Three years ago, a huge explosion shattered the city and, with it, hopes of rebuilding the population. The most vulnerable people, many of them women, bear the brunt of Lebanon’s disasters.
August 4, 2020, an incredibly hot and humid day in Lebanon. I stayed home in front of my computer, running remotely due to the pandemic. I finished my afternoon shift as chief manufacturer and correspondent for the Associated Press, covering Lebanon and the Greater Middle East. I am at the mercy of an unreliable web connection and, like most Lebanese, suffer from scorching heat and recurring power outages. The power cuts in Lebanon date back to the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990 and remain unresolved to this day.
My area is about 7 miles from Beirut, nestled on a hill overlooking a small, non-violent pine forest. the long summer days. He had no plans to go to the city that day. Around 6 pm, I went to the kitchen to feed my cat that was waiting for me in the garden. It was our daily ritual. When I opened the window and emptied the canned food into a bowl, I heard the familiar roar of fighter jets passing through our skies. Israeli warplanes have been violating the Lebanese air area for decades, yet fighter jets were not unusual that summer.
A minute later, a loud explosion shook the space, the loudest I’ve ever heard in my life. My first thought that there had been an airstrike nearby. I started screaming, helplessly: “They beat us, they beat us!”I hurried to pick up my phone, desperate to locate if everyone, adding my husband and son, was safe. My daughter with my sister-in-law and fine. But I couldn’t find my husband, who was on his way home.
I started looking for data on social media. ” 6:10 p. m. What was it?” I tweeted. I turned on the television and there were unconfirmed reports that there had possibly been an explosion at the Lebanese prime minister’s house. I tried to call my colleagues in Beirut, but I couldn’t get through.
Local media were now reporting that the explosion, which was felt miles away in neighboring Cyprus, was an explosion at the port caused by fireworks in a storage space. Ten minutes later, one of my colleagues called me. She was hysterical: her roof had collapsed, and although she miraculously emerged unharmed, her space was badly damaged. I could not perceive how an explosion in the port devastated its space, which was several miles away. The first photographs of the port and the explosion began to be played on local television. I think the biggest impact was on the port itself. Few things were clear that night. Eventually, my husband was found safe and sound. It would take us and the whole country until the next morning to realize the magnitude of what had happened.
I drove to Beirut at 6 a. m. to do a live broadcast of Good Morning Britain from a position near the port. Even before I reached the city, I saw windows and doors blown out miles from the epicenter of the explosion. The destruction began several kilometers beforeyou entered the capital.
The site of the explosion itself had an eerie tranquility, the elegant morning light passing through the smoke still hovering over the seaport, its luminosity exposing with piercing clarity the enormity of the destruction. The port had been destroyed, its upper grain silos were defeated. , one aspect collapsed almost completely, the other intact, faintly chasing the devastated city. The damage was unlike anything I had seen before. It reminded me of Homs and Aleppo in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, devastated by months of airstrikes.
Three hundred thousand members were left homeless overnight, many were injured and wandered helplessly in search of shelter and help. The destruction was most intense in the eastern parts of the city. Buildings were shattered and bare concrete columns were all that remained of the sumptuous skyscrapers that dominated the harbor. Cars along the road gave the impression of having been hit by a giant hammer and the streets were blocked with debris and debris. People were already clearing the streets, saving what they could, looking for survivors. I didn’t see any army or police officers helping them. As I approached the east side of the city, the silence was broken by the sound of broken glass, while the glass of the burst windows continued to fall from the frames. People’s feet creaked on the fallen fragments of buildings as they tried to make their way through the rubble. This shattering sound has the soundtrack of our lives. It was all we heard, all day, for many weeks.
In 2020, Lebanon was trying, like most countries in the world, to engage the pandemic. But the virus had arrived at a time when the country was already grappling with an unprecedented economic and monetary crisis. By October 2019, Lebanon had been overtaken by nationwide protests opposed to the ruling political elite, and tax increases in particular. The country looked more and more like a failed state. The Lebanese pound had begun to lose price that summer and would continue to fall more than 80%. protests and when they reopened, depositors were denied access to their savings. All of this was ultimately the result of a Ponzi scheme operated for years through the Central Bank, ad banks and the political establishment, in which everyone’s cash, including mine, disappeared. .
