Their reputation precedes them: they are young, beautiful, rich, and famous. Therefore, one might expect, upon meeting them, to discover two pretentious types, an enormous phallic cigar fixed at the corner of their mouth, already balding and potbellied, protected by a swarm of bodyguards and surrounded by a plethora of bimbos. Not at all! One will be quickly disappointed or rather very pleasantly surprised. Tony Habre and Chafic El Khazen, barely reaching retirement age between them, respectively run the “White Bar” and the “Sky Bar,” the two most popular clubs in Beirut, reserved for a clientele that is both economically endowed and carefully filtered at the entrance. These two “bosses,” with the demeanor of kids barely out of adolescence, whose only dark circles betray their midnight lifestyle, have not only managed to maintain youthful features. They also display surprising modesty and genuine maturity.
Why the roof of a building? It is certainly a place that car bombs cannot reach. After all, we are in Beirut. The two establishments, moreover, opened a few weeks apart, in the spring and summer of 2006, at the height of the Hezbollah war with Israel.
Situated on the “roof” (Lebanese easily mix Arabic, English, and French in a conversation, often with a concealed pleasure that reflects a certain level of education) of the An Nahar newspaper building, managed by Gebran Tueni, who was also assassinated due to his resolute opposition to Syria, the “White” commenced operations in June 2006, two months before the crisis with the Hebrew State. With a breathtaking view of the Al Amine Mosque in the downtown area, the place is adjacent to Hezbollah’s tents planted in the heart of the capital. Unlike some evenings at the Baalbeck Music Festival where the Muezzin’s call would drown out the voices of lyrical singers (Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu had this bitter experience in August 2002), this time, the sound system dominates the call to prayer.
“Regardless of security reasons,” says Tony Habre to explain his club’s success, Lebanese people inherently possess a “culture of staying awake, partying, and collective pleasure.” “The wars of Lebanon or in Lebanon cannot be wars desired by the Lebanese,” he further clarifies. Despite his young age, Tony Habre is not a novice in the field: “White” is his fourteenth establishment! He thus had to create his own management company with about ten people, “Add Mind,” led by the Frenchman Alexis Claverolle, who came straight from a city in northern France. The business is booming since the equivalent of “White” is being established in a few days in Jordan and in a few months in Egypt.
Two or three hundred meters as the crow flies, the “Sky Bar” extends over an immense 1000 m² terrace atop one of the Biel buildings (an exhibition center extending into the sea, enhancing its security aspects). Launched in July 2006, just hours before the Israeli offensive on Beirut airport, it recorded a record 3,650 entries. Chafic El Khazen is also not a beginner: he effectively created the first “roof” in 2003 at Palm Beach on Manara, a kind of Promenade des Anglais where joggers mingle with nargileh smokers. Our interlocutor seems accustomed to fateful dates to the point of coming to terms with the psychological burdens imposed by his birth date: 7.7.77. Quite a prophecy! Chance or not, his bar, shaped like a completely lit lightning bolt, sells over 250 bottles on Saturdays, and forms a multicolored contrast with an intensely black void where the flickering lights of Beirut’s eastern suburb can be seen in the distance. “We sell feeling,” “energy,” explains the serious-minded owner of the “Sky.”
Unlike the owner of “White,” he alone manages his club to which about twenty partners are associated. Tony Habre and Chafic El Khazen do not just manage their business like simple shopkeepers. They engage in personal reflection. They are undeniably part of this new generation of Lebanese who are questioning the future of their country… as well as their own future. The two maintain more or less the same discourse: Tony Habre talks about the “need to give meaning to life” and Chafic El Khazen, on his side, is writing a very personal work that mixes philosophy and spirituality. It is reasonable to think that it also serves him as a means of introspection.
Both passionate advocates of the Lebanese cause, they both feel “for the first time in their lives” a sense of weariness, even a form of “hatred” towards the destructive impulses at work in the country. Considering they are not in need, one can then fully grasp the extent of the despair likely to engulf a Lebanese population in a much more precarious economic situation than theirs.
Obviously, they do not wish to talk about politics. Even less about religion. These two entrepreneurs see them as the most catastrophic evils for the country. The unfeigned humanism of Chafic El Khazen leads him to say, in a phrase that is not fabricated, that he feels like a “citizen of the world,” while Tony Habre laments the sad tradition of “dictatorships in the Arab world” to the point of wondering if Lebanon will “really ever know democracy.” During these interviews, both humanly and intellectually dense, one might almost forget that a few meters away, hundreds of carefree young people are drinking, laughing, and dancing. As a Lebanese proverb says, “the heavier the wheat in the ear, the more it bends toward the ground.”
With the kind collaboration of Lebanese photographer (New York) Jessica Kalache: jkalache@gmail.com
