Why do southerners keep keys to their destroyed homes?

Question

Accepted Answer

Southerners keep keys to destroyed homes as a way to hold onto the idea of home and continuity after displacement
Fatima Hajj Ali and other southerners in southern Lebanon keep the keys to houses that have been destroyed because the key still represents the home they expected to return to and the door that no longer exists. In the exhibition “Hkeeli ya Jnoub” (“Tell me, O South”) at Beit Beirut, one project shows three southerners keeping their house keys even though the houses no longer exist, and Hajj Ali describes being unable to go back because “there is no door anymore”. The exhibition also links this practice to the Palestinian tradition of keeping keys to homes lost during the Nakba, when an estimated 760,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
The keys remain tied to the expectation of return
Hajj Ali, a 23-year-old from Nabatieh al-Fawqa, said she was supposed to go home and use the key to open the door, but the house was destroyed. She described that “half the house collapsed and half remained,” and said she longed for everyday sounds and routines, including sunset and the call to prayer in a garden, while also saying Beirut is “not home”. The key, hanging in the museum like a wind chime, functions in the display as a physical stand-in for that lost, familiar space.
The exhibition explicitly connects the practice to the Palestinian key tradition from 1948
The “Keys Without Homes” project by Adeeb Farhat draws on a wider regional precedent: Palestinians have a longstanding tradition of keeping keys to homes they lost during the Nakba. That 1948 “catastrophe” involved the flight and expulsion of an estimated 760,000 Palestinian Arabs during the creation of the State of Israel. Farhat’s work presents the act of keeping keys as part of how displaced people preserve memory when the original houses are gone.
Adeeb Farhat’s videos reflect fear of losing a home and the key’s changing meaning
Farhat, 36, said his idea came during the previous war in 2024, when he feared losing his own home and worried about what would happen to his relationship with his house key. His project includes videos of three southerners who kept the keys even though the houses no longer exist, placing the key at the centre of how people process loss. In this framing, the key is not only a reminder of a specific house, but also a marker of what has been interrupted in daily life.
The wider exhibition uses domestic details to show what the keys stand for
Other works in “Hkeeli ya Jnoub” reinforce that the keys symbolise more than property by recreating everyday life in destroyed homes. In “What Remains”, Sama Beydoun, 29, showed pictures of her grandfather’s destroyed home in Bint Jbeil, while a recreated bedroom, living room and kitchen included items such as a glass jug, coffee pot and spice containers. By pairing keys with domestic memories like weekly gatherings and kitchen objects, the exhibition presents the key as a tangible link to a home that has been erased.

Reading history

Hide →

This history is cleared when the page is closed.

Why do southerners keep keys to their destroyed homes?

Loading

Was this article helpful?

Helpful

Not helpful

Report an issue

1

0

0

Share with friends