Maabar is a 12-part podcast series on the Lebanese Civil War, cutting across two genres – Oral History and Documentary – it dives into the layers of what was experienced, what is remembered and what therefore still exists. Following no particular chronology, the podcast traces themes and shared experiences, as by removing time and space, we have room to open a different conversation about the war. One not preoccupied with what our names might be, where we are from, or who we are with, but what we have lived together, and what it means for us today. Maabar - a symbol of war for many, and for us, the conviction that we find ourselves at a crosspoint, where we need to decide if we want to cross-over into a new chapter. It’s time to talk, and time to listen. Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD. For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credits معبر هوي بودكاست من ١٢ أجزاء عن الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية، بيتضمّن تاريخ محكي و وثائقي. بفوت بالعمق بالتجارب الي عاشوا الناس، الي بيتذكروا و بعدا موجودي. بلا ولا اي تسلسل، البودكاست بيرسم و بيخبر تجارب الناس. واذا شلنا الزمان والمكان، بينفتح مجال لحديث مختلف عن الحرب. بلا ما نهتم ب شو اسامينا، او من وين جايين او مع مين، بس شو عشنا سوا وشو بيعنيلنا اليوم هيدا الشي. المعبر، رمز الحرب لكتير ناس، و بالنسبي لإلنا، الأناعة انو وصلنا للتقاطع وين لازم نقرر اذا بدنا نبلّش صفحة جديدة. صار وقت نحكي ووقت نسمع. معبر من إنتاج وإعداد انطوني الطويل وسيدريك قيّم، بالشراكة مع forumZFD. للحصول على قائمة الشكر الكاملة ، زوروا موقعنا على www.maabarpodcast.com/credits
12. Maabar | معبر
What happens when war ends? How do you pick up your life, plan for the next day, the next week, the next month? What role do you play when your last fifteen years were all-encompassingly defined by the context of war? Who are you now? How do you make sense of all that is lost, all those lives, all those faces framed in families' living rooms regardless of where they might be from? And how do you make sense of all that is left; the grief, the fear, and the person living next door: once friend, then perpetrator, now neighbour again.
What happens when war ends? Or does war ever end? How do you move on? How do you bear the injustice, chaos, and destruction? Do you bury them deep inside, as if they never happened, although you know they are inevitably bound to resurface?
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credits
شو بصير بس تخلص الحرب؟ كيف بتستعيد حي
21/07/2022 • 25 minutes 7 seconds
11. One After The Other | واحد ورا الثاني
Disclaimer:
This episode contains heavy language and strong depictions of violence that may be triggering to some. Please be advised.
When all is said and done, war is ugly. War kills, maims, and destroys life. Its pain lives on buried inside, in the hearts, minds, and souls of those it afflicts;
escaping death, not getting killed, becomes unbearable, cursed by the despair of surviving, of living with surviving and carrying grief so deeply that it turns you inside out; the impossibility of life moving forward, is betrayed by the brutal and inexorable march of time, and life inevitably moving forward.
War is not full of tragedies; war is tragedy. These are but a few stories telling us how it plays out, in its cruel and unrelenting dimensions, in vivid detail that conjures up imagery difficult for most to swallow. We owe it to the tellers of these stories, and to the many more whose stories remain untold, not to shut our eyes and cover our ears, but see, listen, and imagine war for
15/07/2022 • 37 minutes
10. Folie | جنون
How do you live a life shaped by sporadic destruction and fatal randomness? What happens when you adapt, start living instead of only surviving? When the absurdity of war becomes your new normal, sometimes even without you realizing it, something shifts. When instead of stars, you trace exploding bombs in the night sky, or grow fond of the sound of shelling, something has changed. The stories of people adapting, not only to live, but for a different form of survival, without much ability to question as to whether what they are adapting to is liveable to begin with.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credits
كيف بتعيش حياة مكوّنة من دمار متقطّع و عشوائية قاتلة؟ شو بصير وقت بتتكيف وبت بلّش تعيش بدل ما بس تضلّ على قيد الحياة؟ وقت تصير عبثية الحرب هي طبيعتك الجديدة ، احيانًا حتى بلا ما تنتبه ، بيتغير شي. وقت بالليل بتتفرّج ع القنابل المتفجرة بالسماء بدل ا
07/07/2022 • 41 minutes 18 seconds
09. Survival | البقاء
How do you survive a war? How do you cope with violence surrounding you from all sides? What if you find yourself in front of the barrel of the gun, the target itself? Or what if you find yourself aiming your gun, being the one pulling the trigger? What happens if that line between life and death becomes narrower and narrower? How many times can you walk that line, escape death without losing something else?
