This book offers a vivid, hybrid account of life during the Lebanese civil war, exploring how violence becomes normalized in everyday experience. Combining memoir and creative nonfiction, it presents a cinematic portrayal of Beirut’s transformation from a vibrant cultural center into a space of combat and division. Through personal vignettes, it examines how individuals adapt to violence and how social roles and moral frameworks shift under pressure. It also reflects on the intersections of culture, cinema, and conflict, providing a unique perspective for readers interested in film studies, Middle Eastern history, and the lived realities of war.

Adnan Madanat is a Jordanian filmmaker, screenwriter, and influential writer on cinema. After graduating from Moscow University in 1970, specializing in television and documentary film, he began his career in Syria, directing documentaries for the General Organization for Cinema, including The Suleymaniyah Lodge (1971) and Melody for Several Seasons (1973), and was an assistant director on Nabil Maleh’s The Leopard (1971). He later directed politically engaged documentaries for Palestinian cinema, including News from Tal al-Zaatar (1976) and Palestinian Visions (1977). In addition to his filmmaking, Madanat worked in television as a screenwriter and program developer, notably writing An Oriental Tale (1991), directed by Najdat Anzour. He is a major figure in Arab film criticism, authoring numerous books on cinema, including In Search of Cinema (1974) and Transformations of Contemporary Arab Cinema (2004). He has also published fiction and translated key texts on cinema and esthetics into Arabic.

Translator:

Fawwaz Salameh is an independent researcher and translator. He is the former manager of the Oral History Project of PalestineRemembered.com and has published essays about Palestinian refugees in the Rumman cultural magazine and the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Translation Editor:

Samirah Alkassim is a film scholar and co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Arab Cinema. Other translations she has edited include Knights of Cinema: The Story of the Palestine Film Unit by Khadijeh Habashneh and The Dream: Diary of a Film by Mohamed Malas.