WEEPING OVER THE RUINS

Weeping Over the Ruins is an original novella set in Lebanon during the beginning of the sectarian civil war. It tells the story of Hadia Mariam Khoury, a young Lebanese woman, who is about to graduate from college when the civil war breaks out in her country. She lives in East Beirut, in the predominantly Christian neighborhood where the first couple of incidents, a bus shooting and a church shooting, set off the civil war which ended up lasting over fifteen years and disrupting more than half a million lives. We follow Hadia and the residents of her building as they continue to lead their daily lives, despite the mayhem around them. We accompany them as each layer of normal life begins to peel off around them. Most of the events and vignettes in this novella take place between April 13, 1975, the beginning of the civil war, and May 13, 1977, the day Hadia the aunt is shot and Hadia the niece is born.