An improvised life performance inside a taxi in Beirut, 12 hours driving daily for 3 days, 2025
سرفيس، سرفيسين، لعل الكلام يزيل التعب.
If you want to know how the country is doing, all you need to do is take a taxi. In what we call a “service” taxi, you’ll listen to the driver or to the other passengers sharing the ride with you. You’ll hear everything,politics, daily struggles, social dynamics.
In this temporary space, people’s stories unfold in full. They open up to the driver or to each other. Conversations often begin with complaints about the state of the country, corruption, nostalgia for the past and end with deeply personal stories. Financial struggles, health issues, or pride in children educated through years of hard labor behind the wheel.
The taxi becomes a space for venting and for brief, yet deeply emotional encounters.
It’s no surprise then that taxis have inspired so much literature, theatre, and film.
Taxi drivers work long hours with no social protections, no health insurance, no pension. My father was one of them. He retired voluntarily, worn out by years of driving. He often complained of pain in his joints and back. The economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed him to make the decision to stop, even though retirement offered no safety net. He returned to his village.
For a long time, I was haunted by the idea of driving his car myself, of becoming a taxi driver, sitting behind the wheel for hours, picking up strangers, and listening to their passing stories.
After the last war, I found that talking to others gave me strength. Sharing intense stories,, offered a strange comfort, a kind of cleansing through shared experience.
That’s what I intend to do in this performance: drive the taxi, and talk to those who come along for the ride.
