The Story Behind Al Qesas

A few months ago, I was sitting with my mother while she told me a story about my grandfather.

He was from Al Fakiha, a small town north of Baalbeck. When he was young, he fell in love with a woman who was considered unusually open-minded for her time. My mother told me they used to go to the beach together, something that was almost unheard of in their community. He was not wealthy, and when he asked for her hand, her family demanded a large mahr that he could not afford.

Instead, he returned home and married my grandmother, a woman from an indigenous goat-herding family in Al Fakiha. She had traditional tribal tattoos and could neither read nor write. She was recommended to him by his mother and, by the standards of the time, was already considered older for marriage, being in her mid-twenties.

At first, this sounds like the story of a lost love. But that is not what stayed with me.

My mother explained that rather than becoming bitter, my grandfather carried forward what he had admired in the woman he could not marry. He believed women should see the world, learn, grow, and have opportunities. He brought those values into his own marriage and family.

He took my grandmother from Al Fakiha to the city. He took her to concerts and the cinema. He had her clothes custom-made in Sursock. He showed her a world she had never known while never asking her to abandon where she came from. He spoiled her relentlessly.

Life was not always kind to them. Before the birth of their eldest daughter, my grandmother lost three children. She refused to go to the hospital, and her body would not induce labor on its own. These losses stayed with her for the rest of her life. Yet they continued and gave birth to five girls, and then two boys.

He spoiled his daughters just as much as he spoiled his wife. All of my aunts received an education. He encouraged them to study, think for themselves, and pursue lives larger than what might have been expected of them. He built the family home with his own hands. After retiring from the military, he continued working for years, refusing to slow down until his heart eventually gave out. He loved the girls in the family.

His first daughter was named after the woman he had once loved. Hayat. He spoiled his daughters, his granddaughters, and later me. Even as a child, I knew he treated me kinder than any grandson. 

When my mother finished telling the story, I found myself wondering what would happen to it after she was gone. 

Where would it go?

Who would remember that a man from Al Fakiha once loved a woman he could not marry, and that decades later the values he admired in her would shape an entire family?

Who would remember my grandmother's tattoos?

Who would remember the children she lost?

Who would remember the life they built together?

What happens to stories that never make it into books?

The last memory I have of my grandfather is from July 2006. The war had just begun. We were sitting on the balcony together eating Mlokhiye. My mother was inside the house. My father was outside tending to the garden. It was an ordinary family moment, one of thousands that seem insignificant while they are happening.

Then Israel bombed the Ballouk building right next to us. I watched it happen with my own eyes. The memory is frozen in time: the food, the balcony, my grandfather beside me, the shock of the explosion, and the realization that ordinary moments can become history without warning.

Years later, I began thinking about how our stories disappear. We used to carry them in memory, but if colonialism and its tools kill us, who will be left to remember?

We often say that our stories matter. We talk about preserving memory, protecting heritage, documenting our histories, and resisting erasure. Yet most stories never make it into archives, books, or history lessons. They remain in kitchens, living rooms, long car rides, family gatherings, and conversations between friends. Then, one day, they are gone.

I realized that if anyone had the skills to build an archive for these stories, it was me.

So I bought a domain name, designed a logo, and Al Qesas was born.

Its purpose is simple: to collect, preserve, and share the stories of people.

Some stories will be about war, displacement, and political struggle. Others will be about food, love, friendship, family, work, migration, gender, queerness, childhood, faith, grief, joy, or the migrant workers whose names are lost under the rubble of a flattened building. Some will be carefully written memoirs. Others may be fragments, memories, photographs, recordings, or oral histories.

All of them matter.

This archive is free to access and free to contribute to. It is ad-free and independently maintained. I personally own and fund the project, and I do not seek to profit from it. If Al Qesas receives funding in the future, that support will be publicly disclosed and must remain completely unconditional. No donor, institution, organization, or individual will be allowed to influence what stories are collected, edited, published, or preserved.

Today, I am contributing my own stories. I am also inviting others to do the same.

Think about your mother. Your father. Your neighborhood. The family story everyone knows. The family story nobody talks about. The memory that shaped you.

If there is a story you want to exist long after you are gone, write it down and send it to us. There is no required theme. There is no correct way to tell it. 

There is only one question:

What story do you want the future to remember?