Umm Kamel’s Affair

Abstract

Weakened by the expansion of several imperial and colonial projects, the inhabitants of Jabal ‘Amil survived as second-class citizens, severed from the urban expression of Lebanese nationalism, and having to formulate their identity amid countless transgressions on their scholarship and literary production. It is thus in the spectacles of the universe and the mysteries of the cosmos that they inscribed fragments of their oral legacy, turning the night sky into an archive that no empire could burn or colonize. And yet it is light pollution, leaking from the same cities they were once forced to nourish, that quickly established itself as the main transgressor, clearing the faintest stories in their celestial library. Although distant manifestations of Islamic cosmology could no longer animate their rural nights, new alterations in the sky after dark, no matter how violent, have proven worthy carri-ers of their modern myths and legends. And it is onto the loudest object in their polluted sky, the Israeli reconnaissance drone IAI Searcher MK, that they grafted the tale of their legendary matriarch Umm Kamel. I argue that Umm Kamel’s physical and symbolic ascent into the sky was orchestrated by a modern generation of ‘Amilis whose infidelity to the celestial stories authored by their ancestors fortified their ability to transform the combined pressures of pollution and colonization. United by their efforts to forge new imaginaries around a starless night, they invite reflection on the possibility (and responsibility) of confronting the sky we have together inherited rather than lamenting the one we have lost. In tracing Umm Kamel’s transformation from figure to constellation, I contend that their cosmic interventions set the stage for new alliances between design and darkness, and ultimately, for a more expanded imagination of night design, particularly within the context of the climate crisis.

Keywords:

• night
• design
• darkness
• architecture
• sky
• decolonization
• liberation
• Lebanon
• climatem

Say, ‘Tell me, if all your water sinks into the earth, who then will bring you clear flowing water?’¹

It is He Who has made the earth for you a cradle, and has caused pathways for you to run through it; and Who sends down rain from the sky, and thereby We bring forth various kinds of vegetation.²

In the summer of 1950, much like in previous periods of severe drought, the people of Jabal ‘Amil gathered at night to pray for rain.³ Their congregation followed days of fasting and concluded several nights of walking barefoot behind the ‘ulama and the mu’addhinun, who journeyed from one village to another before convening to perform Salat al-Istiqsa. After completing the prayer, the ‘ulama ascended their pulpits and hung up their cloaks. Together with the congregation, they raised their hands in supplication, earnestly praying, beseeching, and imploring God for rain. But despite the sincerity of their efforts, these rituals, detailed in the autobiography of a Shi’i cleric from the village of Saqra,⁴ failed to bring life to Jabal ‘Amil’s summer that year. And so when rain finally arrived several months later, on July 24 at 7:15 p.m., people were surprised, even deeply disturbed. For it is not water that descended from the sky that Monday evening, but blood, bullets, and fragments of brain tissue.⁵

The night of July 24, 1950 etches a significant chapter in the history of Jabal ‘Amil’s sky as it witnessed the earliest instance of Israeli military aggression within Lebanese airspace. This occurrence was far from typical because the Lebanese airline Compagnie Générale de Transports, a subsidiary of Air France, operated routine flights from Beirut to Kalandia airport in the Arab region outside Jerusalem.⁶ On that evening, just like any other, the Dakota DC-3 aircraft named ‘Tripoli’ departed Kalandia as scheduled, identified as flight No. 118, with a total of 25 passengers on board. At an altitude of 8500 feet, Pilot Charles Corsin steered the plane toward Mount Hermon, approximately 30 kilometers east of the Israeli border. The Lebanese airliner had recently passed over Lake Tiberias and was nearing Marjayoun when the Israeli aircraft, known as the Spitfire, suddenly appeared. In that moment, as both planes were traversing the sky above Jabal ‘Amil, the fighter jet unleashed numerous bursts of machine gun fire. Fragments of flesh were propelled onto the ceiling of the Lebanese aircraft and into the air. Following strong criticism, the Israeli spokesperson clarified that the shots were intended as a warning, responding to what Israel perceived as an Arab disregard of its airspace and therefore its right to exist.⁷

With over 25,000 Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace from 2007 to 2023,⁸ the irony of the earlier statement will become increasingly apparent over time. However, what makes that summer night of 1950 particularly intriguing is that whatever plummeted from the Jabal ‘Amil sky, presaging the millions of substances and devices that would fall at night in the years to come, landed not far from Umm Kamel’s house in the village of Taybeh. If both this initial precipitation and all its subsequent variations establish a new climate for Jabal ‘Amil—one where military objects rain at night irrespective of the season—then the following pages will examine how this famed matriarch was severed from her humble dwelling and elevated into the cosmos to counter the naturalization of this new weather. I argue that her physical and symbolic ascent into the sky was orchestrated by a modern generation of ‘Amilis whose infidelity to the celestial stories authored by their ancestors fortified their ability to resist and transform the combined pressures of pollution and colonization. United by their efforts to forge new imaginaries around a starless night, they invite reflection on the possibility (and responsibility) of confronting the sky we have together inherited rather than lamenting the one we have lost. In tracing Umm Kamel’s transformation from figure to constellation, I contend that their cosmic interventions set the stage for new alliances between design and darkness, and ultimately for a more expanded imagination of night design, particularly within the context of the climate crisis.

Figure 1. Polaris, Moon, and Umm Kamel

Credit: All images by author.

Umm Kamel and the Brightening Sky

No matter what occupied young Fatima al-Assaad’s childhood, it is likely that on December 27, 1913, she gazed up at the sky. On that day, crowds gathered to witness the first-ever flight over the villages of Jabal ‘Amil, as a plane piloted by the 32-year-old Frenchman Jules Vedrines made its way from Beirut to Yafa in Palestine.⁹ Vedrines was in the midst of a journey from Paris to Cairo aboard his Bleriot XI aircraft, participating in an aerial race initiated by the Parisian newspaper Le Matin, which had pledged to award the winning aviator a substantial prize of half a million French francs.¹⁰ The Le Matin race left a profound impact on many citizens of the Ottoman Empire, instilling in them a newfound admiration and respect for the Europeans. Naturally, this changing attitude stirred resentment among numerous Ottoman officials who saw in France’s celestial achievement a direct challenge to the empire’s authority and influence. As a result, roughly two months later, an Ottoman plane appeared in the Jabal ‘Amil sky as it made its way from Istanbul to Alexandria in a promotional campaign for the empire. However, much to the shock of onlookers, it crashed suddenly and fatally into a valley near the Sea of Galilee, resulting in the instant deaths of both the pilot and copilot.¹¹ The news rippled through the Ottoman Empire, signaling a turbulent future—a struggle for aerial dominance preceding a contest for territorial sovereignty.