By mid-2020, inflation was soaring, unemployment and poverty had reached new highs, and a collapse of the fitness sector was a genuine option as hospitals struggled to stay afloat. Many, including myself, had the idea that the country had hit rock bottom. Little did we know that a crisis of any kind was waiting for us just around the corner.
After the explosion, I started collecting stories from survivors, especially women. Many of them lost everything that day: the most valuable people in their lives, their physical and intellectual health, their homes and livelihoods, their ability to be satisfied and feel secure. Mothers lost their children in the blast, wives lost their partners, doctors and nurses, rescuers, refugees and migrants: no one would remember that 6:08 p. m. moment. m. and the heartbreaking main points of the day that replaced their lives.
Pamela Zeinoun, a 27-year-old pediatric nurse, was working in the newborn intensive care unit at Saint George’s Hospital on the day of the explosion. She made the same old rounds, taking care of young children and informing their families. In the untimely toddler segment with two of my colleagues a few minutes before 6 p. m. ” he told me. ” We were attending a circle of relatives visiting their baby. I was talking to them. Then I moved on to neonatality, where I had a patient. I made the decision to call my mother, I call her at this time of day.
“While we were talking, I heard a loud bang. It was strong, I can say it was not normal. I turned to the window and told my mom I heard an explosion. My mom was outside Beirut, a long way from the port, but she told me she heard it too. A few seconds later, I felt the floor jump under me. My reaction was to walk away from the window. There was a giant closet that overturned, and its drawers fell and threw me on the floor. Everything collapsed on my head: the roof, the glass, the steel.
The first idea that came to Zeinoun’s brain was the protection of babies. “I may not succeed with the newborn from where IArrayThere is a collapsed roof between me and the incubator. I can only see the baby, she is fine, but I can Don’t move the debris.
“There was no electricity. I was shouting the call of one of our colleagues who was pregnant. I ran into two nurses. They had cuts on their heads and were soaked in blood. They held hands. I tried to communicate with them, but they looked at me with blank looks. They didn’t scream or cry, they didn’t respond. I had injuries, but I looked good. He was afraid that he couldn’t see lograran. no because there was blood in his eyes. They don’t see me.
“I tried to save the 4 young children from the untimely recovery department. I dressed in one and gave it to his mother. I told him to leave without delay to another hospital. I had no idea what was going on outside, or that. “Most of the city’s hospitals were gone. All the incubators were damaged, but the young children still slept there. I started cutting the little children one by one. do nothing.
“I saw them sleeping, but I didn’t know if they were alive or dead. The incubators, although damaged, protected them. I carried the other 3 unwelcome toddlers in my arms. My constant fear was the temperature of their frame: I kept thinking they would be cold. One of the parents was still there. It was her baby that I sent back to the mother. I tried to reach him, to tell him to help me get pajamas for the other toddlers in a drawer. But He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t say a word. I waved my hands. He understood. He opened the drawer and gave me my pajamas. I don’t know why he couldn’t speak. It’s like I’m looking to channel everything. My strength to save those little children – as if I’m saying a word, I’m going to lose that strength, I’m going to lose control.
Zeinoun walked out of the hospital building, with the 3 premature toddlers still in his arms, and stopped at the front cabin of the hospital to know what to do next. At that moment, a photojournalist took a picture of her. It went viral.
“I got scared. People were telling me to leave because there would be another airstrike. I started asking other people to give me their clothes. She wrapped every baby with every single thing she had. A doctor came to see me and sought to help me. I refused to give the little children to him or anyone else.
Zeinoun and the doctor to leave the hospital. They went to some other nearby clinic, thinking they would find help there. said. ” That’s when I started to realize how massive it was, that it went beyond our hospital, beyond this street.
“I kept pinching the babies. I looked for them to cry to make sure they were alive. I walked with them for an hour and a half down the road. I thought we would never get there. I tried to give up several times. , however, the doctor and I encourage others.
They nevertheless controlled taking an elevator in a passing car. “I don’t forget sitting in the middle. There was a driver, his daughter, his wife and his seven-year-old grandson. The boy looked at us petrified. I started crying. I felt so vulnerable. The doctor also cried. My arms were shaking. The woman was trying to calm me down. Then one of the toddlers had apnea [stop breathing]. He was dead, handed the other two to the doctor and started stimulating him, his back, his legs, just to make him cry. He didn’t answer. But through it all, miraculously, he cried. He came back to life here. . “
Zeinoun and the doctor eventually went to another hospital outside Beirut and began frantically searching for incubators. “I discovered one and put the 3 toddlers in it. They were all alive.
