Feature: Lebanese sculptor preserves memories of war in clay

BEIRUT, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- On the southern edge of his home village of Hebbariyeh, perched quietly on a hill beneath Mount Hermon, Lebanese sculptor Samir Mansour spends his days transforming the soil of the south into clay faces that retrace the lives of people scarred by war, displacement, and decades of upheaval.

Inside a small room packed with rudimentary sculpting tools of all shapes and sizes, Mansour sits on an old wooden chair before a table stained with clay and scattered with simple instruments essential to his craft.

Before he begins sculpting, he walks out to the surrounding fields, collecting a specific type of soil in cloth bags. He transports it in his aging car back to his workshop, where the first stage begins: soaking the earth in a pit for a full day to prepare it for molding.

"We treat the clay until it becomes sticky and cohesive," Mansour told Xinhua, "and only then do we move to the next stage."

At that point, he explained, "the faces start to emerge slowly -- the crease above the eyebrows, the curve of the mouth, the weariness etched into the people of the south after long years of fear and vigilance. These faces don't resemble one person; they are a blend of everyone I saw during the war."

Across the workshop, dozens of small sculptures line wooden shelves: men returning to their ruined lands, women carrying the resolute calm they held through displacement, and children with wide eyes reflecting wonder and deep-seated fear.

Mansour said his fascination with people's faces began with the memories of war -- watching residents rush to hide, abandon their homes, or return to inspect what remained. "Sometimes a single look revealed everything -- loss, fear, and the constant attempt to stay composed."

"The faces of southerners are not just features," he said. "They are pages of a history we lived. I'm trying to preserve them before time alters them or memory erases them."

Clay, he said, feels closest to his spirit. "It comes from the same earth the southerners lived on. It wouldn't make sense to document their suffering with plastic or synthetic materials. Clay makes every piece feel tied to the memory of the place."

For Mansour, clay sculpting is "simple yet complex -- it requires experience, clarity of mind, calm, sensitivity, patience, precision, and craftsmanship." A single sculpture may take anywhere from two to ten hours.

Some sculptures he intentionally leaves incomplete. "They resemble people's lives -- still unfinished after the war."

Mansour's work has drawn admiration from visitors who stop by the humble workshop from time to time.

"When I saw one of Samir's pieces, it felt like the faces of those we've lost," said Samer Al-Ali, a man in his fifties. "Maybe because the clay comes from our own land."

Nakhleh Haidar, a young woman in her twenties, described the sculptures as "faces that seem to have walked out of the houses of the south, from the fields, from old village alleys."

Young villager Jalal Amer added, "We plant this earth and dig into it, while Samir makes it speak. That's what I admire most about his work." ■