A Tale of Three Springs: The Masks and Desires of Water’s Infrastructure

By Peter Habib, Department of Anthropology, Emory University.

I came across it on a blazing Monday, tucked away next to a small dikkān (corner store) and a complex of five-story apartment buildings in Zahle. I had asked my companion—a water truck driver—about the water flows in this city, the capital of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Having arrived in Zahle just a few months prior, I was still getting my lay of the land. My time was spent on a seemingly futile quest to find what residents mentioned as a ubiquitous and mundane feature of this mountainside landscape: water springs.

We parked near the dikkān and I hopped down from the truck onto the asphalt and gravel. I tried to get my bearings, surprised that concrete structures surrounded me. My companion started to walk ahead and descended some steps into darkness. I stumbled behind him as my vision adjusted to the light change and my nose to the smell, not quite a sewer but certainly not the mountainside breeze I had envisioned for water springs. We walked into the underbelly of a storm drain network, littered with beer bottles, cigarettes butts and plastic refuse. Glossy mildew and mold covered the pathway. I saw water trickling and pooling in some areas but generally flowing. My companion motioned to my left by throwing out his arm without much care, as he started to leave the underground drain. “Hada al-naba ” (that’s the spring), he said (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Disputed Potability. Photo by Peter Habib.

I was confused. All I saw was a pipe protruding from a stone wall, with water flowing through. The ground below was covered in an algae-like substance. As if anticipating my disbelief, I noticed the sign. Written on a sheet of paper in black marker and taped to the stone wall, the text initially reads: “This water is suitable for drinking.” And then, in a different blue colored marker, scribbled in-between the gaps of writing, a single word negation, “ghayr.” “This water is not suitable for drinking.” It seems I wasn’t the only one perplexed by this underground watering hole, the pipe in the wall, the so-called spring.

Even more odd was a torn portion in the paper sign, on its left side. It is unclear if this tear was accidental or deliberate; an alteration to the sign’s message by removing what was previously written. From the addition of the word “ghayr” (not)—the axis from which the sign currently derives its meaning—we can speculate that this negation was originally part of the sign’s whole. And someone who contested the sign’s statement, (i.e., someone who trusted in the water’s potability) tore out this negation before the original author inserted it again between the lines. An absence through a tear—a negation of a negation—and a presence through addendum. The sign effectively serves as a canvas marking the temporality of the water spring, whose flows certainly predated the damp concrete surroundings which only serve to reinforce concerns of its potability.

The sign does more than bring to the surface disputes through an accumulation of contradictory statements; its very presence variously marks the water’s (un)potability and emphasizes the (im)possibility of a water spring in such a definitively urban environment. The water spring’s material form—as a metal pipe in a mildewed storm drain—is not only emblematic of humans’ entanglement with their environment¹. Rather, the water’s infrastructure—its very materiality—prevents the spring as existing self-evidently. The pipe in the wall needed a sign to speak for it, precisely because it is difficult to tell where the natural flow of water ends and a metal pipe in the wall begins. Here, we see that infrastructure is the spring while also masking such a reality. The function of the infrastructure and its form collapse into each other, making both indistinguishable and ultimately contested. Through this tension, the fundamental question of potability from an unknown source remains a mystery. While the sign reflects this ambiguity, it also highlights a central aspect of a water spring’s nature: the aesthetics and disputes of potable, pure, desired water.

To explore this further, I consider a second site. My continued search for water springs brought me to the nearby town of Jdita. Arriving at the main square, I approached a group of conversing men. I interrupted them to introduce myself and ask for directions to the town’s well known water spring. Ahmed (pseudonym), a 48-year-old Syrian man who lived his life in Jdita, offered to give me directions. Less than three blocks away we approached a small courtyard housing a mosque, an auto-repair shop, and a dikkān. Plastic chairs were scattered under shade from nearby trees. Those present were enjoying the lazy Saturday afternoon, moving from their places of work to the courtyard as conversation carried. At the center was a stream of water, running through a meter-wide, meter-deep canal. The stone tiling of the courtyard, the tree’s shade, and the water’s background trickle made this an inviting gathering place.

Figure 2. The Unknown Source. Photo by Peter Habib.

Pointing to the water, Ahmed claimed this was the head of the spring [Figure 2]. As I searched for the source of the canal, all I found was a metal grate, its color camouflaged with the stone to which it was attached, with the flowing movement of water rushing through. In the canal was algae, bricks, and some scatterings of litter. “This is for drinking?” (hada lil-shurb?), I asked Ahmed. “Yes, like this,” and he cupped his hands and bent over slightly, demonstrating how to quench one’s thirst. The nearby storeowner overheard us and interjected. A 28-year-old, he said: “We can all drink of it, but these days, us in the younger generation, we won’t drink from it unless it is tested.” (Kilna mnishrab, bas hallaʾ niḥna, jīl al-jdīd, ma fīk tishrab ʾila ma taʿmil test.) I asked the younger store owner about the source (al-maṣdar) of the water. He told me that “the source isn’t known. We are on a mountain, and all the [water] is underground.” (al-maṣdar mish maʿrūf. Hon al-jabal, kilo taḥt al-arḍ). He said that while experts claim the water is clean, “we don’t know what’s underground” (niḥna ma mnaʿrf shoo fī taḥt al-arḍ). The location of the spring’s head as beneath the courtyard, the mosque, the store, the very ground of Jdita, amplified uncertainties of the source’s precise origin, the water path it follows, and the potential contaminants it accumulates.

