This is a conversation with Lina Mounzer and Timour Azhari, repeat guests on the podcast, about the legacy of the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (1915–1918) and its legacy today.

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Topics Discussed + Resources:

What was the Great Famine? Causes and Context (Allies blockading from the sea, Ottomans barring grains, role of local elites like Michel Sursock)
Hunger and Hallucination: Tales from the Great Famine (Lina's talk)
An Abandoned Village Bears Witness to Lebanon’s Famines – Old and New (Timour's article)
Parallels to today
A Hungry Population Stops Thinking About Resistance: Class, Famine, and Lebanon's World War I Legacy
Is there an amnesia problem in Lebanon? Yes and No
The sense that history is repeating itself
Working as a way of coping
Thinking of leaving and of the established migration routes (belonging, identity, legitimacy etc)
The role of the diaspora beyond bringing aid
Across the Rickety Bridge by Farrah Berrou
Akram Khater's Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921
The gendered component of the famine
The Megaphone short doc
Maybe let's eat the rich
Coexistence as being between rioters and peaceful protesters
What counts as violence vs non-violence
What we've inherited from the Lebanese wars (1975-1990)

Recommended Books

Timour:

On the Road by Jack Kerouack
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Citizen Hariri by Hannes Bauman

Lina:

Beirut Nightmares by Ghada Samman
A Month in Siena & The Return by Hicham Matar
Yes, I am a destroyer by Mira Mattar