Bitter Bread

Refugees fleeing the Civil War in neighbouring Syria have settled temporarily in Beqaa Valley, Lebanon, living and working under the supervision of a local administrator from whom they rent their land, earn their wages, and to whom they are indebted. Their steel shacks and tarpaulin tents provide scant relief from the ravages of seasonal floods and the whims of a forbidding natural environment. Abbas Fahdel renders this world of fences, homesteads, sewers, and makeshift playgrounds on a canvas as epic as that of the American West. That is, as a struggle for the basics of a dignified and autonomous communal life.