looking upon the rail tracks. The day Bechara retired was a sad day. He drove his car and spent weeks in his native village in Jezzine. He did not want to speak to anyone for a long while. Today Bechara longs for the train station. He still drops by once a week to find silence and peace amongst its rusting locomotives. When I think of him, I hear those words: “railways run in my veins”, to him, being a railway worker was and still remains a way of life.
A Railway to Go Where? Bechara wonders how a railway system simply can cease to exist, and what are the reasons behind the oblivious response of stakeholders? To him, the answer to these questions is straightforward: it’s a matter of land ownership. The OCFTC owns 401 kilometres and about eighty millions square meters of railway in Lebanon, he says. He is aware that people wonder why the OCFTC still exists today. They inquire about the daily tasks of the remaining forty railroad workers – absurd situation, he agrees – personnel for a railway system that is now defunct. There has not been any legislation by the Ministry of Transport to terminate the operation of the railway or to dissociate the railway authority. Bechara says that in the advent of that, this could create land property issues, since the heirs of those from whom the land was expropriated to construct the railway network in the 1800 would be able to claim back the ownership of the land. With the laissez-faire approach and corrupt institutions, railway land has been developed illegally, starting the late 1970s and especially along Lebanon’s coastal line. Concrete sleepers and metal works have been pulled out and some locomotives have been sold on the black markets. Bechara says that throughout the years, the OCFTC has filed around 2,300 legal complaints against owners of those developments who have infringed railway property, but that the status of those complaints remains ever pending. There are pages and pages of research work investigating the state of the railway and proposals to rehabilitate the network. All aspects have been studied and carefully documented repetitively over the span of the last 30 years – during the 1980s, 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. We hear of a plan here, an idea there, a line for freight, another for sightseeing.
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Bechara believes that rehabilitating a section of the railway is not the solution; it is not what he has been striving for and dreaming about for the last 30 years. It’s a simple equation. To him, the railway story is almost a metaphor; it is a mere reflection of the confused identity and status of Lebanon. He asks: “A railway to go where?” From the Mar Mikhael train station today it is unimaginable to go anywhere in the city, let alone to cross any border. There have been forbidden landscapes to the south for a long time, and also the North has recently become challenging. Bechara is certain that with tensed affairs with neighbouring countries, a railway in Lebanon cannot be envisioned. Like many, he believes that an inter-Arab, inter-Middle Eastern railway would be a sign of peace, diplomacy and economic growth. Today in 2012, Bechara is yet to serve as president of the Railway Workers Union for another year. In the 1960s when he started working, the union had 3,000 members; today there are barely 40 members who simply guard the old sites, attend to administrative tasks and await a meager retirement pension. Bechara often wonders what will happen to the railways when the remaining railroad workers retire, as the OCFTC has stopped recruiting new employees. Who will then guard railway heritage? Can it be left to decay in oblivion just like that? Derelict railway stations across Lebanon bear exceptional industrial and architectural heritage, and with time, they have evolved into wildlife habitats and grazing sites as ecological network take form in the absence of human activity. City planners and landscape architects envision those sites evolving into temporary public spaces: museum-parks. Meanwhile, Bechara remains the guardian of the railways. He will forever strive to keep its memory alive. Today, he is working on a publication and a documentary film – while he waits, like his fellow railroad workers and fellow citizens, for a modern railway system. Reader, should you want to look for the hidden landscapes imprinted on Beirut’s edges, go speak to him. He will give you the right cues to find the railways.
