Description

By (author) Baun, Dylan

Short /annotation:
The story of Imad Nuwayhid, a Lebanese student, communist, traveller, hotel employee, and “martyr” of the Lebanese Civil War, offering a global microhistory of this era of radical youth politics and culture, as well as how it is remembered today

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Imad Yusuf Nuwayhid was born in 1944 in the Lebanese village of Ras al-Matn. He came of age in the 1960s, splitting time between Beirut and Europe. And he died in 1975, the start of the Lebanese Civil War.

But who was Imad Nuwayhid? Was he a leftist intellectual? A self-interested hotel worker? A fighter dedicated to Palestinian liberation? A tragic symbol of what happened to those caught in the crosshairs during the war? Through archival and oral history, Beirut Radical finds that Imad was none of these things alone, but all of them together.

Beirut Radical takes up Imad Nuwayhid as a global microhistory—a window into the global sixties, the war, and its aftermath. Baun argues that Imad’s beliefs and actions, crystalized during two tumultuous decades of the Cold War, signal a young generation of what he terms “practical radicals.” While much more is known about their politics and support for left-wing ideologies, Imad’s life highlights how they pursued them, equally, alongside their career aspirations. Imad’s death in the war, then, shows the twisting path by which some young leftists ceded their autonomy to liberation struggles. Lastly, Beirut Radical follows Imad’s afterlife, examining how multiple actors to Lebanon’s war, some in concert (party and family members), some in resistance (some family), claim individuals and their memory, during and beyond wartime. More than anything perhaps, Beirut Radical is a meditation on the intimate, the personal, the ethics, and the micro-level of history.

Table of contents:

INTRODUCTION: A Man, A Martyr, and Claiming Him
First Encounters
The War, the Left, the Sixties, and Imad
The Promise and Perils of Global Microhistory

CHAPTER 1: Village, City, and American Empire in Lebanon

From Snobar to Steel Town
Being a Kid in Cold War Lebanon
The United States and Hotel Phoenicia Come to Beirut
Modernization and Dependency

CHAPTER 2: Coming of Age Abroad
The Family Archive
First Impressions of Sixties Europe
Foreigners and West Germany
The Shock of ’67
Coming Home

CHAPTER 3: Radical Translations, Practical Decisions
Meeting the Comrades
Imad Meets Leon, Parisian and Beiruti Style
Translating European Anti-Zionism
Back to Studies, Back to Europe
Changing Beliefs in a Similar Profession

CHAPTER 4: Looking and Fighting for a Home in the Lebanese Left
Subject: About Imad Nuwayhed
Movements, Students, and Unions in ’70s Lebanon
The Rupture of ’72-3
Joining the Stronger, non-Sectarian Party
The Battle of Qantari

CHAPTER 5: Remembering, Forgetting, and Mobilizing a Martyr
Do They Look Alike?
The Funeral
The Party
The Comrades
The Family

CHAPTER 6: The Politics of Memorization in Post-war Lebanon
Googling Imad in Beirut
Cleaning the Slate
Nostalgia for the Left
The Party Strikes Back
Coming to Terms

Review quote:
The book tells the life story of a little-known Druze leftist who fought and died in the Lebanese Civil War. As a global microhistory, it allows us to appreciate a number of important historical trends in the third quarter of the twentieth century, including the rise of American empire; the emergence of pan-Arab, pro-Palestinian, left-wing activism; and a politics of memorializing “martyrs” that has important resonance in Lebanon today.

Review quote:

“Beirut Ra