It didn’t take long for Fatima’s village, like many towns and villages across the empire, to appear as dots on newly-drawn French maps. Shortly after the Versailles Agreement in June 1919, which confirmed that Lebanon and Syria would be placed under the French Mandate, France recognized the urgent need to improve transportation links between Beirut and the hinterland. Its aircraft filled the atmosphere, no longer in a simple show of prowess, but in a staging of its territorial grip. The skies over Jabal ‘Amil saw a particular surge in activity, as the region straddled the border between newly-founded Lebanon and Palestine, with the latter under British Mandate and pledged as a national home to Jewish Zionists by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour. The protracted negotiations over this border, which began as early as May 1916 during the Sykes-Pico Agreement and concluded in December 1920, demanded relentless mapping efforts orchestrated by surveillance planes that quickly inhabited the Jabal ‘Amil ecosystem.¹²

It was a rainy night when, on February 10, 1932, Fatima assumed the name of Umm Kamel after giving birth to Kamel al-Assaad. This significant event occurred eight years after her marriage with her cousin Ahmad al-Assaad who, at nineteen years old, was seven years her junior.¹³ Serving as the undisputed zu’ama, the feudal leaders of the mountain from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, the al-Assaads’ authority was deeply rooted in their official roles as representatives in the Ottoman parliament.¹⁴ These positions were closely tied to their esteemed lineage as descendants of the Saghir family, a formidable clan believed to have inherited the emirate of Jabal ‘Amil in the sixteenth century. Recognized as the legitimate rulers of the mountain, whose forebears had given their lives to defend the land and its faith, the al-Assaads came to embody the very essence of martyrdom and the political and religious values intrinsic to Shi’ism in Islam. Among the ‘Amilis of the twentieth century, none personified these principles more resolutely than Kamel Bey al-Assaad’s namesake—Umm Kamel’s father and representative of Vilayet Beirut in the Ottoman government. Tamara Chalabi writes:

People saw his lineage as a symbolic projection of the Shi’i notion of their history as one of struggle and martyrdom in the face of injustice, the life and death of the imams being the confirmation for this history of struggle. According to Shi’i legacy, all of Ahl al-Bayt, the descendants of the Prophet through his daughter Fatima and Ali bin Abi Talib, were either killed or poisoned. In Jabal ‘Amil’s history, the deaths of the illustrious ulama Muhammad Bin Makki (d. 1384), known as the First Martyr (al-Shahid al-Awwal), and Zayn al-Din bin Ahmad (d. 1558), the second martyr (al-shahid al-Thani), only encourage such historical perspective.¹⁵

The year 1924 witnessed his passing on a night devoid of moonlight,¹⁶ a moment that both solidified his connection to the renowned scholars of Jabal ‘Amil and paved the way for the next generation of ‘Amilis to design their liberation across the sky. In his obituary of Kamel Bey al-Assaad, Amir Shakib Arslan writes: “The latest news mourns al-Badr al-Kamel, the full moon, and Amal al-Amili, the Hope of the Hopeful, the za’im of Jabal ‘Amil.”¹⁷ This remarkable ability to illuminate the night sky by assuming the guise of a celestial entity finds its parallel in the execution of Zayn al-Din bin Ahmad al ‘Amili at the hands of the Ottomans. Known as the Second Martyr, bin Ahmad was a prominent Twelver Shiite ‘alim of the sixteenth century whose role in spreading Shi’ism from Jabal ‘Amil across the Persian Empire marked him as a prime target for the Ottomans. While a Turkoman tribe looked on, a man executed him and reportedly presented his severed head to the Sultan. On that fateful night in 1558, the tribe observed lights descending from the heavens, then ascending again.¹⁸

The celestial ascents of both the za’im and the ‘alim represent two instances of illumination that may seem similar, but that originate from vastly distinct contexts. While Zayn al-Din bin Ahmad’s path across the sky represented a rift between Jabal ‘Amil and the Ottoman Empire—one that heralded the demise of the region’s golden age of literary and cultural production—Kamel Bey al-Assaad’s moonrise symbolized both the community’s pride and its concerns about the loss of political stability, which it wielded through his connection with the Ottoman parliament. Decades would pass before those sentiments of cultural and political loss, personified by two eminent men in Jabal ‘Amil’s patriarchal society, could morph into a shared call for power and freedom epitomized by Umm Kamel’s ascent into the night sky.

Figure 2. Nightfall in Jabal ‘Amil

Credit: All images by author.

While Kamel Bey al-Assaad’s passing symbolically and fleetingly illuminated the skies of Jabal ‘Amil, the years that followed the French Mandate saw a material and enduring brightness enveloping Umm Kamel’s expanding family. This transformation was the result of an unprecedented surge in light pollution originating from Beirut and other coastal cities that represented the newly established project of Grand Liban.¹⁹ Declared by French General Henri Gouraud in 1920, Grand Liban necessitated the invention of a new heritage—one that claimed the Lebanese as the descendants of the Phoenicians, an ancient people whose cities lined the eastern Mediterranean coast.²⁰ This sea-centric nationalism, engineered by the French and subsequently validated by scholars and historians, had a simple objective. By establishing a connection between the Lebanese and the Phoenicians—a civilization that significantly influenced the Western world—Lebanon was to be rebranded as a nation famed for its cultural and economic ties with the Western world, rather than with its neighboring Arab countries.

With this heightened emphasis on Lebanon’s coastal cities, there came the integration of Jabal ‘Amil into a redefined region known as South Lebanon. This transition was not only geographic but predominantly symbolic, highlighting the southern hinterland as an agricultural extension of the state’s core.²¹ Michel Chiha, a prominent figure within the Francophone group Les Jeunes Phéniciens (the Young Phoenicians) and one of the coauthors of the 1926 Lebanese Constitution, discussed the ‘South’ in his work Politique Intérieure: “Lebanon has obligations towards the South, as it does towards the Bekaa, both a bit too neglected. However, we have to draw from the land and the night, in both provinces, a wealth of material and spiritual riches.”²² In no time did this invitation to learn from Jabal ‘Amil’s night and land reveal itself as a directive to harvest both, especially through narratives of the sea.

