Portrait of the Boy in Red: Days in Peace and War

Traboulsi's origins between three formative spaces: the ancestral village of Mashghara in the western Beqaa with its tanneries and springs; the family hotel in the mountain resort town of Bhamdoun; and the library that opened the world of books. A childhood shaped by the sensory landscapes of rural Lebanon and the cosmopolitan milieu of Beirut's foreign schools.

Political awakening during the turbulent 1950s — from the Arab Students' Club in Beirut to first encounters with Marxist thought and the journey to London for university studies. The chapter traces the formation of a young radical intellectual against the backdrop of Nasserism, the Suez crisis, and the 1958 Lebanese crisis.

The radicalization of the 1960s: witnessing the South Yemeni revolution, working at the Palestine Office in Beirut, and the devastating shock of the June 1967 defeat that pushed an entire generation toward armed resistance. The chapter ends with the turn to the mountain — literally and figuratively — as the path to revolutionary politics.

The radical left at the margins of the Arab world — named after the Qarmatians, the medieval egalitarian movement. Traboulsi moves between revolutionary Aden, the Dhofar guerrilla front in Oman, and the fedayeen camps in Jordan, immersed in the networks of the Organisation of Lebanese Socialists (OCAL) and the broader New Left that sought to fuse Marxism with Arab liberation.

The 1970s oscillate between revolutionary hope and bitter setback. The chapter follows the deepening entanglement of the Lebanese and Palestinian causes, the formation of the Lebanese National Movement under Kamal Jumblatt, trips to South Yemen and revolutionary Ethiopia, and grassroots organizing in the Beqaa Valley — all under the gathering storm of civil war.

The eruption of the Lebanese civil war in 1975. Traboulsi recounts the opening battles — the shifting front lines, the sectarian mapping of Beirut, the battle for Mount Lebanon, and the catastrophic siege of the Tal al-Zaatar refugee camp in 1976. "The Red Prince" refers to the political alliances forged between the Lebanese left and the Palestinian resistance under the Lebanese National Movement.

The civil war continues with the Syrian military intervention of 1976, the shift of fighting to the south, and West Beirut's transformation into a besieged republic of letters and arms. The chapter charts the escalating violence against Palestinian refugee camps and the internal fractures within both the Lebanese and Palestinian movements.

The interwar period between the Two Years' War (1975–76) and the 1982 Israeli invasion. Traboulsi travels to Africa, returns to South Yemen, engages with Cairo's intellectual scene, and takes up journalism at An-Nahar al-Arabi wal-Dawli — the international edition of Lebanon's leading daily. A pause between storms.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982 and the 88-day siege of West Beirut — the defining trauma of Traboulsi's generation. From the initial assault on the southern front to the encirclement of the capital, the daily bombardment, and finally the negotiated departure of the PLO. A companion piece to Traboulsi's diary About a Hope with No Cure, written during the siege itself.

Named after the flowering vine that survived the bombardment. The chapter covers the aftermath of the siege: the Sabra and Shatila massacre of September 1982, the birth of the Lebanese National Resistance against Israeli occupation, and the clandestine networks that sustained the struggle. Traboulsi's Green Notebook captures the raw immediacy of those days.

Exile in Paris, refracted through the city's transport system. A series of vignettes — encounters in the metro, on trains, in taxis — that illuminate the condition of the Arab exile in Europe: racism, loneliness, the "new poverty," and the surreal juxtapositions of life in a Western capital while Beirut burns. Sharp literary observations that blend sociology with memoir.

Cultural and political observations from France and Spain during the exile years. A mosaic of essays linking the personal and the political: Mahmoud Darwish's brush with death, the commodification of water, Guernica as mirror for Beirut, the parallels between Spanish and Lebanese sectarianism, and the assassination of the Marxist philosopher Mahdi Amel (Hassan Hamdan). The chapter weaves together art criticism, travel writing, and political analysis.

An elegy for every home the war destroyed. Traboulsi returns — in memory and in person — to the places that shaped him: the Beirut neighbourhood of Zuqaq al-Balat, the mountain village of Jaj burned by militias, the Bhamdoun hotel reduced to rubble in the Mountain War, the family house at Ras al-Jabal overrun by the Israeli invasion, and finally Mashghara itself, the ancestral village. The "Andalusian house" — bisected, like Lebanon — becomes the governing metaphor for irreparable loss.