Dahieh is a term whose cyclical popularity in western media is directly linked to coverage of Israeli military campaigns on Beirut or Iranian influence in the Levant. It is a term co-opted by the IDF to christen its doctrine of using hugely disproportionate force in the deliberate targeting of civilian population and infrastructure, international law be damned. A term suggestive of the enticing combination of menace and mystique so prevalent in Western gaze portrayals of the Middle East in the post-9/11 cultural landscape.
But dahieh is simply the word for suburb in Arabic. Nevertheless, the word has also transformed, in the Lebanese vernacular, into a term denoting one very specific area – the southern suburbs of Beirut. The genesis of Dahieh, at the onset of the civil war, followed a pattern of demarcation and segregation similar to Beirut and all its suburbs. Yet this particular part of the capital’s so-called Misery Belt has come to wield an outsized influence on Lebanese and regional politics. It has come to best exemplify the lasting scars of suburban segregation with the profound othering of its inhabitants that facilitates the formation of isolationist identities. Thus, this zone of exemption brought about by the violence of the civil war and the Israeli occupation has become a feedback loop that amplifies and perpetuates the threat of violence and fragmentation.
Maxim Mokdad is a Lebanese-Bulgarian architect, graphic designer, illustrator, and musician. He grew up partly in the war-torn southern suburbs of Beirut and partly in exile. Graduating high school following Operation Grapes of Wrath, he relocated to Sofia to study architecture. He has worked for renowned architectural practices, such as Grimshaw Architect, London, and Aedes Studio, Sofia. His projects have received numerous accolades, such as the 2023 Archinova architecture award in the Administrative, Commercial and, Industrial Building category and two 2022 National Building of the Year awards in the Industrial Building and Green Building categories. His work as an illustrator has been featured in exhibitions in London, Vienna, and Prague, amongst others. He has released two albums for Amek Collective, under the musical nom de guerre OOHS!, and shared a stage with Föllakzoid, Jerusalem in My Heart, Jessica Moss, Jozef van Wissem, and Ian Svenonius.