The sea brightening the night sky was a sight familiar to Umm Kamel. She had a habit of rising in darkness to immerse herself in Quranic readings before joining her husband, hours later, for conversations about regional and global politics. In Images of Women: The Portrayal of Women in Photography of the Middle East 1860–1950, we encounter a unique portrayal of her that breaks from the practice of referencing her in biographies of her husband and father. It is there that we learn—somewhat ironically—that Ahmad al-Assaad, at the outset, lacked experience, was excessively trusting, and consistently relied on her wisdom and sharp judgment.²³

Umm Kamel’s awakening to increasingly brighter nights marked a turbulent chapter in the history of the al-Assaad clan. Their power and standing, rooted in both their lineage and the Ottoman-backed feudal system, faced uncertainty as the French Mandate took hold.²⁴

Both Fatima al-Assaad and her husband found themselves entrusted with the stewardship of their dynasty, particularly after the passing of Ahmad’s father in 1936. Although they ardently championed Arab nationalism and the unity with Syria, the signing of the Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence that same year forced them to accept the separation between the two nations and adopt the vision of Grand Liban.²⁵ With Ahmad al-Assaad frequently in Beirut after assuming his role as a member in the newly-established Lebanese parliament, Umm Kamel took on her position as the eldest and most influential member of the al-Assaad clan in Jabal ‘Amil. An article in the Al-Akhbar newspaper notes, “When Umm Kamel settled in South Lebanon, she wielded authority and decisiveness, convening deputies, ministers, elders, and municipal leaders to issue her commands from behind a veil. Anyone suspected of disloyalty to the al-Assaads faced isolation, and those attempting to mediate with Kamel’s adversaries faced severe consequences.”²⁶ In fact, the profound respect and fear she inspired in the local villagers contributed to her title as Umm al-Janoub, or Mother of the South.²⁷

And thus Umm Kamel became the mother of a South whose nights were far brighter than the one she was born into. Ironically, this radiance highlighted the plight of villagers who remained without access to electricity.²⁸ The gradual erasure of Jabal ‘Amil’s night, triggered by light pollution seeping from the very cities that the people of the South were taxed to nourish, embody an enduring cycle of depletion that stripped both the land and the sky of the knowledge they once carried. The slowness of this transformation only heightened the tragedy, with people realizing years later that their sky no longer brought to life the scenes and legends they had cherished for generations. And it no longer handled their vital weather forecasts, once rooted in an attentiveness to the slightest changes in celestial alignments. This is illustrated by the nearly forgotten adage, “When al-mizan [Libra] vanishes, unhitch the horses from the plough,” which reflects the role of the night sky in initiating and concluding the harvest season.²⁹

This loss of an archive inevitably calls to mind the punitive raids orchestrated by Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, the governor of Acre, when his troops set Jabal ‘Amil’s libraries ablaze at the end of the eighteenth century.³⁰ Scholars from Acre are said to have chosen the most precious manuscripts from the stolen collections and claimed them as their own. The remaining works fueled the fires of the city’s bakeries for six consecutive nights.³¹ Who could have anticipated that the clouds of smoke billowing from Acre at night, symbolizing quite literally the city’s consumption of Jabal ‘Amil’s scholarship, would be permanently etched into the sky for centuries to come? Certainly not Baha’ al-din al-‘Amili, the distinguished astronomer hailing from Jabal ‘Amil, whose significant treatise in astronomy, Tashrīh al‐aflāk, stands out as one of the early works in the sixteenth century advocating for the Earth’s potential rotation, predating the widespread acceptance of Copernican advancements.³² Even Hasan Kamel al-Sabbah, the celebrated inventor from the city of Nabatieh, whose pioneering work in electricity played a pivotal role in the advancement of twentieth-century technology, might have been deeply troubled to witness the stars he had frequently discussed with his mother fading from sight.³³ Yet despite the magnitude of this loss, it was the appearance of new stars—ones notably lower, and bluer—that would alter both the substance and symbolism of the Jabal ‘Amil night sky forever.

The Making of a Constellation

As she convened daily in her humble majlis, hosting gatherings beneath the imposing al-Assaad palace, Umm Kamel’s influence saw remarkable growth during the 1930s, extending its grasp over South Lebanon and northern Palestine. Her rise was aided by the fact that the border demarcating the two countries, as defined by an Anglo-French commission in 1923, remained essentially a theoretical separation and had little impact on the inhabitants living nearby.³⁴ In fact, the predominantly Shi’i south, which had received little attention from the central Lebanese administration, relied heavily on its economic and cultural ties with Palestine.³⁵

The situation took a turn for the worse as tensions escalated between Jews, Arabs, and British authorities during the 1936–39 Arab Revolt, when Palestinian Arabs demanded independence and an end to the policy of unrestricted Jewish immigration and land acquisition. To mitigate the influx of weapons and assistance from Lebanon into northern Palestine, the British army opted in 1938 to establish a border for the first time.³⁶ The initial delineation, known as Tegart’s Wall, coincided with the arrival of Sir Charles Tegart and included a frontier road with three parallel barbed wire fences, as well as concrete blockhouses positioned at specific intervals. However, due to topographic limitations, the border proved ineffective in preventing the infiltration of aid and support.³⁷ Some jestingly commented that the only thing Tegart’s Wall managed to deter was wildlife—it served as a perfect barrier to keep wolves out of northern Palestine while keeping gazelles safe.³⁸ Although the birds of Jabal ‘Amil remained unaffected by the extension of this terrestrial border into the sky, its impacts would be profoundly experienced by the people of the South, especially in the wake of the Nakba and the proclamation of the state of Israel in May 1948.