This encounter reveals much of water’s ambiguity and the very nature of springs. Water’s (un)certainty is derived not only from its visible sources, often pipe or well infrastructures built to direct or pull the underground flows of water to the surface. But it stems from a realm that can’t be seen, and a source that can’t be precisely located. Aquifers, for example, are often not discrete trails of water, such as underground streams which flow in the gaps of the earth. Rather, they are forms of earth—dirt and gravel and stone sediments—which contain enough interstices to hold water’s saturation. Such movement through earth can cling pollutants and filter water. But chemical and biological contaminants, often derived from irrigation or human waste, can prove resilient to such natural sieves. As the volume of groundwater reaches the capacity limit of the aquifer, it begins to breach the surface and seep outward. Only when it breaks the surface does the groundwater become seen. Canals and pipes are built to channel this predictable emergence of water. But its source, as the storeowner said, is the underground itself, and remains a shrouded zone that is always suspect. It is this unknowability and uncertainty of water’s source which positions the water spring in the liminal space between enchantment and disenchantment², purity and danger³.

Testing the purity of the water is of course the main signifier of its quality, but the result is not always definitive. This is because flows of water are inherently unstable. Any water test is rooted in a particular time and location; if a sample were taken during the dry season, for example, potential contaminants would be more concentrated, likely affecting its potability. Additionally, if a sample were taken downstream from its presumed pure source, contaminants could accumulate in its flows. Pollution, in its many forms, can also be punctuated and inconsistent, evading the temporal snapshot that a test captures. Such frequency and reliability of testing is unrealistic in today’s Lebanon, which is burdened with historic hyper-inflation and political impasse, making costs unmanageable and compromising the trustworthiness of officials’ claims. What remains is the grate and canal, guiding the endless flow of a spring whose source is unknown, and quality perpetually questioned.

One final spring for our consideration. Above the city of Zahle is the village of Wadi el-Arayesh. Walking through the town offers wonderful views of the ravine from which the village derives its name (meaning the Valley of Grapevines). In this lush mountainside village, water is known to be abundant, primarily from its seasonal snowfall and melt. Off the town’s main road one finds inviting infrastructure to gather water: a stone arch holds a brass fixture of a lion’s head [Figure 3]. From the mouth is a water spout, carrying a spring’s ceaseless flow (or waning trickle, in the driest summer months). Just below the spout is a small makeshift wooden platform to place one’s jugs for collecting the much-desired substance. It is located in the open air, adjacent to homes and underneath terraced vineyards reaching the full height of the hillside, with a view overlooking the full ravine. The site is, in a word, beautiful. This spring is frequented by many: local residents, passersby, as well as visitors of nearby Zahle, all of whom enjoy the refreshing, delicious, desired water.

Figure 3. The Ideal Form. Photo by Peter Habib.

Having frequented this spring during my many months of fieldwork, I would often spark up conversations with others collecting water. This spring is the town’s pride, and never once did I hear concern over its quality, despite the water channel’s location underneath a towering height of terraced irrigation and the possible seepage of agricultural chemical contaminants. This spring fulfilled the expectations of its ideal form: a mountainside location, topographically above nearby towns, with an inviting and well-attended infrastructure. This all culminated in the primary descriptor of the water: delicious (tayyeb).

Here we again see the importance of infrastructure’s form⁴ defining residents’ engagement with water springs. Despite—or perhaps because of—the literal mask of a lion’s face gracefully shrouding the pipes which channel the water’s flow, this spring is embraced as most desired and even natural. Yet faith in the water’s potability is linked most pointedly to its location: high above, presumably closer to its source from the heart of the mountain, and away from the possible contaminants (and contaminating presences) of the urban Zahle below.

In all of these cases, infrastructure’s form masks the complexities of geology and hydrology, transforming these physics into a consistent yet uncertain flow. By reducing these ambiguities into a pipe or a grate or a brass head, the infrastructure serves to both attract and repel, offering a promise of (un)potability it can’t necessarily keep⁵. In directing flows through a single output pipe or grate which demarcates how residents engage with the water, infrastructure serves not only to guide the spring’s water; it becomes the spring itself. In this way, infrastructure’s form shapes water’s disputes. Through such metal and stone channels, the water resides, flowing as frequently as aquifers saturate in the unknown depths of the earth until it breaches the surface.

Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, eds. 2017. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press. ↩︎
Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton University Press, 2001. ↩︎
Douglas Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger; an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Praeger. ↩︎
Larkin, Brian. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (1): 327–343. ↩︎
Anand, Nikhil, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel. 2018. The Promise of Infrastructure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ↩︎

References

Anand, Nikhil, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel. 2018. The Promise of Infrastructure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Bennett, Jane. The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics. Princeton University Press, 2001.

Douglas Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger; an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Praeger.

Larkin, Brian. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (1): 327–343.

Tsing, Anna, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, eds. 2017. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press.

Peter Habib is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University. His research interests include studies of humanitarianism, development, ecology, infrastructure, and the state. His doctoral dissertation is based in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where he examines how the management of resources such as water impacts social life among residents and governing actors.

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