Indagare Global Conversations Talk with Melissa Biggs Bradley and Bokja's Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibri

“In Beirut,” says Indagare CEO and founder Melissa Biggs Bradley, “beauty is wrapped up in justice and a desire for an improvement in the world.” One store that embodies that synthesis is Bokja, founded two decades ago by Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibri. After meeting at a party and running into each other in Beirut’s social circles, they discovered their shared passion for creating. Together, they’ve worked with refugee artisans from dozens of countries, who have woven political symbolism into their gorgeous handiwork, and helped earn Bokja a huge international following along the way.

As part of our ongoing Indagare Global Conversations series, Indagare members and friends recently joined Melissa for a discussion with Hoda and Maria. “We had access to master embroiderers because of the unrest throughout the Middle East and the Arab world,” explains Maria. “All these people came to Lebanon with their craft, and their way of seeing things, and they knocked on our door. Our team became a little representation of all these techniques.”

During the hour-long chat, Melissa, Hoda and Maria touched on how political activism and high design can be woven together, what Lebanon looks like in lockdown and more. See below for highlights from their discussion.

See more Global Conversations, here. Stay tuned for the full recording of this conversation, coming soon.

A Conversation with Bokja's Hoda Baroudi and Maria Hibri

What does your quarantine look like for you?Hoda:

 Quarantine is playing tricks on me...At times it seems like a blessing in disguise, because it asks me to stop and look at my house again, reconfigure the spaces, cook and cook and cook. But, most of the time, there’s this elephant in the room and there’s this cloud of anxiety that seeps in.

Our latest collection, from seven months ago, at Bokja is called “Solastalgia,” and it was a premonition from us at the time. One of the team members mentioned that this word’s been circulating the last few years—when the fires in the Amazon and California happened. It defines a stage where there’s anxiety whenever something shifts in the world environment and you cannot find an explanation for it. And if you ask me what quarantine means for me now, it’s solastalgia. I can’t understand the meaning of this total lockdown. But also it puts its finger on a positive note. It’s a yearning to be wholesome with nature again. There’s this desire to go back to a home that is not like home anymore. This is what quarantine is for me these days.

Maria: I’m quarantined at home, and actually I’m in the same neighborhood as Hoda. I’m discovering the way the light shifts in the house, which is something I never experienced before, because I never stayed in the house so much. So I move around with the light...I’ve always questioned the fact that I'm a hoarder and have so much stuff around me, and I was thinking maybe I should be like Marie Kondo. But now I’m very grateful to have all these things that make me feel like I’m traveling throughout my life inside my house.

How have your routines changed? Is Bokja totally closed?

Hoda: Lockdown isn’t just about you. It’s about protecting the other, so we’ve really tried to abide by the rules, and when we opened the atelier with very strict measures, it was only to move the machines to the artisans’ houses, so each artist now has the machines at home.

I find it very helpful to find a routine and stick to it—to create a structure so you won’t melt from anxiety. So the highlights of my day are going to the kitchen at noon with my husband to indulge in my passion for cooking. We give it the time that we actually never had before, and we cook much more than we need and I leave the food at the doorsteps of my neighbors and close friends. I find that very gratifying and it warms my heart that I’m at least able to affect a little change. A religious highlight of my routine is the 7 o’clock drink on my balcony watching the sun set over Beirut. Other than that, there’s the usual yoga hour, reading and trying not to glue yourself to the television all the time.

Maria: I’ll add the fact that it was difficult at the beginning not to wake up and go to work. For as long as I can remember in my adult life, I wake up and go to work. The first two weeks I had withdrawal symptoms. I missed making things. I missed the fact that we had that privilege that we are able to express ourselves with our work. In the week before shutdown, we started making all these “Love in the time of Corona” cushions, embroidering the coronavirus...and we felt ‘Okay, we can handle this. As long as we use this amazing language that we have created throughout the years to express whatever life was throwing our way.’ So this was how we managed usually.

Understanding that, ‘Okay. Let me settle in to the act of not doing, just being.’ As Lebanese we’ve always experienced this sense of Flight or Fight. Whenever there is a trauma, we either fight it or we fly away and run to the mountains or outside Lebanon. Now, we need to stay still, and this is new. Fighting it for us, as Bokja, was always to create and commemorate.