The Israeli assault on the Lebanese airplane in the late hours of July 24, 1950, as highlighted in the opening of this article, provides compelling evidence of the border’s vertical dimension and its use as a rationale for acts of violence. Pilot Charles Corsin’s account of encountering “a fighter aircraft bearing a star” while flying over the foothills of Mount Hermon marked the beginning of an era in which the Star of David eclipsed all other stars above Jabal ‘Amil.³⁹ And while this initial act of aggression resulted in military and biological discharges that happened to land near Umm Kamel’s residence, subsequent aerial assaults would deliberately target the al-Assaad palace facing her. This was a response to Ahmad al-Assaad’s strong opposition to the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, even though records from al-Hadaf newspaper in October 1945 revealed that he had sold several plots of land to a Jewish agency.⁴⁰ Despite consistently managing to avoid injury during these military campaigns, the stress they imposed, coupled with escalating national tensions, ultimately led to his demise on March 16, 1961.⁴¹ Over 50,000 people congregated around the al-Assaad palace to partake in the commemorative ceremony, including ministers, presidents, and religious figures. During the funeral procession, Umm Kamel rallied the crowd to present her son, Kamel al-Assaad, as the future leader of Jabal ‘Amil, with the aim of preempting any potential disputes over his claim. Thus, the bereaved raised their hands skyward and declared in unison, “The leader has departed; long live our leader Kamel, the leader of our nation.”⁴²

Following her son’s relocation to Beirut to assume his father’s parliamentary role, Umm Kamel’s influence in Jabal ‘Amil grew to epic proportions. It became so vast that she seemed to straddle both the physical realm and the world of the Jinn, spiritual entities consisting of nations and tribes with the ability to operate in both the seen and unseen domains. It was during this time that a Jinni double of Umm Kamel, known as al-Salha, began to make nocturnal appearances. She appeared as a tall, slender, radiant figure dressed in white and reminiscent of someone preparing for prayer. In her memoir al-Hajr, Najah Taher, who is Umm Kamel’s granddaughter, would later recount: “Al-Salha is my grandmother, yet she adorns herself in garments of pristine white.⁴³ Her impact was so profound that people bestowed upon her the name ‘The Benevolent’ and held a genuine belief in her.”⁴⁴ Through al-Salha, Umm Kamel firmly established her position within Jabal ‘Amil’s oral traditions, particularly during the nighttime hours, as she began to lurk in the shadows, in haunted houses and open fields. And with the ongoing reinforcement of the Israeli Air Force and the increasing presence of planes in the night sky, it wasn’t long before children perceived, in the distant glimmer of each Israeli aircraft, the ethereal figure of al-Salha descending from the heavens.

And yet, despite their unquestionable creativity, it was their parents—our parents—who nurtured this infidelity and granted their offspring the power to reclaim the cosmos. Theirs was a challenge of navigating paradoxes: how to preserve a sky without reaching it, how to live under a predator without yielding to it, and how to ensure that even the monster terrorizing their children is theirs, derived from their legacy and not the occupier’s arsenal. Al-Salha is the commoner’s weapon, a hybrid of metaphysics and technology. It enabled ‘Amili peasants to denounce, by mechanizing Umm Kamel, the feudal order that exhausted their ancestors. And to undermine, by haunting the plane, the apartheid system that would slaughter their kin.

While the land border between Lebanon and Israel remained relatively calm in the 1960s and early 1970s, the skies over Jabal ‘Amil bore witness to unprecedented aerial activity. This reached a climax during the Six-Day War in June 1967 when the Israeli Air Force gained complete air superiority after neutralizing Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian airfields. Lebanon’s refusal to join the Arab armies in the war against Israel ushered in an era in Jabal ‘Amil when the nocturnal al-Salha loomed ominously and resonantly without inflicting substantial damage below her. In fact, her appearances quickly outnumbered those of Umm Kamel herself, whose advancing age naturally diminished her political engagement. By the time she drew her final breaths in a Beirut hospital in the early hours of March 3, 1978, surrounded by loved ones,⁴⁵ al-Salha had completely replaced her in Jabal ‘Amil. Umm Kamel’s ninety-year-old body was transported to Syria and laid to rest near the Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque in Damascus, a shrine dedicated to Zaynab, the eldest daughter of Fatima and Ali ibn Abi Talib.⁴⁶ The following day, Hanan al-Shaykh penned a significant article in an-Nahar titled Matat Umm al-Janoub, which translates to “The Mother of the South is Dead,” accompanied by eulogies and photographs of the thirty Sheikhs who carried her body and interred her in a dedicated chamber within the mosque’s precincts.⁴⁷

Umm Kamel’s departure from the material world, marked by the ascent of her soul to the celestial Kingdom, rendered al-Salha’s presence in the night sky quite redundant. In fact, following her passing, Umm Kamel’s relationship with al-Salha underwent a profound transformation. Though seemingly insignificant, this sudden doubling called for an urgent reassessment of Jabal ‘Amil’s oral culture. And within that same year, the destiny of this legacy fell into the hands of a group of more than twenty ‘Amili adolescents, among them my eldest aunt, who congregated in the vicinity of the al-Assaad palace to deliberate the future of their rural cosmology. My aunt Khadija recalls the passionate debates and exchanges that persisted until the late hours of the night. For those peasant families who endured the most suffering at the hands of the al-Assaads over the past century, burdened by high taxes and labor exploitation, their desire was to see Umm Kamel rise to the sky and unite with the Israeli plane. They believed that this merging effectively brought together all the adversities experienced by Jabal ‘Amil, thus making their struggles more easily transmitted to the next generation.

Conversely, those who still held a deep respect for the cultural and political heritage associated with the al-Assaads wanted Umm Kamel’s story to remain firmly grounded. For they saw in her earthly presence a reminder of their land’s authority—one that could counter the militarization of their sky. Eventually, the group decided that al-Salha, whose spectral presence could be better used to compel their younger siblings to return indoors on regular nights, must descend from the sky. And as their collective decision resonated throughout the surrounding villages, supported by nightly rituals of storytelling and cultural production, al-Salha’s dominion was confined to the shadowy landscapes across the hinterland. Meanwhile, Umm Kamel ascended comfortably to her celestial realm, leaving her spiritual voyage imprinted on the ‘Amili sky in the form of a sublimated yet ominous machine.

The concept of Umm Kamel as a celestial being was still emerging when, on March 14, 1978, just ten days after her passing, the Israeli military launched a large-scale invasion of Lebanon. Operation Litani, as it was officially designated, was initially portrayed as a response to an attack by the Palestinian group Fatah that occurred two days earlier and resulted in the deaths of around thirty Israelis. However, its broader objective was to eliminate the bases of Palestinian resistance groups in the region and establish a ‘security’ zone extending ten kilometers into Lebanese territory.⁴⁸ While Operation Litani marked the largest breach of Lebanon’s land border thus far, Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace had become commonplace, especially since 1970 when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) relocated to South Lebanon after being expelled from Jordan.⁴⁹ This denoted a fundamentally different assertion of Israeli sovereignty when compared to the stance taken by military officials in the aftermath of the 1950 attack on the Lebanese airliner. If the earlier attack was justified by Israel on the grounds that any violation of its airspace posed a threat to its territorial integrity, the pretext had now shifted to emphasize that the nation’s sovereignty was contingent on its daily incursions into Lebanese airspace and its efforts to detect threats emerging from across the border. Paradoxically, then, Umm Kamel’s increasing presence in the sky above Jabal ‘Amil played an essential role in disseminating the very narrative that allowed the ‘Amils to reintegrate their stories into the cosmos.