They say wars are fought to be won, but for most, wars are about surviving. These are stories of those who lived, those who managed to survive, in one way or another, the horrors of battle, the all too close brushes with death. While they did live to tell, their stories are stories of loss, and the loss it took them to survive.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credits
كيف بتنجو من الحرب؟ كيف بتتعامل مع العنف المحيط فيك من جميع الجهات؟ شو بتع
29/06/2022 • 44 minutes 57 seconds
08. Branch 235 | فرع ٢٣٥
“People either live or die...but disappear?”
When your loved ones leave the house one day or are taken right in front of your eyes not knowing whether they'll return or not, how does one cope? The panic of trying to find traces of where they might be, whom to call to get them back, trying not to imagine what they must be going through, all the while hoping against hope that they'll walk through the door.
Some live to tell us what happened when they were kidnapped; they return, not unscathed, but they return. Others return in death, and we are left with anger and hurt and maybe the solace of grief. And then there are those who are kidnapped and never return, 17,000 fates unknown until today.
Some of the most tragic stories a war tells are those we never hear, those that we never learn; these are the stories of those that disappeared.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credit
28/06/2022 • 39 minutes 17 seconds
07. Bow or Leave | يا برضخ، يا بفلّ
When we hear about war, we think of battles and gunfire. But war never remains on the frontlines. It spills over into all aspects of every day life. So how do you deal with the precariousness of the situation? When militias start rounding people up in the streets; possibly being snatched up on the way to see friends; or being beaten up, just because a group of guys, high on the violence of the night, happen to pass by your Sunday family lunch? The theatre of war is not only enacted on the frontlines, but it is a part of everyday life, with weapons’ predominance and control, violence’s sporadic eruptions, an omnipresent reminder that your fate is in the hands of those in power.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credits
لمّا نسمع عن الحرب، منفكّر بالمعارك وإطلاق النار. بس الحرب ولا مرّة بتبقى على الخطوط الأمامية. بتمتدّ على كلّ جوانب الحياة اليومي
09/06/2022 • 28 minutes 2 seconds
06. Folding Stock | أخمص حديدي
War is an abstract concept until the moment your neighbours start amassing weapons and sandbagging their buildings and checkpoints line the streets. Tensions are high, divides are deep and anxieties spread far across. Clashes are no longer isolated incidents. Strategies come up on how to best defend your territory against the enemy - who was the enemy again? The fear of the other sucks you further in. How do you react to a war slowly tightening its noose, strangling our lives? What were our parents thinking? What made them decide between fleeing to safety or joining the fight? Many found themselves at the frontline of a choice and of a conflict about what might or might not be right, all the while not quite sure why their differences gave birth to a war, and knowing even less about exactly what it would take to stop the fight.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarp
02/06/2022 • 25 minutes 44 seconds
05. Where from, where to? | من وين, لوين؟
When regions are cut off from one another, and checkpoints and snipers slice the country into hundreds of little pieces, how do you get from one place to another? How do you get to work, see your family, go about your life? What if, after dinner, you get a craving for ice cream from that one shop that is three checkpoints and two sniper crossings away? How do you keep going and at what cost? How do you manoeuvre through threats of falling into the wrong hands, being in the wrong place at the wrong time; the possibility that anything could happen at a checkpoint, all depending on your name and the name of the person stopping you. Checkpoints marked lines of political conflict. But for many people, life carried on through and beyond these lines. While some were oblivious to the danger and others well aware, their daily crossings back and forth into each other’s territories blurred the lines between where one side ended and the other began.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by
26/05/2022 • 31 minutes 18 seconds
04. Citizen Band | سيتيزن باند
With telephone lines down, roads blocked and snipers monitoring all movement, how did our parents stay in touch -- with friends, family and each other? How did they update and reassure each other about the situation and their whereabouts? For many, the walkie talkie was the only means of communication, a thread people clung on to for sanity through the long hours of the night. Voices without faces, without names, people found each other, sometimes without knowing who was on the other end. They bantered, debated, and duelled through slam poetry, rap battles and cursing tournaments, out of public earshot, beyond the frontlines of the fighting - another reality on a different wave length. In the midst of war, the walkie talkie was a vital lifeline of human connectivity, and sometimes even turned enemies into friends.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/cr
19/05/2022 • 26 minutes 54 seconds
03. A Fragrant Welcome | تحية عطرة
All day people are gathered in front of the radio, the jingle starts, the news comes on. The relief to finally have news of what is happening today.
