A drawing of Beirut seen from above by Lena Merhej. (Credit: Lena Merhej)
"There is said to be a genie in Beirut that is the very spirit of the city. No one has met him face-to-face, he is like a breath felt on the nape of the neck," Selim Nassib wrote in the introductory comic of his trilogy 'Genie of Beirut, Street of God's Fortune' (Dargaud, 2025)where he assumed the role of storyteller, setting the scene of a cosmopolitan and multicultural city where residents engage in an "impossible dance of opposites" that results in a legendary "mental agility."The narrative thread is woven around the now-gone Rizkallah Street (God's fortune), home to Armenian barber Issa, Shiite dyer and ironer Faysal, a Sunni grocer couple paralleled by a Maronite grocer couple, as well as White Russians, a Jewish family, not to mention Jeanine, who spends her time sunbathing on her...
"There is said to be a genie in Beirut that is the very spirit of the city. No one has met him face-to-face, he is like a breath felt on the nape of the neck," Selim Nassib wrote in the introductory comic of his trilogy 'Genie of Beirut, Street of God's Fortune' (Dargaud, 2025)where he assumed the role of storyteller, setting the scene of a cosmopolitan and multicultural city where residents engage in an "impossible dance of opposites" that results in a legendary "mental agility."The narrative thread is woven around the now-gone Rizkallah Street (God's fortune), home to Armenian barber Issa, Shiite dyer and ironer Faysal, a Sunni grocer couple paralleled by a Maronite grocer couple, as well as White Russians, a Jewish family, not to mention Jeanine, who spends her time sunbathing on her...