Are there coping mechanisms you have from growing up in Beirut during the Civil War that you feel like you’re turning to now?

Hoda: We were young girls during the Civil War. It was a time in Lebanon, that despite the war, life was still operational—still happening. I was at the university and the only time that I felt life coming to a standstill was six months in 1982 where we needed to be careful from the shelling. We couldn’t go out, because there was curfew....At the time, I remember I would go three hours every morning to a hospital at the refugee camps and take care of children who’d lost their parents to their shelling. And in the afternoon I’d go to my cousins’ house and we would knit the afternoon away. I remember that time as something very warm and positive. Despite the destruction that happened, it was still a very intimate and personal story of ours. It is actually the hiccups we experienced after the war that gave us the preparatory immunization to deal with what’s happening now....

Maria: We cannot plan because we never know what happens tomorrow. We know about the fragility and impermanence of things. During the war, we would go to the shelters, but we’d be able to hug and touch. Mediterranean people, and Lebanese people in particular, are very much about contact and human contact. Nothing, even the worst of wars which we’ve experienced in our lives, prepared us for this moment where we cannot touch. This is what I’m missing most.

What makes our situation mostly unique now, is that before Corona we’ve been struggling for three to four months of being on the street and fighting every day to end corruption and damage that has been done to our country by this regime that has eaten up all our resources. So even before Coronavirus...we hadn’t been working, our resources were already depleted, and people were going hungry. So now there’s a feeling of extreme fear of what will happen to us if this lasts more. We have no reserves, and we don’t trust the government to take care of us. I’m just coming now from a demonstration in the cars with Lebanese and we were roaming around the city to demonstrate.

Hoda: Since October when this revolution started to take place, there was semi-confinement all over the country. There were many roadblocks so farmers couldn’t deliver goods, the banks were closed, so people weren’t going out. Maria and I tried to keep a sense of normalcy, but it was a confined mood. And then Corona happened, so we had a soft landing. And one of the theories why we weren’t so impacted by the virus is that the revolution made people stay more in their houses…

Maria: There were no concerts, no communal gatherings. The country was at a standstill anyway. So to be hit with this, Corona is the cherry on the cake. And the joke—it’s all about jokes at the end of the day—the joke was, ‘Give us a break! What’s next this year?'

Hoda: Maria, remember the earthquake?

Maria: Yes, we had it all! And it seems like a very heavy situation, but I have to tell you—although it’s the most desperate state we’ve ever been through, I’ve never laughed so much because of this incredible humor that is always part and parcel of this country. I’ve never seen so many beautiful initiatives. I’ve never cried from the beauty of words and generosity and empathy and people doing things, going outside their comfort zones to comfort others. I’ve never felt wave after wave of love and pride to be Lebanese. And honestly, I’ve never felt that this is the only place I want to be. If I could go tomorrow and hide, and there was no Corona in, let’s say, Switzerland, I wouldn’t go because I want to be here with our people. The way our people have reacted to this—have reacted to the Revolution—is something that makes my heart rise like a balloon. I’m so grateful.

Are you seeing some signs that the revolution is going to change things?

Hoda: It’s a difficult situation where the country is made in a way that allows congressional leaders to be in control, and over the last 30 years, those leaders have abused power, missed on economic opportunities and stolen money. The revolution was a necessary outlet.

Without hope, we will never be able to go on. We have to hope that change is coming. There’s no other way. It would be impossible. But my fear is that this cannot happen without a transition to a civil society where people are judged on their merits and there is a complete transparency across the board. It’s impossible to do it halfway.

We have a government that’s a shadow government of the more important leaders. This shadow government is trying to affect change, I think it’s meaningless, because it’s a compromise. At this point in our lives, with the coronavirus, with the bankruptcies, with...with...with...I think compromise should not be allowed. Here, my fear, mingled with hope always, is that it will be a long and bloody one, and there’s no going back.

