09.01.2026

Directed, filmed, scripted, edited, and sound designed by Nur Koç.

the avoided destinations,

dismissed by a title: “middle east.”

as if a name were a verb,

a verdict,

a tragic fate imposed.

but these are cities,

beyond postcards and spectacle,

carrying the weight of lived histories,

layers of life pressed into stone,

into silence, into soul—

just not the kind

the world is taught to look for.

beirut, to me, meant unification.

unification of architecture,

where ruins lean into glass,

the abandoned breathes

beside the new.

unification of people,

where a single bridge

shifts accents, faces, rhythms—

one crossing,

a whole new world.

unification of religion,

where after fire and fracture,

a mosque and a church

stand side by side,

refusing separation.

yet the city reached beyond form.

it reached blood,

it reached root.

i met family i didn’t know i carried.

we shared no common words,

yet my plate kept filling—

a taste of home,

something i know deeply

as the quiet pulse of love.

i watched circles form,

folding into shared stories—

my mother as a child,

a grandfather i never knew,

and my grandmother,

who no longer breathes on this earth,

yet whose memory fills every wall.

she was our cedar—

enduring, upright.

now she moves in my memory

like lebanon’s cedar at sea,

rooted,

undaunted by the wind.

i saw those who once held her days,

companions through her solitude.

a woman crossing borders alone,

carrying a suitcase,

a future,

and her children.

now i am here,

in beautiful beirut,

walking through inheritance,

my past,

alongside my present.

tables rich with taste,

spaces alive with light and joy.

the joy of remembering,

of being,

of loving.

love,

to beirut.