References 1. Al Mashriq-the Levant-Lebanon and the Middle East, The Railways in Lebanon, their History and Present State, almashriq.hiof.no, accessed 2011. 2. Middle East Railways by Hugh Hughes (1981) in The Continental Railway Circle 4. MIDDLE EAST FORCES [pp. 45-48] in Al Mashriq,almashriq.hiof.no/lebanon/300/380/385/railways/ resources/middleeast/index.html, accessed 2011. 3. Section Libanaise de l’Association Francaise des Amis des Chemin de Fer,www.afacliban. org/AFAC-LIBAN/Accueil.html, accessed 2011. 3. Sarah Lily Yassine conversations with Mr. Bechara Hanna Assi, RailRoad Workers Union President 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 5. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Fact Book, ww.cia.gov/library/publications/theworld-factbook, accessed 2012
Tripoli’s Sleeping Beauty Published on Mashallah News http://mashallahnews.com/?p=5730
11-02-2011 Driving along the railway Sunday June 26, 2011. We left the city quite early and waved at Mar Mikhael’s rail yards, as we were approaching Beirut’s northern highway. Nada, who grew up in Tripoli, suggested we drive along the coastal road bordering what remains from the railway that once connected Beirut to Tripoli. I am not quite sure how an interest develops, but I am certain that it grows with a person. Trains have always fascinated me: the feeling of a travelling landscape, and looking through the window while the train transports me from where I am to where I want to be. When I was barely three, I went on a trip from Aswan to Alexandria with my parents, and the only memory that stayed with me is that of sleeping on the train. Driving to Tripoli, I noticed that my travel companion was in a reverie of her own. I didn’t wish to intrude, but when we reached the Kalamoun area, her sense of smell awaked and she remembered orange blossom fields during springtime. She recalled that students from the Kalamoun ranked amongst the first in the Baccalaureate exams, and that they would study along the rail tracks on their way to school. We laughed and wondered if studying along railways was related to their exceptional academic performance. For our first stop, we decided to indulge ourselves with sweets. It was lunchtime, but still, how could we have resisted cheese knafeh and Znoud el Sit. After lunch we were persuaded by relatives to have ice cream at the Mina, Tripoli’s harbour. Mahmoud, who is 10 years old, looked perplexed and asked: ‘But why are you going to visit an old train station that doesn’t work?’ I explained to him that Tripoli’s train station is celebrating its one hundred anniversary this year (it was built in 1911) and that it has a group of friends. Indeed, the Friends of Tripoli Railway Station had strived to open the train station to the public for the first time since the late 1970s, and had organised guided walks and an outdoor concert on June 25 and 26. Arriving at the train station, I imagined travelers in the 1930s waiting at the entrance to get on board, when we were requested to wait in the exact same area for the start of the walking tour. Nada interrupted my daydreaming, and told me she had a friend at school that lived in one of the houses inside the train station. A lady waiting for
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the beginning of the tour added: ‘Aren’t you talking about May? Her father worked for the railway authority at the time’. We exchanged numbers and the lady promised to put us in touch with May. We heard a whistle and our guide, a volunteer from the Friends of Tripoli Railway Station, invited us into the station. We crossed from one side of the rail tracks to the other and our journey through time began.
What happened? Towards the end of 19th century, in 1891, a French company obtained a concession from the Ottoman Empire to build the Beirut-Damascus railway. Beirut-Rayak, the first railway line in the Middle East began operating on August 3 1895, and was managed by the DHP Damascus-Hama and Extensions Company (Damas-Hama et Prolongements). The story was slightly different for Tripoli’s railway station. Local entrepreneurs initiated the project through a joint venture. They established an anonymous company to fund the railway construction works on the Tripoli-Homs branch, which began operating in 1911. In the 1930’s, the Taurus Express, a night train left Istanbul once a week, stopping in Syria’s Aleppo and terminating in Tripoli. Its proximity to the harbour, a strategic choice for the railway station, contributed to the area’s economic growth. Goods arriving at Tripoli’s port were distributed via the railway. Interrupting his narration, our guide pointed out to two German locomotives. The G7 had been designed in 1895, and the G8 either in 1901 or in 1906. According to his sources, both feature in the Treaty of Versailles (signed on July 28, 1919) as reparations owed by the Ottomans to the French. He added that in 1917, during the course of the First World War, Jamal Pasha had ordered the removal of parts of the railway between Tripoli and Homs to complete works on the Damascus-Baghdad branch due to its strategic military importance. But, in 1919, the DHP had regained ownership of the railways and restored the Tripoli-Homs line, which resumed normal service in 1921. British forces in Palestine completed the Beirut-Haifa branch in 1942, and therefore Beirut-Tripoli followed on December 18th of that same year. After World War Two, the cement trade flourished and the railway traffic was ex-
tensive between Chekka and Beirut, ensuring the distribution of cement. After independence, Lebanon bought the railways within its borders, and in 1961 the Lebanese state railway company was established (CEL, Chemin de Fer de l’Etat Libanais). During the 1960s, train journeys became very time consuming in comparison to those done by cars and buses, which had become more popular. Weekend excursionists often were the sole passengers on board the trains. The railway system no longer catered for modern travel needs in a country with expanding urban sprawl.