Maria: When you hit rock bottom, the only way is up. And we did hit rock bottom. But also it’s making people feel more free to say those things that we’d be afraid to say in other times. The language is more radical and the need for change has become so imminent. Otherwise, we’re going nowhere here. Maybe Corona will speed up the process of change. Maybe. I am always more optimistic than Hoda, because I am sick with optimism. But because also I am watching the young generation of Lebanon that has made this revolution happen and I was side by side with them, by the scene, as much as I could be, and I saw some of them today, and I look in their eyes and I look at their determination and the way that they’re free. The Civil War has affected us so much, we are always afraid to go back to that specter of war. They don’t remember that, and they don’t have that fear in them. So they’ll go all the way and they will not accept the status quo. You are so lucky in the States: How lucky you can be that the government will provide. That it’s sending people checks, giving small companies resources to help them stand on their feet until it’s over. We have nothing, but we have each other.

Hoda: As lockdown is happening we’re in our house and we can be in denial. But once we’re out of here, we’re on our own.

What is your economic model?

Hoda: We’re not passionate, we are mad. So back in the days when we used to create one-off pieces, what helped us find our niche was the fact that once the piece was created, we said ‘I want to keep it,’ so we priced it very expensively.

Maria: Hoda, stop, this is oversharing!

Hoda: But when you deal with old textiles, there is no price attached to it. The price is being dictated by how much you covet this piece. Now, the model is fortunately and unfortunately not in our hands anymore. Our CEO takes care to help us with proper margins and wholesale prices.

Maria: The product is an honest product that’s a vehicle for emotions and strong storytelling. The whole world is sensitive to it, so it’s never been really difficult for us to find new markets, because the product spoke for itself. Both of us are very resourceful and so we never stayed put, we just went in with our catalog at the beginning and knocked on every door. It does work to do that. And before creating a new collection, where we’ll need a long time to create, we make sure we have enough cash to cover us for a while. So we go and have exhibitions anywhere in the world, and we always work with an NGO. By giving back, you get something back. We want to be sustainable and we want to give back and be honest. And it’s a viable business model.

Maria and Hoda in Brief

What are you reading now?Hoda:

I’m not reading anything fully. I can’t concentrate. But I’m trying Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. She wrote it in 1928 in the wake of the Spanish Flu, where you had millions perish, and the war. Everything about Clarissa Dalloway is very timely. In addition, I’m reading Black Wave by Kim Ghattas. This book talks about the rivalry between the Shias and Sunnis to control the modern Middle East...It’s very interesting.

Maria: I’ve been interviewed in the local newspaper here, because I’m known to be an avid reader. And I’m going to be honest....Never in my whole life have I been so unable to read. Normally, it’s where I run away from reality. I’ve always read on a daily basis. I devour books. But I don’t want to be distracted. I want to be in this moment, and I don’t want to miss a beat. Reading is what I do in my normal life, but this is not my normal.

What are you watching?

Hoda: What got me through the first month was Endeavor. It’s amazing. I recommend it to anyone who wants to forget about this horrible machine you built in the 20th century. It takes you back to the 1960s and early 1970s and is about an inspector Morse, who’s fascinating. Since then it’s been Trump, Trump Trump.

Maria: I actually watched Tiger King. Fascinating. I found it very timely—I don’t know why. And I watched Unorthodox. But that’s it. I don’t have the patience to binge on things. But to find that the whole world is watching this documentary Tiger King—as an anthropological thing, I find it fascinating.

Are there any textiles or brands that inspire you?

Hoda: I’m a sucker for old things. Old textiles talk to me. Particularly sensitive to this velour that comes from Central Asia. New brands from two friends: Jennifer Shorto, inspired from Old African fabric, and also Idarica Gazzoni in Milano, who weaves textiles inspired by the Ottoman empire.

Maria: I stopped wanting to own it—I’m curing myself of that—but my heart skips a beat whenever I see something embroidered or handmade with time and with love.

Where to Donate

Bokja partnered with the Lebanese Food Bank on a previous collection. “It is the best vehicle in Lebanon during this dire time,” says Maria. The food bank works towards short-term relief, as well as long-term solutions for the quarter of Lebanon’s population living in poverty.

The two also recommend Libami, run by a close friend “who’s given her life since the Revolution to put together an NGO that connects resources to the most needy.” Libami works with multiple non-profits across Lebanon, including the Food Bank, as the “middle chain” to link individuals with the help they need.

Bokja is also creating one-of-a-kind reversible silk masks to continue to provide local artisans with work. The banks in Lebanon are out of order. To purchase the masks, please contact global.classroom@indagare.com.

Read Afar’s article on Indagare Global Classroom.