Storytellers create intimate space in bustling Beirut

Once a month, Ghada Seifeddine, a linguistics graduate student at the American University of Beirut, forgets about her shyness and takes the stage at Dar Bistro cafe in Beirut to tell personal life experiences. The best-received story she has shared was the one about becoming a woman — the day she first wore a traditional hijab — and her recent decision to wear something she feels more comfortable with, a turban. “I was surrounded by women who took off their hijab after wearing it for a long time. So I started thinking about how it relates to my identity,” she says.

Seifeddine’s performances are part of a spoken-word event in which short stories, in both English and Arabic and usually centering on a theme, are told live by the people who experienced them, reviving the old Arab tradition of storytelling.

According to Lebanon Traveler Magazine, storytelling has been slowly becoming a common evening activity in Beirut. The trend started when Dima Matta, a Beirut-based English-language university lecturer and storyteller, reintroduced the art form in 2014 through a storytelling group called “Cliffhangers." “We are a region known for its oral histories, the ‘hakawati’ tradition. Somehow, this heritage faded, and I really wanted to contribute to bringing it back,” Matta tells Al-Monitor.

Since then, similar initiatives spread around the capital, involving poetry recitals, creative writing and improvised theater. The one in which Seifeddine partcipates is a narrative oral storytelling initiative called “Hakaya” (Arabic for “Story”). The community was created in the spring of 2016 by four Beirut residents with a passion for spoken word. “We all felt that there were so many stories of everyday life from this region that are worth sharing in nontraditional ways,” explains co-founder Dana Ballout.