On the morning of 30 April, in the shadow of the financial district’s skyscrapers, a gold cloth slid off a bright yellow sculpture of painted stainless steel, 7ft (2 metres) tall, that spells an Arabic word: “al Qalam”, the pen.
asserted
that → slide → word
The monument, Al Qalam: Poets in the Park, stands in Elizabeth H Berger Plaza and honors the writers of the vanished neighborhood that New Yorkers once called Little Syria: an Arabic-speaking immigrant community that ran along Washington Street, blocks from where the World Trade Center would later rise.
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Center → stand → Street
The monument was the first commemorative artwork unveiled under Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
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monument → unveil → Mamdani
Little Syria produced one of the most famous poets ever to live in New York: Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, a book of poetic prose that has never gone out of print.
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that → produce → print
The monument honors the Pen League, the circle of writers Gibran led in Little Syria in the early 20th century.
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Gibran → honor → century
Its designer, the French Moroccan artist Sara Ouhaddou, wept as she addressed the crowd.
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she → weep → crowd
Discovering the story of this community, she said, had made her “truly aware of my position in the world as the child of immigration”.
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her → discover → immigration
“Thousands of people are going to see Arabic every day of their lives, and it’s in perpetuity.
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it → go → perpetuity
It’s for ever,” the historian Dr Linda Jacobs, who led the Washington Street Historical Society through the project’s final years, told me.
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who → ’ → me
In the weeks that followed, the piece settled into the anonymity that is the fate of most public art, with tourists pausing to gawk on their way to the Statue of Liberty.
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tourists → follow → Liberty
That would have been the end of the story, until the government of Lebanon found out about the small parks department sign beside the artwork.
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government → find → artwork
Lebanese diplomats, politicians and cultural leaders were incensed at what they read on the sign.
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they → incense → sign
Henri Zoghaib, director of the Philip A Salem academy for Lebanese heritage at the Lebanese American University, called the monument “wrong in time”.
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Zoghaib → call → time
The Gibran National Committee, which runs the poet’s museum in Bsharri, Lebanon, his birthplace, issued a formal objection.
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which → run → objection
Two Lebanese ministries complained through diplomatic channels, and in May, Lebanon’s foreign minister, Youssef Rajji, announced that he had directed his ambassador in Washington and his consul general in New York to contact “the relevant authorities, with the aim of correcting the text”.
uncertain
he → complain → text
As Beirut saw it, Gibran and most of his fellow honorees should not have been labeled Syrian.
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Gibran → see → honorees
They were born in Mount Lebanon.
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They → bear → Lebanon
To call them Syrian – as the sign did in six places – was to erase their Lebanese identity.
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sign → call → identity
This might seem like a petty fight over a sign, but the circumstances are not abstract.
uncertain
circumstances → seem → sign
Lebanon has been battered in recent years – economically collapsed, politically paralyzed, under Israeli bombardment and its south occupied.
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south → batter → bombardment
Two weeks before the unveiling, an Israeli airstrike razed the shrine of Shamoun al-Safa at Shamaa in Tyre, a holy site.
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airstrike → raze → Tyre
A nation in that condition holds hardest to the things that prove it exists, and no one is more indispensable to Lebanon’s cultural identity than Gibran.
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one → hold → Gibran
Why else, under bombardment and occupation, would a foreign ministry spend its diplomatic capital on a park sign an ocean away?
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ministry → spend → sign
The problem for the dignitaries demanding the change is that Gibran never thought of himself as Lebanese.
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Gibran → demand → Lebanese
Though he was born in Mount Lebanon, he has always called himself Syrian.
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he → bear → himself
In January 1929, for example, 200 guests in evening dress filled a ballroom at the Hotel McAlpin in New York to honor Gibran’s 25 years of work.
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guests → fill → work
The community’s English-language magazine, The Syrian World, ran the story under the headline: “Syrians Show Pride in Writer Who Has Brought Honor to Race”.
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Who → run → Race
The paperwork tells the same story.
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paperwork → tell → story
When he first landed at Ellis Island in 1895, traveling under his mother’s name, he was recorded as “Jubran Rhamé”, nationality: Syrian.
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he → land → Rhamé
In 1902 he returned as “Gibran K Gibran”, Syrian again in 1910 as “Kahlel Gebian”, nationality: “Turkey, Syrian”.
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he → return → Gebian
Never once Lebanese, because Lebanon, as a state, did not yet exist.
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Lebanon → exist → state
It was a province of an empire, not a nation, and it lost even that autonomy in 1915.
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it → lose → 1915
Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre were never a part of it: they belonged to the Ottoman province of Syria, and from 1888 to a Beirut province carved from it.
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they → belong → it
Lebanon was assembled only on 1 September 1920, decades after Gibran’s generation had relocated in Manhattan.
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generation → assemble → Manhattan
Historian Hani Bawardi – who has spent decades interviewing the children of the first wave of Arab immigrants to America and served on the committee for the Pen League monument – said that he heard “over and over and over” from the sons and daughters of the very first immigrants whose histories he archived: we were all Syrians.
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we → spend → histories
Though today they would be considered Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian, Israeli or Palestinian, then they were all children of Bilad al-Sham, greater Syria.
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they → consider → al
Many of the writers in this monument spent their lives dedicated to unifying this community.
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Many → spend → community
They did so through creating a newspaper and literature publishing universe, on a few streets of downtown Manhattan.
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They → do → Manhattan
Roughly 95,000 Arabic-speaking immigrants came to the United States between 1880 and 1924, and New York was their “Mother Colony”.
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York → speak → 1880
The neighborhood that would become Little Syria grew at Manhattan’s south-western corner, along Washington Street.
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that → become → Street
…and 87 more, not listed.
The Aporia
