sewage runoff and degraded biodiversity. Ultimately, the project aims to bring life back to the river and improve living conditions for adjacent communities by testing and evaluating strategies on small sections before broader application.

Another inspiring project, Greening Bourj Al Shamali Refugee Camp, works to improve conditions in a mainly Palestinian camp in south Lebanon, through the creation of green spaces. As a first step, the project worked with a local youth science group to map the camp using a low-cost balloon-based aerial camera. If this map creation seems unnecessary, Basbous insists that a community-created map is an empowering tool. ‘It’s an incredible project in part because it developed a low-cost way of directly mapping territory,’ she says. ‘We don’t have a centralised office where it’s easy to obtain territorial maps. So, every time you start a new project and you need a map, you have to request one from people like the military. And of course, you have to pay.’

It’s difficult to spend time in Beirut without feeling awed at the way the city has rebuilt itself after the civil war, dismayed how that rebuilding has in turn destroyed parts of the city’s history and heritage, and enraged on behalf of the people who live every day with crumbling infrastructure and political corruption. One night at dinner, during a frank conversation with a successful Lebanese art director, I admitted that I didn’t think I could live in Beirut, given the overwhelming sense of daily struggle. I wondered how people coped, let alone thrived. ‘For all its messiness, chaos, even corruption,’ she said, ‘we stay and fight because here we feel free. Completely free.’

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THIS PAGE Widened pavements and cigarette bins on Jeanne d’Arc Street

“For all its messiness, chaos, even corruption, we stay and fight because here we feel free”

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