I called Zeinoun a year after our interview. He had contacted the families of the young children he had rescued and told them he visited them frequently. One of the young children now lives in France. His weight in my arms constantly reminded me that I had to keep going, that I had no choice, that I couldn’t give up.
She sought to stay in Lebanon to “fight. ” I need to know who is to blame for this explosion, who is to blame for the fact that I have to bring 3 unwelcome little children and run for their lives. Someone is. “
The explosion occurred via a shipment of ammonium nitrate, according to Lebanese officials, which had been stored in Beirut’s port for years but whose origin and destination remain a mystery to this day. It killed more than two hundred people and wounded about 6,500. many seriously.
Those affected were not only Lebanese. Among them were citizens of Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, the United States and Australia. Even in a country that has experienced more than its fair share of conflict, never before have so many other people in Lebanon experienced the same traumatic situation at the same time. The explosion was the result of the corrupt and corrupt maneuvers of the ruling political establishment. The control design of Beirut’s port reflects the department of force within the ruling government. elite: It is largely a microcosm of corruption in Lebanon as a whole.
Many of Lebanon’s existing political leaders were warlords in the country’s civil war, a multifaceted confrontation that erupted in 1975 and lasted until 1990. These leaders have ruled the country ever since. They run sectarian political parties and see themselves as the buyers of Lebanon’s sectarian communities. They consolidated a power-sharing formula along sectarian lines and for a long time benefited from it.
Different sects, other departments and agencies of the state, and all get a percentage of the corruption network. This formula of distribution of political power has also fed a network of clientelism that has made these politicians more powerful than the state itself. They are your establishments and use your resources to serve the interests of your parish. The port of Beirut is no exception.
A tough and dominant organization in the port is the armed Shiite militant organization Hezbollah, which is subsidized through Iran and is considered more powerful than the Lebanese National Army, which controls war and peace decisions and interferes in regional proxy wars, adding that of neighboring countries. Hezbollah has been fighting alongside the Assad regime in Syria since 2013, offering the Syrian dictator a voice and preventing his army from being defeated at the hands of domestic and foreign forces.
Lebanon has been bogged down through regional tensions and conflicts. Its political parties have long sought outside help to strengthen their domestic positions, while foreign powers have used Lebanon as a pawn to advance their hegemonic regional interests. The Lebanese judiciary is also hostage to the interests of the political establishment. Politicians directly interfere in the appointment and promotion of judges, sometimes along sectarian lines. This largely explains the absence of an independent judiciary in the country and the resulting culture of impunity.
People still wonder today why explosive chemicals were left in a working port in the center of a city for years. There is still no definitive answer. According to media investigations and a Human Rights Watch report published on August 3, 2021, senior officials, ministers from other political parties, prime ministers, and the Lebanese president were aware of the presence of tons of ammonium nitrate and the danger it posed. But no one has taken adequate action.
How much trauma can we suffer in life? This is a question I keep asking myself after having lived and reported for so many years in Lebanon and the Middle East. I am amazed at the extent of violence we have suffered and tolerated, time and time again. Salwa Baalbaki, a journalist, has survived much violence: the civil war, Israel’s wars in Lebanon and bombings in the suburbs where she lives. Despite all the trauma he went through, he is not in position for August 4, 2020.
Baalbaki worked for An-Nahar newspaper, Lebanon’s oldest and once most prominent newspaper.
We met at the newspaper’s headquarters in downtown Beirut about a year after the explosion. He took me to a workplace facing the street, with windows covered with wood paneling. The facades of the building had not yet been replaced. There was noise in the room. and I can hear it a little. She spoke in a soft but hoarse voice.
Baalbaki joined An-Nahar in 2004. This was a year before the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Gebran Tueni, was assassinated. “I worked with him for about a year before he was killed,” she said. Tueni, an outspoken Syrian critic of Lebanon after the civil war, was killed in a car bomb on the outskirts of Beirut in December 2005. I was still a student at the American University of Beirut that year, and Lebanon was caught in a vortex of political assassinations, most commonly car bombs, that targeted and killed politicians advocating Syria’s exit from Lebanon, adding former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The bombings also targeted intelligence agents investigating Hariri’s assassination. The political assassinations lasted until 2013 and many civilians lost their lives.
