Lamia Ziadé's 'Bye Bye Babylone' Recounts Lebanon's Civil War Through a Child's Eyes

Lamia Ziadé, known for her fabric relief paintings and erotic drawings of languid Oriental women in pop interiors, shifts focus in her book 'Bye Bye Babylone, Beyrouth 1975-1979'. The work combines text and drawings to narrate 'her' Lebanese war, beginning with a description of provisions and objects: sweets abundant in newly built supermarkets that would soon become scarce, alongside weapons like AK47s and Katyusha rockets whose sounds would dominate Beirut. Ziadé then introduces the conflict's protagonists as if casting a play: the Christian Phalangists of Pierre Gemayel, the Mourabitoun of Ibrahim Koleilat, the PFLP of George Habache, Al-Assifa of Yasser Arafat. The drawings, isolated on white pages like floating memories, adopt a childlike style with vibrant colors contrasting the horrors of the Battle of the Hotels, where factions fought over downtown palaces that had turned Lebanon into a new Côte d'Azur. Ziadé oscillates between collective history and family anecdotes, recalling anxiety during bombings, improbable detours to avoid snipers, and the saving grace of holidays in the countryside, which eventually becomes engulfed by war.