1940 Beirut, Lebanon

Mohammad Al Ahmad
1940
Interviewed on1/29/2019
By Ali Sawar

When I was around 8 years old, my family was expelled from our watermelon farm in Haifa, Palestine. We moved to a refugee camp on the outskirts of Jenin. Needless to say, a trip to the movie theater wasn’t really on the menu.

I worked hard at school, and eventually received a scholarship to go to college in Beirut. I moved from a shanty town in Palestine to the Paris of the Middle East – a world of cinema was now in reach.

The first movie I remember seeing was My Fair Lady, which still happens to be my favorite movie — I think the 60s was a beautiful time for movies in general. I was in my early twenties.

A trip to the movie theater was the ultimate outing. I tried to take your grandmother to see a picture whenever we felt like we could afford it. I remember holding her hand the whole time during The Sound of Music.

Sometimes we went alone, and sometimes we were joined by a group of friends. We would usually make our way to a theater called Roxy Cinema around sunset. The theater was on Hamra street, a three-kilometer walk from our house. You would come into the building and buy tickets at an office on the ground floor, then walk upstairs to the theater. There wasn’t any popcorn back in those days, but a man would go around the theater selling drinks and peanuts before the movie started. I liked to order a hot cup of tea with my peanuts.

On the day we saw My Fair Lady, we didn’t go to Roxy. There was a fancier theater called Piccadilly Palace in downtown Beirut. It was an opera theater, but when they weren’t hosting a play, they would screen movies. There was a tram that took you downtown, and you didn’t need to buy a ticket unless you were traveling more than one stop. We didn’t have the money for a ticket, so we would travel one stop and wait for the next tram to come, and repeat. Once we got there, an usher showed us to our seats and we waited for the movie to start. There was a lot of talking at first, but when Audrey Hepburn came on screen the whole theater went silent, save for the crunch of peanuts.

I’ve seen My Fair Lady at least 10 times since then, and I still think it’s a great movie. The actors are good and the storyline is ridiculous but delightful. They just made better movies in my day.

Movies were really the best way to unwind after a stressful week, but they were also addictive. My friend Suleiman would joke that whenever he picked up a book to study, all he could see was Bridget Bardot!