Beirut concert tells tale of two cities exposing
DUBAI: The wildly popular Egyptian singer Amr Diab performed for an audience of thousands at the Beirut Waterfront in Lebanon on Aug. 19. Tickets went for $60 a piece, with concertgoers asked to wear white to be let in.
During his first performance in Lebanon in 12 years, the singer sported a $500,000 Rolex watch and was reportedly paid $750,000 for the concert and a private wedding show.
While Diab’s Lebanese fans might have been dazzled — if their Instagram posts from the venue were any guide — many found the concert and its star tasteless and insensitive at a time when Lebanon is in the grip of a protracted economic crisis that has pushed 80 percent of the population below the poverty line.
At the same time, some wondered how Diab was able to rally close to 20,000 people to the Beirut Waterfront, while the families affected by the Beirut port blast continued to call in vain for help from their fellow citizens.
The Aug. 4, 2020 Beirut explosion, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, devastated the capital. The impact destroyed the city’s port, damaged over half of the city and killed 218, injuring around 7,000 and leaving an estimated 300,000 homeless.
Diab’s starstruck fans were put on blast by Nasser Yassin, Lebanon’s minister of environment, who strongly criticized the state the venue was left in after the show was over as clips on social media showed the surrounding streets littered with garbage.
In a post on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, Yassin called on the company that organized the event to clean the site and adjacent streets at its own expense in accordance with the country’s 2018 Waste Management Law 80.
He also asked the governor of Beirut to issue general cleanliness.