There are also people gathered behind the radio, living for the news, trying not do die while making the news. The relief to manage to air one more flash, after the all the absurdity of making it happen.
The radio, the TV, the news, a lifeline to the next moment, a frontline seat on the battlefield. Each station a different frequency, a different angle, on and off the air.
And each day, the same question: what will the news hold tomorrow and what if tomorrow, the airways remain silent?
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credit
كل النهار، كانو الناس يتجمّعو حول الراديو، بتبلّش الدقّة و بتبلّش النشرة. واخيراً رح يرتاح بالهن بس يسمعو اخبار مستجدّات اليوم
و كمان كان في ناس يتجمعو بالراديو، عايشين للأخبار، ع
12/05/2022 • 22 minutes 45 seconds
02. Mère Gabrielle | مير غبريال
“Can the fighting start already so school can close?”
For children, school is meant to serve as a safe space, like a second home, where they go to learn, play and nurture friendships. A space that builds towards their future.
But war changes everything.
What was once a safe space, can no longer protect them. With education disrupted and their playgrounds destroyed, what does it mean to be a student in times of war? To have chaos and disorder crossover inside the boundaries of your own school? To see your friends carrying guns and grenades to class? To have your exam postponed many times over because of fighting?
War forces people to improvise, to adapt quickly, and for these children, sometimes that meant dropping out of school and joining the fighting.
Disclaimer: The story told from 17:10 to 17:58 did in fact take place in 2008 and has been included by mistake, though it does testify to the repeating cycle of violence.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by An
12/05/2022 • 24 minutes 41 seconds
01. Cops & Robbers | عسكر وحرامية
"A child hears about death and destruction, of course that instills fear”.
How does a child understand war? How do they comprehend the gravity of the situation? From the deafening sounds of bombs and bullets to the sight of someone pulling a gun on your father at a checkpoint.
At an age where children are supposed to learn and play, our parents were children raised in a reality of violence and destruction.
Imagine the toll this must have had on their lives, on how they raised us? What they taught us about life, about one another?
But in the worst of times, between the battles, the bombings and the shelters, in a life they were not meant to live, moments of normalcy always managed to creep in, where children played, laughed and some even fell in love.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credits
“ ولد عم بيسمع قتل ودمار, أكيد بيخلق في خوف”
كيف
05/05/2022 • 27 minutes 7 seconds
Prologue | مقدمة
Maabar is a 12-part podcast series on the Lebanese Civil War, cutting across two genres – Oral History and Documentary – it dives into the layers of what was experienced, what is remembered and what therefore still exists.
Following no particular chronology, the podcast traces themes and shared experiences, as by removing time and space, we have room to open a different conversation about the war.
One not preoccupied with what our names might be, where we are from, or who we are with, but what we have lived together, and what it means for us today.
Maabar - a symbol of war for many, and for us, the conviction that we find ourselves at a crosspoint, where we need to decide if we want to cross-over into a new chapter.
It’s time to talk, and time to listen.
Maabar is a podcast created & produced by Anthony Tawil and Cedric Kayem, in partnership with forumZFD.
For the full list of credits, visit www.maabarpodcast.com/credits
معبر هوي بودكاست من ١٢ أجزاء عن الحرب الأهل
05/05/2022 • 1 minute 44 seconds
Maabar - معبر | A Podcast Series on the Lebanese Civil War - Season Trailer
Tapping into the memory of a country, Maabar is a podcast series retracing the Lebanese Civil War through the memories and stories of the people who lived it.
1st Episode airs on May 5, 2022.
