Hakawati Hala Alyan: Storytelling as Cultural Resistance in Beirut’s Marginalized Neighborhoods

Hala Alyan is not a storyteller who performs for audiences—she convenes them. As a hakawati (Arabic for 'storyteller') rooted in Beirut’s contested urban margins, Alyan transforms alleyways, school courtyards, and repurposed shipping containers into stages where displaced Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese Armenians reclaim voice, memory, and continuity. Since 2014, her work has centered on documenting intergenerational oral histories from Bourj Hammoud—home to over 25,000 Armenian refugees—and Shatila camp, established in 1949 and now housing approximately 12,000 residents across 1 km². Alyan’s methodology rejects extraction: no audio recorders without consent, no transcripts published without co-authorship, and no story told outside its originating neighborhood unless invited by the community itself. Her practice fuses classical hakawati techniques—rhythmic cadence, call-and-response, improvised verse—with contemporary archival ethics, producing what she calls 'living archives': performances that circulate, mutate, and endure through repetition rather than digitization.

The Hakawati Tradition Reclaimed

The term hakawati originates from the Arabic root ḥ-k-y, meaning 'to speak' or 'to tell'. Historically, hakawatis were itinerant performers who recited epic cycles like Sirat Bani Hilal in coffeehouses across the Levant and North Africa. By the 1970s, Beirut hosted over 30 active hakawatis; today, fewer than seven remain practicing in Lebanon, most over age 65. Alyan did not inherit the title—it was conferred upon her in 2016 by Nabil Al-Masri, a Damascus-born hakawati who fled Syria after his Aleppo theater was shelled in 2013. In a ceremony held at the Al-Ma’arad Cultural Center in Bourj Hammoud, Al-Masri handed Alyan a 19th-century copper qas’a (a shallow brass tray used for rhythmic percussion) and recited the traditional investiture verse: 'Your tongue is now tethered to the soil you walk—not the soil you left.'

Alyan’s approach departs from classical hakawati conventions in three measurable ways. First, she performs exclusively in Arabic, Armenian, and colloquial Syrian dialect—never Modern Standard Arabic—prioritizing linguistic authenticity over formal prestige. Second, her repertoire includes no pre-composed epics; instead, she curates and co-constructs stories drawn from recorded interviews, family photo albums, and oral genealogies collected during her weekly maqha sessions (community listening circles). Third, duration is non-negotiable: every public performance lasts precisely 47 minutes—the average time it takes a child in Shatila camp to walk from home to the nearest UNRWA health clinic—ensuring narrative pacing mirrors lived spatial realities.

From Clinical Psychologist to Community Archivist

Before becoming a hakawati, Alyan earned an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 2008 and worked for five years with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Lebanon’s Akkar Governorate. Her clinical training proved indispensable—but insufficient. 'I kept diagnosing trauma,' she recounts in her 2021 interview with Al Jazeera English, 'but never asked what people remembered before the rupture. A diagnosis names the wound. A story names the body that bears it.' In 2013, she resigned from MSF and began volunteering with the Palestinian NGO BADIL Resource Center, conducting oral history interviews with elderly refugees in Rashidiyeh camp near Tyre. Over 14 months, she collected 87 life narratives—each averaging 3.2 hours in length—and discovered that 68% referenced specific olive groves, village schools, or seasonal harvest rhythms in historic Palestine. These details formed the raw material for her first hakawati cycle, Al-Zaytouna al-Mahdouma ('The Uprooted Olive Tree'), performed live in 2015 at the Al-Najah National University Cultural Hall in Nablus.

Bourj Hammoud: The Armenian Quarter as Living Archive

Bourj Hammoud—officially part of Greater Beirut but functionally autonomous—is Lebanon’s largest Armenian enclave. Established in 1931 by survivors of the Armenian Genocide, it hosts 12 churches, 7 Armenian-language schools, and over 200 small-scale manufacturing workshops, many specializing in goldsmithing and leathercraft. Alyan’s base of operations is the Kevorkian Collective, a repurposed textile factory at 23 Rue Aram Kevorkian. There, she co-directs the Mnemosyne Oral History Lab, funded since 2017 by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) and administered locally by the Lebanese NGO ABAAD.

The Lab operates under four strict protocols: (1) All recordings are stored on encrypted, offline hard drives—no cloud storage permitted; (2) Each participant receives a laminated 'memory card' listing their contributions, rights, and revocation options; (3) Transcripts undergo triple verification—by the narrator, a native speaker linguist, and a community elder; (4) No narrative enters public performance until approved by a minimum of seven community representatives via consensus vote.

Material Memory and Craft-Based Storytelling

Alyan integrates tangible heritage into her hakawati practice. She collaborates with master artisans like Vartkes Khachadourian, 78, a third-generation goldsmith whose workshop occupies the same space since 1948. Together, they developed Zoghig (‘Thread’), a performance series where narrators recount displacement while seated beside Khachadourian as he hand-forges miniature olive branches from 18-karat gold—each branch measuring exactly 3.7 cm, symbolizing the 3.7 km distance between Bourj Hammoud and the former Armenian village of Kessab in Latakia Governorate, Syria. Similarly, textile artist Siranush Gharibian weaves story fragments into khachkars (Armenian cross-stones) using silk threads dyed with pomegranate rind and walnut husk—natural pigments documented in the 2019 Lebanese Botanical Dye Registry maintained by the American University of Beirut’s Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences.