The railways witnessed the onset of civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990), and the changing geopolitical considerations in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prevented the development of a regional railway system. Trains were seldom target of bomb attacks, but despite common belief, the last train in Lebanon ran between Chekka and Beirut in 1997. Towards 1976, the Syrian military established a base at Tripoli’s train station. Its railways were stolen and sold in the informal market, bullets were fired into its steam locomotives, and its buildings ravaged. And ever since, like the sleeping beauty, the train station delved into a deep sleep. Shrubs coiled around its rusting machinery perhaps to protect it from the decay of time. Birds became its sole companions.
Our walk had started at the travellers’ rest house. It took us inside trains, through a repair workshop, up in the sky looking at the water tower crane, and almost deep into the foundations of a railway turntable, a device for turning railroad rolling stock. We stumbled on a pile of abandoned steel rails and concrete sleepers below a Ficus tree, under which children had gathered for a drawing session. I stood there, thinking that Tripoli’s railway station had become an open public space over a weekend in July. This was very similar to themuseum park concept that I had envisioned for Mar Mikhael railway station in Beirut. If this was possible for a day or two, then surely there was hope! I thought of the Peace Train that was driven by the enthusiastic Railway Authority employees in October 1991 between Chekaa and Beirut. I remembered Mr Assi, the head of the railroad workers syndicate, saying that the train whistle was symbol of peace.
Wishes for the future
As our day was drawing to an end, we waved goodbye to the train station and to its friends, hoping to come back soon and hear a real train whistle. Still many questions were lingering in my mind. How can a railway system simply stop, just like that, without legislation? Will the young Mahmoud ever ride a train in Lebanon, fulfilling the dream of Mr Assi? What is the fate of 401 kilometres of railways in Lebanon? Will clientism remain the status quo? Will Lebanon’s corrupt governance system continue to allow the construction of beach resorts on the railways?
The Friends of Tripoli Railway Station is a non-governmental, not-for-profit volunteer lobbying group attempting to preserve Tripoli’s train station. They believe that the station should be classified as national heritage by the Ministry of Culture to protect and salvage its history.
These are questions that I shall keep on asking. We returned to Beirut, and Nada’s phone rang; it was May, the girl who lived in the train station. They agreed to meet, and I said I’d join them of course, to listen to their stories and keep the memory of the train station alive.
Our guide left us reflect on the thought, but we decided to sneak into another group, thinking that we may perhaps gather some extra information regarding the railways, and indeed we met the group’s coordinator. He told us that back in 2002, the Ministry of Transport and Public Works had planned to rehabilitate the Tripoli-Abboudieh-Homs branch but that the political tensions between Lebanon and Syria prevented the completion of the project.
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TERMINUS Featured in Portal 9 Journal: Autumn 2012 Stories and Critical Writing About The City The Imagined: Issue 1 'Imagined Engravings in The City' - ' Episodes' p. 152 Edited By James Westcott http://portal9journal.org/
Tripoli, Lebanon While shrubs coil around the rusting locomotives and the crumbling shell of Tripoli’s station, About Raed of Lebanon’s Railway Office guards the moribund site. Only birds come every day. Built in 1911, the Tripoli-Homs line transported corn, cattle, and later petrol to Syria, with just one carriage reserved for passengers. By the 1930’s the Taurus Express night train arrived in Tripoli once a week from Istanbul, but by the 1970’s cars and trucks had usurped the railway. During the civil war, the station was taken over by the Syrian army, shelled, and ruined. Today G7 and G8 German locomotives, over one-hundred years old, stand speckled with bullet holes. In 2005, The Friends of Tripoli Railway Station formed to try to rehabilitate the romantic ruin. There are dreams of a museum, a wilderness garden, a café. Meanwhile, the railway itself may see some kind of use again: funding has been secured to restore parts of the line for freight transport to the Syrian border at Abboudiyeh, and new laws promise a Tripoli Special Economic Zone, which may encompass the station. Last summer, the public was allowed to access the station for the first time since 1975 to celebrate its one-hundred-year anniversary. Today the station remains quietly posed, refusing to be left alone again.
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