[URBAN NOTE] "The scars of war on Lebanon's Holiday Inn"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera's India Stoughton notes provocative graffiti of an abandoned hotel in Beirut. I think it good provocative, myself, but others' mileage may vary.

In the early hours of the morning, Lebanese artist Jad El Khoury, who goes by the name Potato Nose, entered the carcass of Beirut's abandoned Holiday Inn through the military base that now occupies the ground floor.

He climbed the 26 flights of narrow service stairs, then descended down the side of the building on ropes. Over the course of the next two hours, he painted a series of cartoonish, blue-and-white creatures on the building's facade, composing them around the bullet holes and craters caused decades ago by shelling.

When Beirut residents awoke to discover Khoury's artwork last month, they responded passionately, with many expressing anger at his alteration of the landmark building.

"It was really surprising," Khoury, 27, told Al Jazeera. "But I understand that many people will see it like I am doodling over history, which is not the case. I opened up a debate that was already there - should we fix all the scars of the war, or should we keep them?"


For 40 years, the skeletal remains of the Holiday Inn have towered over central Beirut, an ever-present reminder of Lebanon's devastating 1975-1990 civil war. A symbol of cosmopolitan prewar Beirut, the derelict, shell-scarred building now stands incongruously beside the glitzy downtown.