I’m not entirely sure how the work that inspired this month’s diary entry will ultimately unfold, since it is being disassembled as I write.
We’re all still barely processing the resonance of the event, with visitors coming from across the country and beyond.

One of the blessings attached to the work that led to the exhibition is the research that preceded the installation. It allowed me to discover the mesmerizing writings of Roger Caillois. I will later share an excerpt from his 1970 book L’Écriture des pierres (The Writing of Stones).

That same research also took me back to my early childhood, when my fascination with stones already transported me to higher ground.
A man who was like a surrogate father, Philippe Zoumerroff, had the generosity and wisdom to take his son and his friends on filons—stone-hunting promenades. He would hand us a map with indications of the types of stones we might find in their natural habitat. Those trips were formative, and they remain vivid in memory. Whatever we found, we could keep.
A few years later, I had gathered a small collection that still rests today atop a 19th-century Syrian silver-and–mother-of-pearl commode in my Cairo bedroom.

There are pieces of pink quartz, smoked crystal, malachite, labradorite, pyrite, citrine, amethyst, jade, amber, and others with more curious names like chewing-gum stone and television stone. Not all are of remarkable quality, yet together they form a still yet interactive dance that quietly accompanies my daily life in Cairo. They are among the first things I see each morning when I open the sock drawer, and the last when I grab a T-shirt before bed.
I often reorganize their choreography, thinking of Andy Goldsworthy’s breathtaking land art and dreaming of exploring such gestures on a larger scale one day.

That opportunity arrived when I was invited to participate in the 2025 edition of We Design Beirut, held on the site of the ancient Roman Baths in Downtown Beirut. The exhibition, sponsored by Stones by Rania Malli, was aptly titled Of Water and Stone.
At first, I thought of displaying a marble bathtub I had designed for a previous show in Cairo. But curators Mariana Wehbe and Samer Al Ameen suggested creating something different, an installation that could celebrate the memory of ancient Roman bathing rituals while linking them to the present through an object that might belong in a contemporary bathroom.

Since I always begin with research grounded in art, I imagined a land-art-inspired installation: a stream of marble boxes cascading down the site’s stairs like fragments of memory and water, since most marbles are born of it. Each box would embody a type or state of water (sea, river, pond, snow, vapor, froth) and would be filled with the sea salt and thyme once used in Roman baths for cleansing and healing.

Rania’s generosity and faith in the creative process allowed for an exceptional selection of stones, including sodalite, a gemstone I cherished as a child and once believed could heal emotional wounds. Though my beliefs have since shifted from the mystical to the empirical, I still hold that beauty, and a conscious connection to it, carries an undeniable power to soothe and restore.

One of the discoveries that affirmed this conviction is the book I mentioned earlier: Roger Caillois’s L’Écriture des pierres, which I discovered at 7L in Paris as part of a beautiful retrospective work called La Lecture Des Pierres. From the moment I opened it, I knew it would stay with me forever.
Caillois, writer, poet, and stone collector, inspired a series of photographs by Lebanese photographer Tarek Moukaddem, created for my Instagram account as a visual companion to the We Design Beirut installation.

The installation itself is a meditation on water and memory: stone capsules flowing down the stairs, particles altering a familiar landscape, enriching collective memories through texture, color, salt, and thyme while giving rise to new ones. From the murky waters of Palissandre’s grays and browns to Sodalite’s deep-sea blues and aqua greens, from River Green marble’s contrasted patches to Dover Blue’s quiet sky hues, the flow of boxes converges toward Snow White marble, like crystallized memories or accumulated froth moving toward tomorrow.

Visitors were able to spontaneously buy signed, numbered boxes on site, allowing the stream to evolve from day to day. More boxes will be available for purchase after the dismantling of the installation as vessels of remembrance, traces of the day when “700 boxes streamed down the stairs of Downtown Beirut.”
Whether or not you were in Beirut for We Design Beirut, I hope Memory Upcycle will continue to live in the minds of those who saw the images, visited the site, or own one of the boxes.

Roger Caillois illuminates the poetic nature of stones. The excerpt that follows seemed a fitting way to close this month’s entry.

L’Ecriture Des Pierres (extrait):

Pierres De Rêves:

En Chine, vers le milieu du xix° siècle, il arrive que l’artiste choisisse une plaque de marbre dont lui plaisent les taches ou les veines: il la délimite et l’encadre, l’intitule et y grave son cachet. De cette manière, il en prend possession et la transtorme en œuvre d’art dont il assume désormais la responsabilité. J’ai publié à plusieurs reprises un document représentant une de ces plaques que les Chinois appelaient pierres de rêve. Elle est intitulée Héros solitaire et signée K’iao Chan. Elle présente une figure difficilement identifiable, de teintes jaune, bistre et noire, qui peut à la rigueur évoquer la silhouette d’un être pris par un tourbillon de vent et comme s’arc-bou-tant. Depuis, j’ai vu beaucoup d’autres de ces plaques, parmi lesquelles j’en mentionnerai deux, de plus vastes dimensions, qui représentent des paysages.
On y aperçoit des ravins boisés, des étangs, des lacs où se reflètent les pentes des escarpements voisins ou dont les berges plates, d’un côté se perdent dans la campagne et, de l’autre, s’arrêtent bientôt au pied de collines obliques, inclinées comme par l’effet d’un grand vent soufflant toujours dans le même sens. Ces marbres sont également signés et, au lieu d’un simple titre, portent chacun un court poème dont le sens correspond à l’impression dégagée par le charme ou la sauvagerie du site.
Voici la traduction de ces deux textes:

I. Parmi les monts les plus gris, Les nuages vont et viennent
Comme autant de grands hommes:
Aucun d’eux n’atteint la grandeur,
Tant c’est difficile.

II. Dans son cercle de montagnes, Un vieux temple est comme neuf.
L’esprit y paraît à tel point vivace,
Tout comme le vent, l’air, les arbres:
Comment exprimer pareille impression?
(…)

Translation in English

Dream Stones:

In China, around the middle of the nineteenth century, it sometimes happened that an artist would select a slab of marble whose spots or veins pleased him. He would delimit and frame it, give it a title, and engrave his seal upon it. In this way, he took possession of it and transformed it into a work of art for which he henceforth assumed responsibility.

I have on several occasions published an image of one such plaque that the Chinese called dream stones. It is titled Solitary Hero and signed K’iao Chan. It presents a figure that is difficult to identify, in yellow, bistre, and black tones, which could, at a stretch, suggest the silhouette of a being caught in a whirlwind of wind and bracing itself.

Since then, I have seen many other such plaques, among which I will mention two of larger dimensions, representing landscapes. One can discern wooded ravines, ponds, and lakes reflecting the slopes of nearby escarpments, or whose flat banks, on one side, fade into the countryside, while on the other, they soon stop at the foot of oblique hills, slanted as if under the effect of a great wind blowing always in the same direction. These marbles are also signed and, instead of a simple title, each bears a short poem whose meaning corresponds to the impression conveyed by the charm or wildness of the scene.

Here is the translation of these two texts:

I.
Among the grayest mountains,
The clouds come and go
Like so many great men:
None attains greatness,
So difficult is it.

II.
Within its circle of mountains,
An old temple seems newly built.
The spirit there appears so alive,
Like the wind, the air, the trees—
How could one express such an impression?
(…)

Stay tuned for December’s guest: a singular master of mosaic, or rather, cosmosaic.

A mineral, poetic, and happy month of November

Omar