A seven-year investigation into the attack that began the Lebanese Civil War 50 years ago…

In Beirut, on April 13, 1975, a bus carrying Palestinians is targeted by armed men, marking the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. In the style of Javier Cercas or Patrick Radden Keefe, journalist Marwan Chahine has embarked on a spectacular investigation, the first of its kind, into this inaugural event. His aim is not only to uncover the truth but also to better narrate the story of his father’s country.

On an April morning 1975, a bus carrying Palestinian families slowly advances down a quiet residential street in Ain el Remmaneh, a suburb of Beirut. Suddenly, a gunshot rings out, followed by another, and then carnage ensues. Retribution is swift, and the rest is history: a civil war lasting over 15 years. Very little is known about this inaugural event that everyone in Lebanon claims to have witnessed but refuses to remember. What really happened that morning? Why is this scene both so present in the collective imagination and yet so mysterious?

Like Radden Keefe in Ne dis rien, Marwan Chahine has investigated the history of this infamous bus for over 7 years to untangle fact from fiction and reveal the reality of every war: generations sacrificed, thugs turned heroes, micro-events turned legends, true villains, false heroes, abundant ambiguities, sincere false beliefs, the blending of drama and absurdity, and more.

Through this investigation, he questions the memory of war not to redistribute roles or reveal scoops, but to allow memory to circulate—of victims, of perpetrators, of subsequent generations—showing that they are all more closely connected than one might think.

Marwan Chahine was born in Paris in 1982 to a Lebanese father and a French mother. As a journalist, he was correspondent for Libération in Cairo during the Egyptian revolution. He also worked for Le Nouvel Observer and L’Orient-le Jou.