Rust and Dreams - Layale Chaker
This piece was inspired by my visit last winter to an abandoned train station in Baalbeck, a city in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. Custom-designed to navigate the steep slopes between Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem, the railroad linking Lebanon, Palestine and Syria was a world-class engineering feat of the late 19th century. Baalbeck, with its ancient history as a crossroads of civilizations, once represented connection and exchange. The train station, the last stop in Lebanon, was a gateway to the wider world, reflecting the unity of a region that, before colonial rule, was one vast, interconnected land.
This work reflects on that interconnectedness—a region once seamless, now fractured by borders imposed after colonialism, some of which have become impossible to cross. It explores the lost fluidity and exchange between places and peoples, symbolized by the disused railways. Yet beyond mourning the disconnection, it seeks to uncover the enduring desire to reconnect what has been severed—culturally, historically, and physically. The piece meditates on the possibilities of healing these divisions and reimagining a future where shared pathways overcome the boundaries of greed, conquest, and colonial rule.