But as the Lebanese sky turned into a battleground between ‘Amili symbolism and Israeli militarization, most noticeable at night when Umm Kamel’s whistling echoed more profoundly, an inverse battle unfolded on the ground. In fact, when Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon on June 6, 1982, it merged engineering and iconography to validate the magnitude and urgency of its military campaign.⁵⁰ This fusion materialized in Israel’s own spiritualized vessel, a creation unlike Umm Kamel, designed by the Israeli army and infused with biblical references. The most overt of these allusions was the name of the vehicle itself, merkabah, given to the powerful tanks that surged into Lebanon during the IDF’s Operation Peace for Galilee.⁵¹ In his book Children of Ezekiel, Michael Lieb examines how the Israeli army employed the name of the merkabah to weaponize longstanding apocalyptic fears, thereby framing the 1982 invasion of Lebanon as a racial confrontation of cosmic significance.⁵² In the first chapter, “Technology of the Ineffable,” he writes:

In order to better understand the rationale underlying the decision to adopt the biblical nomenclature for these particular tanks, I wrote directly to Major General Israel Tal, the assistant defense minister of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)…. I received a letter dated July 15, 1985 from Ze’ev Klein, assistant to General Tal…. According to Klein, this tank dates back as early as 1968…. Under the leadership of General Tal, Israel determined, in August 1970, to develop and manufacture its own tank, modified to the “special and unique needs” of the nation…. Because of a desire to underscore the significance of that decision, General Tal, together with Major General Coren, then the IDF’s chief rabbi, chose a biblical name for the tank. This name would symbolize not only the strength embodied by the tank but also its salvific role. Evincing a sense of religious and prophetic fervor, Klein concludes with this flourish: “Israel now has a defensive weapon, a tank, that gives expression to her physical power and spiritual determination to defend herself until peace with all her neighbors will prevail.”⁵³

In its paradoxical quest for peace, then, the merkabah defends Israel by invading the lands of its neighboring countries. And yet, Lieb argues, the tank does not derive its prophetic powers from the territories it conquers but rather directly from the sky above them.⁵⁴ As an artifact both human and divine, the merkabah, he notes, embodies a contemporary and tangible manifestation of the anxiety dream chronicled in the Hebrew text of Ezekiel.⁵⁵ In this biblical narrative, the prophet, seated on the shores of the Chebar, bears witness to the opening heavens, revealing a radiant storm-cloud and flashing fire advancing from the north. At its center, he observes a chariot with four gleaming wheels accompanied by hybrid creatures flapping their wings loudly, each possessing four faces directed toward the cardinal directions, all moving in harmonious unity.

Amidst the rise of apocalyptic ideologies rooted in the oracles of Ezekiel, few have championed the joint practice of nuclearizing and racializing the bible as vehemently as Pat Robertson,⁵⁶ the evangelical figure who placed third behind George Bush and Robert Dole in the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States in 1988.⁵⁷ On June 9, 1982, just three days after Israel initiated its invasion of Lebanon, Robertson took to television to forewarn his audience about the impending horrors of an Armageddon battle.⁵⁸ With television cameras trailing his every move, he approached the blackboard, using his pointer to highlight the Middle East, and paraphrased Ezekiel’s oracle against Gog. Elaborating on how the oracle encompassed Russia, Armenia, Libya, South Yemen, and Iran as the enemies to the north, he proclaimed that “this entire scenario is now in motion” and “can transpire at any given moment.”⁵⁹ Within this narrative, the merkabah assumes the role of the promised celestial vehicle sent from the heavens to ‘defend’ Israel against any enemy forces poised to descend from the northern regions.

Embedded in the conflict between the merkabah and Umm Kamel, particularly evident during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and beyond, was no longer merely a confrontation between the Israeli army and the inhabitants of Jabal ‘Amil. Instead, it had transformed into a war striving to impose a radiant Hebrew sky on the ruins of a dark Shi’i cosmology. Consequently, as the Israeli army and its apologists across the globe deployed apocalyptic narratives to justify Israel’s northward incursions, Jabal ‘Amil responded by unleashing its own celestial ideology. This gave rise to the renowned call to arms, al-Shams Tashruq min al-Janub, translating to “the Sun Rises from the South.”⁶⁰ With unwavering infidelity to the heliocentric model of the cosmos, the nascent Lebanese resistance, emerging amid Operation Peace for Galilee armed with a modest military arsenal, positioned itself at the convergence of three interconnected souths: the south of Lebanon, grounded in a history of martyrdom against injustice; the Global South, as part of a broader Islamic ummah dedicated to freeing lands occupied by the Zionist regime; and the symbolic South, the realm of the rising sun, where struggles for freedom and darkness and freedom in darkness herald a new dawn.

Despite its grandeur, the merkabah stood alongside other Israeli technologies unveiled during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. While the tank drew strength from Ezekiel’s prophetic visions, it sought another, more tangible support from the heavens to choregraph its movements on the battleground. This crucial assistance materialized in the form of a bird, an oriole, making its inaugural appearance in the Jabal ‘Amil sky. But unlike typical orioles that feed on fruits and berries, this particular species had an appetite for blood. The Israeli oriole, later recognized as the IAI Scout, became the first reconnaissance unmanned air vehicle (UAV) dispatched by the Israeli army to Lebanon.⁶¹ Its specific objective was to capture crucial footage of Syrian air defenses in the Bekaa Valley, a mission that would precipitate their downfall. This collaboration between the land and the sky facilitated the siege of Beirut by Israeli forces from June to August, concluding with the PLO agreeing to evacuate Lebanon and relocate to neighboring Arab countries.

In 1985, aligning with the IDF’s establishment of the South Lebanon Security Belt, the oriole solidified its presence as a native species in Jabal ‘Amil. This ‘security’ belt, a swath of Lebanese territory approximately ten kilometers wide, was occupied by the Israeli army after its withdrawal from Beirut. Authority over this region was delegated to the South Lebanon Army (SLA), the quasi-military force of the collapsed Free Lebanon State, which relied fully on Israel for logistical and military support. While commonly discussed in terms of its territorial takeover, the South Lebanon Security Belt played a significant role in triggering the proliferation of the intrusive oriole species and all its subsequent variants in the sky. Among these, none left a more lasting impact on Umm Kamel than the marsh tern, a long-winged white bird that underwent a foul deformation at the hands of the Israeli army, emerging as the IAI Searcher MK.