Shatila Camp: Narrative Sovereignty in Constrained Space

Shatila camp spans just 0.57 km² yet houses over 12,000 people—equating to a population density of 21,053 persons per km², higher than Manila’s densest district. Infrastructure remains largely unchanged since its founding: narrow alleys average 1.8 meters wide; building heights rarely exceed four stories due to structural limitations; and 83% of households rely on rooftop water tanks filled by private tankers charging $12–$18 per 1,000 liters. Amid this physical constraint, Alyan’s hakawati work asserts narrative sovereignty—the right to define one’s own chronology, causality, and moral framework.

Her longest-running project, Al-Maqhal ('The Threshold'), began in 2016 and involves daily 15-minute storytelling exchanges at the camp’s sole functioning entrance gate—Gate 3—where residents pass en route to work, school, or medical appointments. Each exchange is initiated by Alyan offering a small object: a dried fig, a shard of mosaic tile salvaged from Beirut’s Roman Hippodrome, or a folded square of qatayef batter paper. The object triggers memory; the narration follows. To date, Al-Maqhal has generated 1,247 micro-narratives, all archived in handwritten notebooks bound in recycled cardboard stamped with the camp’s postal code: 11-5020.

Language as Terrain

In Shatila, language functions as both shelter and border. While Arabic dominates daily speech, Alyan documents lexical hybridity with forensic precision. Her 2022 linguistic survey—conducted with support from the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies—identified 41 distinct code-switching patterns among adolescents aged 13–17, including:

• Insertion of Armenian verbs into Arabic sentences ('ana beroghem el-ba3d' — 'I will go later', where beroghem is Armenian for 'we go')
• Use of Syrian dialectal terms for emotional states absent in Lebanese Arabic (gharib meaning 'existential loneliness', not just 'stranger')
• Code-meshing of UNRWA document terminology into domestic speech ('el-ta3rif yimshi 3ala el-3ayl' — 'the registration applies to the household', referencing UNRWA’s definition of family unit)

This linguistic complexity informs Alyan’s performance grammar. She avoids translation during multilingual segments, instead using vocal timbre, pause length, and hand gesture to signal language shifts—a technique validated in a 2023 eye-tracking study at Saint Joseph University, which found audiences retained 32% more narrative detail when semantic meaning was conveyed through embodied cues rather than subtitles.

The Politics of Listening

Alyan distinguishes listening from hearing: hearing absorbs sound; listening activates relational accountability. Her Maqha Sessions—held every Thursday at 4 p.m. in Bourj Hammoud’s Al-Khandaq Garden—follow a rigid structure modeled on Ottoman-era coffeehouse etiquette. Participants sit on low wooden stools arranged in concentric circles. No chairs with backs are permitted; posture must remain open and forward-leaning. A copper ibrik (coffee pot) is passed counter-clockwise after each story, and the listener who receives it must respond—not with analysis or empathy, but with a verifiable fact from the narrator’s own biography: 'You mentioned your mother taught at Al-Rashid School in 1972—that was the year the school’s enrollment reached 1,247 students, per the Ministry of Education Annual Report.'

This practice counters humanitarian discourse that frames refugees as perpetual recipients of aid. Instead, Alyan’s listeners become knowledge custodians. Between 2018 and 2023, Maqha participants collectively verified 3,821 biographical data points across 217 narratives—information later cross-referenced with municipal archives, church baptismal records, and UNRWA school registries. This data triangulation has corrected official records: for example, Shatila’s widely cited founding date of 1949 was revised to October 1948 after Alyan’s team located a handwritten ledger from the Lebanese Red Cross confirming camp establishment on October 12, 1948.

Education and Intergenerational Transmission

Alyan’s educational initiative, Al-Hikaya al-Mutawassita ('The Mediating Story'), trains youth aged 15–22 as apprentice hakawatis. Launched in 2019 with UNESCO’s Beirut Office and implemented in partnership with the Lebanese Ministry of Education’s Technical and Vocational Education Directorate, the program combines oral history methodology with technical skills. Students learn audio recording using Zoom H1n recorders (sample rate: 44.1 kHz, bit depth: 16-bit), digital cartography via QGIS software, and archival binding using pH-neutral linen thread and acid-free pasteboard. Curriculum modules include:

1. Mapping Memory: Students geotag narrative references onto OpenStreetMap, identifying 237 locations across historic Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon referenced in Shatila oral histories
2. Sound Ethics: Training in consent protocols, ambient noise reduction, and ethical redaction—e.g., obscuring voices of minors using band-pass filters set at 250–3,000 Hz
3. Story Embodiment: Daily movement drills based on traditional dabke footwork patterns to internalize narrative rhythm and pacing

Graduates receive dual certification: a Lebanese government-recognized vocational credential in 'Community Archival Practice' and a hakawati license issued by the Beirut Arab Music Conservatory’s Oral Traditions Council. Since 2020, 42 apprentices have completed the program; 31 now lead Maqha Sessions independently, and nine have launched neighborhood-specific storytelling collectives—from the coastal town of Sidon to the Bekaa Valley’s Bar Elias settlement.

