In 2013, I found myself in the middle of the Syrian catastrophe, a naive young photojournalist trying to find his way and tell the story of a crisis to crisis-weary people back home. On a whim, I made my way to the ancestral village of my great-grandfather tucked away in a quiet corner of the mountains outside of Beirut. That fateful decision opened up a whole new world of family, identity, and human geography that I have been grappling with ever since. These photographs are the beginning of an attempt to tell the story of family from the Levant to the American South. This is a project that is still very much in its infancy.
Above photo: Joseph BouSamra joyfully dances in the town square of Hammana, a largely Maronite Christian town along the Beirut-Damascus highway. During the war, the town was besieged and occupied by the Syrian Army and their local allies. The Italian anti-fascist anthem “Bella Ciao” is a popular request that seems to bring most of the town to their feet in revelry.
In the first decade of the 20th century Lutfallah Jarjoura Saad al-Arsoun emigrated from the mountain village of Arsoun in what is now the modern state of Lebanon to Selma, North Carolina by way of France, Canada, New York, and Massachusetts. The global silk trade had shifted from the Levant to the far east leaving a once prosperous region impoverished under a collapsing Ottoman empire. Many Syrians (as they referred themselves at the time) followed the migrant routes to better opportunities in the west. Once Lutfallah settled in the eastern North Carolina town, he rose to prominence as a businessman, landlord, author, and family man whose descendants have spread across the Carolinas and into the rest of the nation.
Cedrus libani grow on the western flanks of the high peaks of Lebanon. First mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the cedars of Lebanon have been both exploited and protected for as long as human civilization has sought to dominate the world. The gnarled trunks that built empires serve as the national symbol of the modern nation state of Lebanon.
The Beqaa Valley of Lebanon as viewed from a ridge below Qurnat as Sawdā, the highest peak in Lebanon and the Levant. The fertile valley, once known as the bread basket of the Roman empire, is flanked by the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains. The green fields below are where local residents cultivate cannabis plants for processing and export. The valley has long produced intoxicating wine grapes and opium poppies as well, which may explain the why the nearby Temple of Bacchus is one of the grandest examples of Roman architecture outside of Rome.
The Puncho Resort as seen near Byblos in September 2013.
Politician and militia commander, Samir Geagea dominates the politial landscape in towns like Zahle, perched on the eastern flank of the Lebanese mountains where they connect with the Beqaa Valley.
View of the Lebanese mountains from the Temple of Jupiter in Baalbek. Indigenous christians who claim to go as far back as Phoenicia have survived in the mountains against waves of empire.
Take care not to block the shrine.
Driving up from the coast near Tripoli, the Kadisha Valley opens up before you on your way to the high villages of Bsharri and Bekaa Kafra. The deep gorges and high mountain ridges have long served as places of literal and figurative sanctuary.
A curious local boy in the town of Zahle follows a similarly curious foreign photographer and eventually sits for a photograph.
A young man takes a leap of faith off the corniche in west Beirut.
A Christian alter at Ras Baalbek in September 2019. A few years earlier, the town in the northern Beqaa Valley near the Syrian border was under threat by ISIS forces hiding in the Anti-Lebanon mountains.
Brothers Tony and Fadi BouSamra refresh themselves at a local ice cream parlor in Zahle in September 2019. Originally from Hammana, Lebanon, the brothers now live in St. Louis and Nashville, joining the successive waves of the great Syrian-Lebanese diaspora that have had outsized influence in the Americas since the fall of the Ottoman empire.
People gather along the Beirut Corniche in October 2013 looking for recreation and respite from what can be a challenging existence in a troubled region. Seven years later, 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate silently waiting in the background would rock the port city in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded.
Tony BouSamra and his wife Patti walk through millions of years of geologic history near Bsharri, Lebanon.
The Beirut peninsula as seen from the mountain town of Beit Mery in September 2019.
Tony BouSamra sits contemplatively outside the Deir Qannoubine monastery in the Kadisha Valley of Lebanon in September 2019. The structure built into the steep canyon walls has served Maronite patriarchs since the 14th century.
Members of the BouSamra family gather for a nightly card game at their residence in Hammana, Lebanon.
The gift shop at Our Lady of Bechouat in the Beqaa Valley. It was when we were seated at these very tables that I was told a tale from the civil war. The muslim forces in the valley (as they were described to me) backed by Syrian armor were driving tanks across the fertile plane towards the Christian villages perched on the eastern flank of the Mountain of Martyrs (a reference to previous conquests of the region). The residents converged on the sanctuary praying for a miracle. It came in the form of tank foiling red Beqaa Valley mud. Local lore says that God responded to their prayers by stopping the tanks from advancing, allowing them only the ability to move in reverse, which they ultimately did.
A family tree of the Saad diaspora: Saad begets Jarjoura, who begets Lutfallah, who begets George, who begets Elizabeth, who begets Thomas, who finds his way back to the ancestral home in Arsoun, Lebanon.