Although, up to that moment, Umm Kamel had been predominantly linked to Israel’s manned aircraft, which lit up the night sky with flares, phosphorous munitions, and various other bombs that the IDF tested periodically on Lebanese civilians, the IAI Searcher MK provided the matriarch with a new, more consistent nightly abode. As the inhabitants of the Security Belt endeavored to articulate the name of this new predator, attempting to trace its relentless buzzing across the night sky, they quickly recognized that the letters M and K in the Searcher MK echoed Umm Kamel’s own name: Umm Kamel/MK. And as their voices grew louder, they grafted Umm Kamel onto the drone’s body, this time morphing her into an eerie hybrid of marsh tern, ‘Amili woman, and military technology. So ingrained had this creature become in the ‘Amili culture, so embedded was she in people’s customs and practices, that schoolchildren spent their lunchbreaks diligently trying to draw it. They labored to blend the bird’s wings with Umm Kamel’s figure, its bill with her face, all intertwined with the technologies of surveillance developed by the Israeli army. Even today, more than three decades later, it remains difficult to come across a child’s sketchbook in Jabal ‘Amil without finding drawings of the mechanized harpy—all mirroring, inadvertently, the throne-chariot detailed in Ezekiel’s vision.

While military technologies multiplied during Israel’s nearly two-decade-long occupation of Lebanon, particularly as the clashes between the Israeli army (and its Lebanese allies) and local resistance groups intensified, Umm Kamel had, by the early 1990s, settled into a consistent expression that endures to this day. This stabilization was grounded in the mutation of war in Jabal ‘Amil from a state of violent eruption to an everyday social condition where, as Munira Khayat observes: “life and war, often perceived as opposed and antithetical, are experienced as continuous, interwoven, entangled, interactive, constitutive, fused, one.”⁶² The movement of Umm Kamel through various military constellations and its eventual assimilation into the UAVs, the “Golems… [the] army without soldiers,”⁶³ as articulated by retired Brigadier General Shimon Naveh, attest to that very integration of war into the routines of rural life. Unlike manned aircraft, which shattered the night sky during Israeli escalations, Umm Kamel emerged as the emblem of war that has been domesticated, normalized, and reclaimed.

She had been humming in the sky for years when, on July 25, 1993, Israel initiated Operation Accountability, releasing bombs and illegal chemicals that infiltrated people’s lands and skins. She was also buzzing when, on April 18, 1996, a week after the launch of Operation Grapes of Wrath, Israel committed the infamous Qana Massacre, targeting hundreds of civilians and United Nations peacekeepers hiding in a UN compound. Few nights are etched into the ‘Amili consciousness as vividly as the evening following the massacre, when rain poured unexpectedly, washing away the blood and dust, and muffling the incessant sound of Umm Kamel. But her resonance echoed again soon after, enduring through the years leading up the 2006 July War, when she was overshadowed by Israel’s newer—and louder—armed drones and the thousands of leaflets and millions of cluster bombs that fell on Jabal ‘Amil at night. And today, she remains, watching from above as Israel bombs South Lebanon, even as I write these very words.

Yet it is Umm Kamel’s presence beyond those intermittent moments of extreme violence that offers insights into the everyday nature of the night sky in Jabal ‘Amil. In this merging of agrarian and military cycles, shepherds have mastered navigating the dark countryside by observing her predictable movements in the sky above them, much like their ancestors who, a few decades ago, depended on Polaris. Children rehearse their Shi’i cosmology by layering her nightly paths onto those of the constellations they can no longer see. When they grow weary of her presence, they create their own earplugs to block out her irritating buzzing as they complete their homework before bedtime. In rooms nearby, their parents, having just utilized her grimness to coax their youngsters indoors, sense her through the television channels she distorts while making her way across the sky. And they switch to those channels that prove more resistant to her interference, mocking the solitary Israeli soldier trying to observe their cozy family evening in an isolated chamber, away from loved ones.

Figure 3. Cycles of natural and artificial Illumination. Credit: All images by author.

However, unlike the tenacious television stations, which oscillate between resistance and suppression, these nightly practices could, and should, be discussed without confining their creators within political identities premised solely on struggle and resilience. “How might we develop theories,” asks Lila Abu-Lughod, “that give [people] credit for resisting in a variety of creative ways…without misattributing to them forms of consciousness or politics that are not part of their experience?”⁶⁴ Umm Kamel, then, ought to be understood as it is experienced on those ‘Amili nights, as a pursuit of life, knowledge, and hope that often transforms and transcends the pressures of pollution and colonization. Although molded by violence, her story today embodies the labor carried out by the people of Jabal ‘Amil to endure and prosper and dream, not only on their fertile lands, but also beneath their changing sky.

Designing (with) the Modern Night Sky

On September 10, 1981, Lebanese musician and composer Marcel Khalife released the song Alliyha, or “Speak Up,” as a rallying cry for unity against Israeli subjugation. In it, he implores his listeners to vocalize and relay their collective stories, loudly and defiantly, reminding them that, “Our story is not written in books, it is illuminated in the nights of people without histories.” The impact of this five-minute song on the ‘Amili legacy throughout the tumultuous decades that followed cannot be measured. Nevertheless, it prompts us to recognize how the people of Jabal ‘Amil illuminated their nights by actively and collectively engraving their story—in darkness—on the same surveillance vessel shining a bright light on them. Embedded in Umm Kamel’s design, then, is a project of illumination. Yet it is one realized by rejecting, reappropriating, and ultimately eclipsing the metaphors and manifestations of the colonial project. But also by overcoming the longing for the radiant nights of times past and the celestial practices of ancient civilizations.

By positioning Umm Kamel as a design project, my aim is to propose a relationship between design and the sky that aligns closely with the joint practices of decolonization and decarbonization. While contemporary architectural discourse frames the night sky as either a dynamic spectacle to observe or a dark backdrop to project against, I argue instead for its recognition as both a physical and a symbolic site of intervention. “Current modes of seeing and understanding the environment are designed,” Verzier and van Westrenen remind us, “they could therefore be redesigned.”⁶⁵ And it is within this paradox of complicity and hope that I call for a new practice of night design—one that champions imaginations of the sky both arising from and defying its ongoing pollution and militarization. It is, of course, crucial to identify the role that premodern interpretations of the cosmos could play in the ongoing struggle for climate justice and liberation. However, we must be cautious not to obscure the efforts of those who, out of necessity, are reshaping their skies today in ways that like Umm Kamel propel us beyond the binaries of past and present, nature, and technology, hero and enemy, cosmos and territory, and even East and West.

