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Man Built A Thin Building To Block Brother’s Sea-View. Bhai-Bhai Badla Level: Max!

byRachna Srivastava
16th November 2017
3 minute read
Lebanon'sThinnest-Building-Spite

How fresh is that Deewar scene in your minds, where Vijay and Ravi are discussing their bank balances, properties and who has Maa? Pretty damn much!

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We have seen the tension between brothers in reel life and to what extreme levels they can go in real one. Blood relations go after blood, news has it, people!

But, how do you piss off your sibling without causing any physical harm? Taking a page out of the book, How To Piss Off Siblings (eh, it doesn’t exist, I just coined the name) this is the perfect way.

A man out of sheer revenge built the world’s thinnest building, called The Grudge, in Manara (Beirut). He did so because he wanted to block the sea view of his brother’s building.

No chill!

Two brothers had inherited each plot from their father. Due to road infrastructure’s partial reclamation of one plot, one of the brother’s built the world’s thinnest building on a 120-square-meter piece of land. It blocks the Mediterranean sea view of his brother’s building.

It was named Al Ba’sa (in Arabic) which translates to The Grudge in English.

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The intention of the building was to decrease the valuation of the brother’s plot. It is some sort of revenge, huh?!

BTW, it is also called The Queen Mary. It looks like a ship — wide from one side and narrow from the other. And, there are two apartments on each floor where, of course, the rooms vary a lot in size.

A blogger wrote on Blogbaladi while recounting a republished story on Jadaliyya,

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“Intrigued by this habitable wall disguised as a building, I returned to my father with questions. “Why is it called “Grudge,” and why and how was it built?” I asked him. My father then started recounting an urban myth. “There were two brothers who each inherited a plot. Let’s call them plot A and plot B. Unable to agree on how to develop the two parts, since plot B was partly reclaimed by road infrastructure, the owner of plot B decided to develop the minuscule piece of land on his own. That way, he hoped that his building would block the brother’s view of the sea so that the value of his land would decrease.

According to residents in the neighbourhood, The Grudge was built in 1954. The liveable wall ranges in depth from four metres at its widest, to sixty centimetres—the depth of a closet—at its slimmest. What is even more exciting is that the building, it turns out, is one of the few buildings in Beirut that will be saved from destruction by the law. Although it is not listed as a heritage building, and therefore not protected by the bill protecting such buildings, the plot on which The Grudge stands cannot be developed under the city’s current building and zoning laws. According to those laws, no new structure may be built in its place, even if the house is demolished, because the plot has an area that is smaller than what you are allowed to build on. Therefore, leaving The Grudge the way it stands is more profitable for its owners than tearing it down, as they would not be able to sell the land to developers.”

 

During the Lebanese Civil War, one of the apartments was used as a brothel. And, the other one was used by a family to seek refuge.

Seeing this Tweeple started sharing more anecdotes and stories of sibling revenge aka Spite Buildings. 

1. There’s one in Italy.

2. And, in Dublin.

3. Looks scary.

4. The tale of two swimming pools.

https://twitter.com/Unofficial_Phil/status/930716465434628096

5. Oh, they never change.

This is taking bhai-bhai ke beech ki deewar too literally.

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