Between 2013 and 2015, suicide bombings related to the Syrian fighting also rocked the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. Several explosions also targeted residential spaces on the outskirts of Beirut in this period, where Baalbaki lived, killing dozens of civilians.
“When I walk down the street, I don’t feel safe,” she said. “When a car passes by, I think it may be loaded with explosives and it will explode. “
On the day of the explosion, Baalbaki was running from his home due to the pandemic. But he arrived at the workplace in the afternoon to present an article on the economic crisis in Lebanon, which he had been publishing for the launch of An- Nahar’s new Arabic website. “I finished it and told my editor I felt something was going to happen and I just wanted to send the story and finish it. I swear I said that. But Baalbaki never had time to tell it. “His story
“I woke up and state through the wall. I saw that my arm was injured, but I only looked at it once, because I was too scared. It was a deep wound. My hand was slightly tied to my arm. The tendons and ligaments in my wrist were gone, they were torn. I had to hold it with my other hand. He just couldn’t look anymore. I never looked at it before the operation. His voice broke and he stopped. He was trembling.
“I was going through the wall expecting another air strike, because I heard Israeli planes before the explosion, that’s what I heard. I know their sound very well. I have survived many of Israel’s wars in Lebanon.
Almost every survivor I interviewed talked about hearing squirting. I heard that sound myself. But forensic experts have linked this roar to the intensity of the chimney and the burning of oxygen and chemicals in the air, as well as the small explosions that precede the explosion. To date, there has been no credible evidence documenting an airstrike, or even the sight of jets.
The following is from an account of the explosion that Baalbaki wrote on Facebook:
“I was waiting for my death, and then someone shouted, ‘Salwa, you are bleeding, come here. ‘I still don’t know who he was. We were literally in an open space, everything was gone. If If I hadn’t been in a state through the wall, I would have fallen off the building. Only the columns were still in state.
“I stepped on the rubble towards a colleague, his call is Khalil. The moment I saw it, I had a flashback. It took me to a point of the civil war. Me, a young woguy and a boy sitting in exactly the same way: We were in front of our space and he got injured. He crouched down and bled to death. He sat down exactly the same way as Khalil and shouted, “God, where do I go now?”Precisely the same scene. Frightening. “
It was this message that made me need to communicate with him. It is the testimony of a generation of women with persistent trauma and without adequate healing. One traumatic occasion brought Baalbaki back to another.
“I no longer have any hope in this country. I’m still here just because I have to take care of my father. Everything disgusts me. Corruption, the way politicians treat people, sucks. They don’t care. But we are guilty. I need to leave this country, even though I love it so much. I have the right to live. My father is old and I can’t leave him. But the worry of war never leaves me.
Like most Lebanese, Salwa Baalbaki lives, survives.
Four years have passed since the beginning of Lebanon’s economic crisis, which the World Bank describes as one of the world’s worst crises since the nineteenth century. And yet, the Lebanese government and politicians have not taken steps to mitigate or mitigate its effect on the population. Nothing has been done: no reform, no structural change, no significant change in place and no accountability. The most vulnerable Lebanese, in addition to women, bear the brunt of this crisis.
Women are also victims of Lebanon’s fashionable history of protracted conflict. Many of those women have suffered and continue to suffer in silence. They never have a chance to heal. They vacillate from one crisis to another. They have endured patriarchal legislation and discrimination and have been forced to show resilience, but in reality they are only survivors of the country’s perpetual disorder and impunity. As I surrendered and left the country, many of them made a decision to stay and fight for justice. They cannot find peace without responsibility.
I met Dalal El Adm, who lost his daughter in the explosion. She created a school base in her daughter’s name, the Krystel El Adm Foundation, raising the budget for families to send their children to school. With the collapse of Lebanon’s school formula, a country once praised for its schools and professional staff is in danger of resurrecting a lost generation.
“It’s been more than 30 years since it ended, but the war is not over. It never ended. We go backwards every day, there is nothing worse. “than that. Before, I compared myself to the Palestinians and I think that at least if I left, I would still have a country to return to, I would still have land. But now it seems that they have taken it away from me. we too. It is our duty to protect this land.
History repeats itself for Dalal El Adm, but she still doesn’t give up. She stays and fights.
This is an edited excerpt from All She Lost: The Explosion in Lebanon, the Collapse of a Nation and the Women Who Survive, published through the Bloomsbury Continuum and available on guardianbookshop. com
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