Rooster, Peacock, Fa3lan
American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon 2006
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Rooster 1943, Peacock 2005 and Fa3lan (nonsensical word that rhymes
with the Arabic pronunciation of Lebanon) is my undergraduate thesis project on the highly debated stories of Lebanese History. I authored, illustrated, designed, and created the typography and calligraphy for this five-part publication.
In this piece, I set out by admitting that, as Lebanese, our inability to agree on a common shared history of the past will always hinder any plans we make for our future. Moreover, and in a lighter tone, I suggest that history will always exist differently in the recounts of its different storytellers. Taking the role of the storyteller, I wrote a fictive fable that allowed the coexistence of the different stories of Lebanon’s Independence since Independence from France in 1947 until the assassination of Rafik Hariri in 2005.
++Extract
Enter
Once upon a time in a far away land; thus, every tale begins in an undefined time and place. And as is the case in undefined times and places, the possibilities are endless. This tale was born under the framework of “once upon a time in a far away land” making it difficult to trace the starting point, or points to be more precise. Without introductions we find ourselves in a birds and poultry house, and unlike any other house for birds it was a factory that housed a family of thousands of birds and poultry. Because the specifications of the place were original the birds' names became numerous starting from the number 1000 to 3000.
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