Umm Kamel, after all, represents a commitment to demilitarization rooted in the nocturnal culture of the Lebanese hinterland, yet one that resonates with similar pursuits across the global South. Unlike the territories of Jabal ‘Amil, which are owned and liberated by the ‘Amilis, her existence remains conditioned by expansionist states that regularly fly their vessels across different ‘enemy’ airspaces. As such, rather than constraining her to a localized practice of resistance, I contend that she presents the potential for a broader decolonial undertaking, one that calls for contributions that transcend geographical and political borders. A glimpse into these alliances unfolds when tracing the route of an Israeli UAV as it travels from Lebanon towards Gaza, a journey throughout which Umm Kamel delicately relinquishes control of the military vessel and entrusts it to the zanana—her Palestinian counterpart. Naturally these collaborations and the larger practice of night design I’m advancing extend beyond drones and the skies of Lebanon and Palestine. While Umm Kamel’s story may be considered extreme, parallel projects are unfolding even in the densest of cities, each striving to attach new meanings to a sky that vigilantly observes and illuminates whom it perceives as hostile. And it is by mobilizing those imaginations towards a joint ownership (or a collective dispossession) of the night that we can dream of, and organize for, a postcolonial future.

As much as I would have liked to conclude Umm Kamel’s story with my previous statement, I find it necessary to add a note of caution, not least to prevent any assumption that I’m placing the responsibility of liberating the cosmos on those already bearing the brunt of environmental and political injustices. I firmly oppose any practice that perpetuates our dependency on those facing the most violence to imagine solutions for the systems and technologies profoundly impacting their lives. But I also reject the notion that technologies are foredoomed to pollute and militarize, and that the most effective path forward is one that blueprints the past. Any effort seeking to alter the meaning and materiality of the night sky in the future demands new collaborations between design and technology today. But ones that, unlike the exchanges that have shaped our modern sky, are aimed at mutual decolonization. Within my formulation of night design, I place the responsibility of navigating these urgent alliances on architecture and its allied fields. For they have been most complicit in naturalizing and reinforcing the interchangeability between ‘night design’ and ‘light design,’ as well as the colonial metaphors hiding beneath its guise of rationalism and security. Thus by forsaking certain outdated loyalties they may wield the greatest impact in championing a new treaty with the night.

Yet “how do we define something,” Momtaza Mehri asks, “if we cannot grasp it long enough to hold it under the light?”⁶⁶ How do we represent without illuminating, containing, crystalizing, and extracting? Such is the paradox woven into this new practice of night design, which acknowledges that those with the imagination to emancipate our contemporary sky are precisely the individuals we mustn’t coerce into the harsh glare of disciplinary or material scrutiny. And so as I unfold Umm Kamel’s story and expand upon it to envision new possibilities for night design, I bear witness to my own infidelity. It is an onerous disloyalty to the people of Jabal ‘Amil, who are unlikely to reap the rewards of this extensive exploration of their sky. It also extends, albeit more proudly, to the design disciplines, which persist in embellishing the radiant gaze of the setter colony.⁶⁷ And it finally reaches many of the technologies dedicated to environmental justice today, which predominantly address the night sky as a canvas to be dimmed through reduced or altered forms of artificial illumination. Reversing these infidelities requires a pursuit of new loyalties, particularly ones founded on scientific and cultural representations of darkness that move us past its portrayal as an absence of light.⁶⁸ After all, as evidenced by its political and symbolic constructions,⁶⁹ as well as its material and radiative qualities,⁷⁰ the night sky is far more complicated than a mere absence. And it is only by dismantling such narratives of emptiness that night design could join a legion of works fighting against the smog and violence of an eternal day.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohamad Nahleh

Mohamad Nahleh is a lecturer in architecture and urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His interests include postcolonial literature, urban theory, Arab history and mythology, and Islamic cosmology. Nahleh’s research and practice work to decenter Western conceptions of darkness and the night. Rather than a backdrop against which contemporary modes of practice might be celebrated, the night in his work acquires a political sovereignty that dismantles the strict link between ‘night design’ and operations that strive to repress darkness—physically or symbolically—through illumination. His forthcoming book, Design After Dark, studies the transformation of the night in the Middle East following the expansion of Ottoman, French, and Zionist colonial projects. It reveals, in particular, how the people of Jabal ‘Amil in Lebanon collaborated with the night to design their liberation. Nahleh is also a registered architect in Lebanon. His ongoing projects include the Path of Nightrise—a seven-kilometer walking trail that archives Jabal ‘Amil’s rich nocturnal legacy through a series of stations along the Litani river. He is now a Journal of Architectural Education fellow.

Notes

1 The Quran 67:30.

2 The Quran 20:54.

3 Muhsin al-Amīn, “Les Rogations Pour la Pluie,” in Autobiographie d’un clerc chiite du Gabal ʻĀmil, ed. Sabrina Mervin and Haïtham al-. Amin (Damas: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2014), 116.

4 al-Amīn, “Les Rogations.”

5 Kirsten E. Schulze, “Coercive Diplomacy: The 1950 Israeli Attack on a Lebanese Airliner,” Middle Eastern Studies 31:4 (October 1995): 922.

6 Schulze, “Coercive Diplomacy”: 921.

7 Schulze, “Coercive Diplomacy”: 924.

8 “Air Pressure,” 2022, https://www.airpressure.info.

9 In Ūsāmah Shafīq. Jadāyul, Tawārīkh fī samāʼ balādnā: al-tayyarān fī Lubnān 1913–1944 (Lebanon: Manshūrāt Jāmiʻat al-Balamand: Manshūrāt Dār al-Nahār, 2005), 23.

10 Jadāyul, Tawārīkh, 52.

11 Jadāyul, Tawārīkh, 55.

12 Richard P. Hallion and R. A. Mason, “The Palestine Campaign of 1918,” in Strike from the Sky: The History of Battlefield Air Attack, 1910–1945 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 29.

13 Sarah Graham-Brown, “Campaigning Women,” in Images of Women: The Portrayal of Women in Photography of the Middle East, 1860–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 212.

14 Tamara Chalabi, “In the Beirut Vilayet,” in The Shi’is of Jabal ’Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation State, 1918–1943, 1st ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 29.

