The Guardian

‘I love this country and this is not the way they will shut me up’

ALINE KAMAKIAN Chef-restaurateur

Aline Kamakian is the chef-owner of Mayrig, an Armenian restaurant she has spent 20 years building into a Beirut institution, with branches around the Middle East. Today, the restaurant is buzzing with NGO workers who flock there to eat mante dumplings and wild-cherry kebabs in homely surroundings (mayrig means “little mother” in Armenian).

The restaurant is just a few hundred metres from Beirut’s port, and when the blast struck, Kamakian was in the office with her management team. “It was like a huge earthquake, like something sucking you in and then blowing you up,” she says.

None of her team was killed, but many were badly injured. Kamakian found her financial controller under the photocopier. “His left eye was not there and blood was welling up, and he was trembling.” She did her best to stop the bleeding and helped to get him and others to hospital.

That evening she told her staff: “We are going to rebuild” – and against overwhelming odds she kept her promise. Not only did she get the restaurant back up and running but she managed to keep paying and supporting her team throughout with the help of NGOs and a friend’s crowdfunder in the US.

Kamakian, 54, also fed local people whose homes had been destroyed. Aided by US chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen and a team of volunteers, her chefs dished out thousands of hot meals a day for the following two and a half months. Cooking for others was a form of therapy, she says. “It helped us to stand back and be the ones changing things, instead of being the one who takes help.”

The problems persist – the electricity keeps cutting out and sourcing produce is a daily challenge – but Kamakian refuses to give up. Her brother in the US begged her to “please get out of this crazy country”. When she mentioned the 65 employees who depend on her, “he said: ‘They will find another job.’ I said: ‘Yes, they will, but I will never find something. I love this country and this is not the way they will shut me up.’”

‘It’s a place where we share ideas and brainstorm together on how to continue in this whole mess’

Actor, dancer, co-founder of Collectif Kahraba and the Hammana Artist House

“We see people arriving exhausted, tense and worried – and then we see them changing,” says Aurélien Zouki, who co-runs Hammana Artist House, an artists’ residency space in the tree-lined hills outside Beirut. For artists worn down by financial and social pressures, and those whose homes were destroyed by the 2020 blast, the space has provided a vital refuge in recent years. “Their faces are becoming more relieved,” says Zouki, “and they’re able to dig into their own research.”

The residency was created six years ago by Zouki’s performing arts company, Collectif Kahraba, which has been staging workshops, theatrical events and festivals around

Beirut for the past two decades.

Essentially, it is “a place where we dialogue, share ideas and brainstorm together on how to continue in this whole mess,” says Zouki. To keep it going, along with the collective’s other work, Zouki and his collaborators have to grapple with unreliable internet and electricity supplies, labyrinthine bureaucracy and dwindling funds. “Everyone is affected by heavy daily concerns that take a lot of mental space and don’t allow a lot of creativity to happen,” he says.

So why continue? Because even if the political situation seems hopeless, art remains as vital as ever. “It’s an alternative door that people can still reach independently of all the political games,” he says. Being human “is not just about destroying and running after profits or political agendas. We are also able to create amazing languages that touch the heart and soul.”

AURÉLIEN ZOUKI

Cover Story

en-gb

2023-06-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-04T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://guardian.pressreader.com/article/281715504005042

Guardian/Observer