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In his studio in Beirut in 1929, the young artist Moustapha Farroukh (1901–57) envisioned a composition to change his society. He hoped his oil painting would incite broad support among his fellow Lebanese for a revolution in conventional gender relations and women's participation in the urban social order. He titled the picture The Two Prisoners and based it on a European convention for representing the East: the Nude odalisque (Figure 1). The resulting painting exemplifies the complex role Arab intellectuals of the early 20th century played in the formation of modern art and universal modernity. Leading artists in Mandate-era Beirut felt compelled to paint Nudes and display them as part of a culturing process they called tathqīf (disciplining or enculturing). To a large extent, tathqīf consisted of recategorizing norms for interaction and self-scrutiny. Joseph Massad has revealed that one crucial component of tathqīf was the repudiation of behaviors and desires associated with the Arab Past, such as male homosexuality. An equally important component was the cultivation of “modern,” “masculine” heterosexual eroticism and a dutiful feminine compliance associated with ḥadātha (novelty) and muʿāṣira (contemporaneity). This was accomplished through the use of a genre that was deliberately new and alien in both its material media and its impact on makers and viewers.

Graduation certificates were presented by Nasima Fakhiri, the commissioner for environment and health control, Shadi Ramzi Majali, the general manager of Aqaba Development Corporation on behalf of Mohammad Saqr, the chairman of Aqaba Special Economic Zone, and Mahmoud Seif Sharif, the general manager of Tkiyet Um Ali, also a group of institutions and major companies attended the graduation such as ACT, the Social Security Corporation and Tala Bay.