The Memory Tree is the only standing memorial to the famine that Mount Lebanon suffered from 1915 till 1918 during the Ottoman rule due to the British and French blockade along the Mediterranean.

The Arabic calligrapher, Yazan Halawani, stated the following about this tree: “It is said that the Lebanese suffer from collective amnesia. And that Beirut finds it difficult to recall this brutal past. It is also said that those who can’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” And this resonated in me as a local.

It is all made of Arabic calligraphy of the phrases that poets and writers wrote about the famine who lived through it, as Khalil Gebran. Surrounding it is a group of benches that anyone can sit on and a sidewalk that is wide enough for biking and kids to play around.