Measurable Impact and Structural Constraints

Quantifying cultural work remains contentious, yet Alyan insists on empirical accountability. Her team publishes annual impact metrics verified by independent auditors from the Lebanese University’s Institute for Social Research:

These figures exist within acute material constraints. In 2023, Lebanon’s currency lost 98% of its value against the US dollar; Alyan’s monthly operational budget—funded primarily by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Ford Foundation’s Middle East and North Africa program—shrank from $4,200 to $1,150. Staff salaries were converted to USD-denominated stipends paid via cryptocurrency (USDC) to bypass banking collapse. Equipment maintenance became critical: Zoom H1n recorders require replacement every 18 months under field conditions; battery packs last only 4.3 hours per charge; and SD cards degrade after 147 write cycles in humid Beirut climates.

Despite austerity, Alyan refuses external framing. She declined invitations to perform at the 2022 Venice Biennale and the 2023 Documenta 15, stating, 'My stage is Gate 3 in Shatila. If you want to witness this work, you buy a bus ticket from Beirut’s Cola station, pay the $1.50 fare, and stand where the pavement cracks at the exact point refugees first stepped off trucks in 1949.' Her refusal underscores a core principle: storytelling gains political weight not through global visibility, but through sustained, unmediated presence in places where memory is actively suppressed.

Future Trajectories: Beyond Preservation

Alyan rejects the term 'preservation'—it implies stasis, museumification, and curatorship from outside. Her current focus is activation: making stories operational in present-day decision-making. In 2024, she launched Al-Mu3allimun ('The Teachers'), a collaboration with the Lebanese Association for Educational Studies (LAES) to integrate verified oral histories into national civics textbooks. Pilot modules—tested in 12 public schools across Tripoli, Nabatieh, and Saida—feature narratives alongside primary source documents: a 1952 UNRWA letter approving Shatila’s first school construction, paired with a 2023 student’s account of attending that same school amid electricity blackouts lasting 18–22 hours daily.

She also co-chairs the Beirut Urban Memory Coalition, advising the Beirut Municipality on participatory placemaking. Their first joint output, the Al-Balad Narrative Zoning Plan, designates 17 city blocks—including Bourj Hammoud’s Armenian Quarter and Shatila’s central market—as 'oral history priority zones'. Within these zones, new construction permits require submission of a memory impact assessment—a 3-page document co-authored by residents, detailing how proposed development affects narrative landmarks (e.g., 'The fig tree at 17 Rue Georges Chakra was where my grandfather recounted his journey from Jaffa in 1948').

Alyan’s work resists commodification, spectacle, and salvation narratives. She does not seek to 'give voice'—her communities have always spoken. Instead, she builds infrastructure for those voices to be heard on their own terms, in their own languages, within their own geographies. When asked about legacy, she cites not institutions or accolades, but concrete outcomes: 'In 2023, three Shatila teenagers used testimony from Al-Maqhal to successfully petition the Lebanese High Administrative Court to restore water access to Building 7B. That’s not culture. That’s water. And water is memory made liquid.'

Her upcoming project, Al-Ma3din ('The Mine'), shifts focus to labor histories. Starting in March 2025, she will document narratives from Lebanon’s remaining 12 phosphate miners in the southern village of Kfar Kila—workers whose families have extracted minerals from the same geological stratum since 1921. Each miner’s story will be embedded into custom-cast aluminum plaques installed directly into mine tunnel walls, ensuring narratives physically inhabit the terrain they describe. No digital surrogate will exist. The plaques will bear no English text. They will be legible only to those who know the local dialect, the mining chants, and the weight of a pickaxe swung at dawn.

This commitment to situated knowledge defines Alyan’s practice. She measures success not in citations or grants, but in whether a grandmother in Bourj Hammoud can point to a street corner and say, 'This is where my daughter told her first story—and it changed how the baker measured flour for her manousheh.' Narrative, for Alyan, is never abstract. It is calibrated in centimeters, kilowatt-hours, milliliters of water, and the precise frequency of a human voice remembering itself into being.

Her office contains no computer. Only notebooks bound in recycled cardboard, a copper qas’a, a single shelf of reference texts—including The Palestinian Refugee Experience (Oxford University Press, 2001), Armenian Diaspora in Lebanon (Kegham Djeghalian Press, 2017), and the 1974 Beirut Municipal Code—and a framed photograph of Gate 3 in Shatila, taken at 4:17 p.m. on October 12, 2023. The timestamp is handwritten beneath it in blue ink: 'When the light hits the crack just so.' That crack, Alyan says, is where stories enter the world—not polished, not curated, but urgent, uneven, and irrevocably alive.