Beirut’s Historic Hamra Street No Longer Cultural Epicenter
Once an epicenter for Arab and Lebanese intellectuals, Beirut’s famous Hamra Street has in recent decades been transformed by consumption-oriented establishments.
A few years back, a group of Beiruti intellectuals from different sects and areas gathered in Modka Cafe on Hamra Street to protest the owner’s decision to close the cafe due to financial hardship. They felt the decision would be harmful to the culture and memory of the place, which had served as a venue for major cultural events. They even called on the Lebanese Ministry of Culture to save the cafe. Eventually Modka was shut down, and the trend continued. Other cafes as culturally valuable as Modka shuttered their doors as well.
Beirut’s Champs-Élysées
Modka Cafe opened in the 1960s, across the street from Wimpy Cafe, which has since closed for the same reason as Modka. Not far away, at the beginning of Hamra Street, stands the Horseshoe Cafe. It too attracted Arab intellectuals and opposition leaders spending years in exile in Beirut. Akram al-Hawrani was among those who frequented the establishment, as did many other Arab figures.
Over the course of 30 years, from 1960 until 1990, the cafes of Hamra Street became home to Lebanese and Arab journalists, politicians and artists, along with the intellectuals. In the aftermath of 1967, the year that witnessed the defeat of the Arab regimes at the hands of the Israeli military, Hamra's cafes were celebrated as clandestine "back rooms," in which the founding statements of Arab opposition parties were drafted and plans for coups d’état devised. When the offices of An-Nahar, considered the first liberal newspaper in the Arab world, moved to Hamra Street, the political and cultural character of the street was further elevated. Michel Abou Jaoude, a well-known An-Nahar columnist, later revealed that Yasser Arafat and his companions had gathered in his office during delicate periods in Fatah's history.
