OUMAYA ALIEH SOUBRA

istorical accounts commonly pinpoint two incidents that unfolded on April 13, 1975, as the beginning of the Lebanese civil war. That day, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerillas attacked a Maronite church in Beirut’s ‘Ayn al-Rummaneh neighborhood. A few hours later, Christian gunmen retaliated by ambushing a bus heading for the Tall al-Za’tar Palestinian refugee camps. However, the underlying conditions that led to what would. Although Soubra would not dabble in overtly “political art” even in the following decades, depicting a reading woman was an odd choice for the time. A relic of 19th-century Europe, this art historical archetype conveyed middleand upper-class refinement, melancholic introspection and (although never entirely) domesticated female sexuality.