15 Chalabi, “In the Beirut Vilayet,” 28.

16 Muhsin al-Amin, A’yan al-Shi’a, vol. 9 (Beirut, 1957), 22–24.

17 al-Amin, A’yan al-Shi’a.

18 Devin J. Stewart, “The Ottoman Execution of Zayn Al-Dīn al-’Āmilī,” Die Welt Des Islams, The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Islam 48:3/4 (2008): 305. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i27798268.

19 See Tamara Chalabi, “Jabal ’Amil Redefined: In the Nation State of Lebanon,” in The Shi’is of Jabal ’Amil and the New Lebanon: Community and Nation State, 1918–1943, 1st ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 87–114.

20 Albert Hourani, “Ideologies of the Mountain and the City: Reflections on the Lebanese Civil War,” in The Emergence of the Modern Middle East, by Albert Hourani (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1981), 170–78.

21 Chalabi, “Jabal ’Amil Redefined,” 87.

22 Michel Chiha, “Liban-Sud,” in Politique Intérieure (Beirut: Éditions du Trident, 1964), 27.

23 Graham-Brown, “Campaigning Women,” 212.

24 Saad Aziz Karim Humaydawi, in Ahmad Al-Asʻad Wa-Dawruhu al-Siyāsī Fī Lubnān, 1908–1961 (Beirut: Dār Nārīmān lil-Nashr wa-al-Tibāʻah wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2019), 70–72.

25 Humaydawi, Ahmad Al-Asʻad.

26 Assaad Abou Khalil, “Ibn Al-Za’im,” Al-Akhbar, March 28, 2009.

27 Graham-Brown, “Campaigning Women,” 212.

28 Humaydawi, Ahmad Al-Asʻad, 93.

29 Edward Robertson, “Arab Weather Prognostics,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (April 1930): 381.

30 Muhsin al-Amīn, “La Généalogie de l’Auteur,” in Autobiographie d’un clerc chiite du Gabal ʻĀmil, ed. Sabrina Mervin and Haïtham al-. Amin (Damas: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2014), 23.

31 Marilyn Booth, “Formations: A Birthplace, a Family, a Voyage,” in The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-Siècle Egypt, 1st ed. (Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2021), 38.

32 Behnaz Hashemipour, “Āmilī: Bahā’ al‐Dīn Muḥammad Ibn Ḥusayn al‐Āmilī,” in The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, ed. Thomas A. Hockey, Virginia Trimble, and Katherine Bracher, Springer Reference (New York: Springer, 2007), 42–43.

33 Abbas Wahbi, in Riyādat Jabal ʻĀmil Fī Al-Buhūth al-ʻilmīyah Wa-al-ʻulūm al-Tajrībīyah: Mundhu al-Qarn al-Sābiʻ Mīlādī Hattá al-Thamānīnīyāt Min al-Qarn al-ʻishrīn, al-Tabʻah al-ūlá (Beirut: Dār al-Mahajjah al-Baydāʼ lil-Tibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2019), 76.

34 David Eshel, “The Israel–Lebanon Border Enigma,” IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin (2001): 76.

35 Eshel, “The Israel–Lebanon Border Enigma.”

36 Eshel, “The Israel–Lebanon Border Enigma.”

37 Eshel, “The Israel–Lebanon Border Enigma.”

38 Edward Horne, in A Job Well Done: A History of the Palestine Police Force 1920–1948 (Lewes, East Sussex: Book Guild, 2003), 67.

39 Schulze, “Coercive Diplomacy”: 921.

40 “Ahmad Al-As’ad Yabi’ al-Aradi Lil-Sahyouniyyin,” Al-Hadaf, October 16, 1945.

41 Humaydawi, Ahmad Al-Asʻad, 170.

42 Humaydawi, Ahmad Al-Asʻad, 171.

43 Najah Taher, in Al-Hajr, al-Tabʻah 1 (Beirut: Dār al-Adab lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2009), 66.

44 Taher.

45 Taher, 92.

46 “Matat Umm Al-Janoub,” An-Nahar, March 4, 1978, 13466 edition.

47 “Matat Umm Al-Janoub.

48 Ahmad Beydoun, “The South Lebanon Border Zone: A Local Perspective,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21:3 (1992): 35–53.

49 Augustus Richard Norton and Jillian Schwedler, “(In)Security Zones in South Lebanon,” Journal of Palestine Studies 23 (1993): 61–79.

50 Michael Lieb, “Technology of the Ineffable,” in Children of Ezekiel: Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End Time (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1998), 39.

51 Lieb, “Technology.”

52 Lieb, “Technology.”

53 Lieb, “Technology.”

54 Lieb, “Technology,” 40.

55 Lieb, “Technology.”

56 Michael Lieb, “Arming the Heavens,” in Children of Ezekiel: Aliens, UFOs, the Crisis of Race, and the Advent of End Time (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1998), 104–5.

57 Lieb, “Arming the Heavens.”

58 Lieb, “Arming the Heavens.”

59 Lieb, “Arming the Heavens.”

60 Munira Khayyat, “War, from the South,” Public Culture 35:1 (99) (January 1, 2023): 113–34.

61 John F. Kreis, “Unmanned Aircraft in Israeli Air Operations,” Air Power History 37:4 (1990): 46–50.

62 Munira Khayyat, “A Landscape of War: On the Nature of Conflict in South Lebanon” (Columbia University, 2013), 3.

63 Eyal Weizman, “Targeted Assassinations: The Airborne Occupation,” in Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, paperback ed. (London: Verso Books, 2012), 242.

64 Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women,” American Ethnologist 17:1 (February 1990): 41–55.

65 Marina Otero Verzier and Francien van Westrenen (eds.), in I See That I See What You Don’t See (Triennale di Milano, Rotterdam: Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2020), 15.

66 Momtaza Mehri, “Provocations on Shadow Play,” in I See That I See What You Don’t See, ed. Marina Otero Verzier and Francien van Westrenen (Triennale di Milano, Rotterdam: Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2020), 329–42.

67 See Mohamad Nahleh, “Nightrise,” Places Journal, October 2022.

68 See Simone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015).

69 See Craig Koslofsky, Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe, New Studies in European History (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

70 See Eduardo Gascón Alvarez et al., “Integrated Urban Heat Sinks for Low-Carbon Neighbourhoods: Dissipating Heat to the Ground and Sky through Building Structures,” Journal of Building Performance Simulation (October 6, 2023): 1–21.