Ziad Rahbani held a mirror to Lebanese society

GOOD art resonates with each generation. Ziad Rahbani might have wished that some of his did not. The plot of “Belnesba Labokra Chou?” (“What About Tomorrow?”), his classic play, is simple: a young man moves from the mountains to the city and finds work in a bar. But life in Beirut is expensive, so his wife turns to prostitution. It is a tale of a strained marriage and a strained society, the latter undergoing rapid urbanisation and an incipient civil war. Every Lebanese can quote its most famous line: “They say tomorrow will be better, but what about today?”