Texas in Beirut

byHabib Battah
Oct 27, 2012

The mountain village of Bikfaya is at least 5,000 miles away from the Lone Star State…

But the stars shine bright down the beat-up sidewalk, just past the vegetable guy…

Ironically, “Texas International Real Estate” is housed in a building that may pre-date the state’s acceptance into the union in the late 1800s.

But foreign “international” titles are always a selling point in the imagination of Lebanese businessmen, no matter how irrelevant they may be to the local context.

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 15 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.