Riwayati exists because the everyday history of this country — the grandmothers, the village stories, the wars survived, the bakeries that closed and reopened — has nowhere to live. We're building somewhere for it to live.
The history books in Lebanon record presidents, treaties, and wars. They do not record what it was like to wait for the bread oven to be ready at 5am in your grandmother's village. They do not record the names your father called his pigeons. They do not record what your uncle's bakery smelled like during the shelling, or which fish your great-grandmother used to buy in Tyre that no fisherman catches anymore.
These stories live in our living rooms and in our kitchens, and they are dying with the people who carry them. We are a country built on memory — and the memory has nowhere to go.
Each story is pinned to the place where it happened. A grandmother in Bsharri tells us about the cedars; her story sits on the map exactly where she grew up. Her grandchildren in Montreal can find it. Her great-grandchildren can find it. Anyone, anywhere, can find it.
Every recording opens with the storyteller giving spoken permission to share. We provide the script in four languages, including Lebanese Arabizi. We never publish without that consent in the recording itself.
We do not publish content naming specific politicians, parties, or sectarian groups. We are acutely aware of how easily an archive like this could be politicized and shut down. Personal experience is welcome; political commentary isn't.
We clean audio (background noise, hiss). We translate titles into three languages. We do not edit out hesitations, accents, dialects, or sighs. The voice you hear is the voice that was recorded.
No paywall. No ads. No data sold. Every story is downloadable under a Creative Commons license. Researchers, teachers, families — anyone can use it. Funded by donations and grants only.
Riwayati is run out of a two-room office in Mar Mikhael by a team of four. We are journalists, audio engineers, and an oral historian. None of us is famous. We do this because nobody else was going to.
Layal recorded her grandmother on a phone over three afternoons. The grandmother passed away four months later. The family began sharing the recording in messages.
By word of mouth, twenty families had asked Layal to help them record an elder. The recordings sat on Google Drive folders. There was no way for anyone outside the family to find them.
An AFAC research grant funded the first six months. Joe and Maya joined. We began the protocols, the consent script, the editorial standards.
We're live. We're recording faster than we can edit. We need help — financial, editorial, and from the families and storytellers themselves.
We work closely with universities, archives, and cultural foundations across Lebanon and the diaspora. If you'd like to discuss a partnership, write to hello@riwayati.lb.
Riwayati is run by a small editorial team in Beirut. Every donation goes to hosting, audio editing, and travel grants for collectors in remote villages who can't make it to us.