For an indefinite period of time, Beirut will only be associated with the port explosion that left 300,000 homeless, injured thousands, and claimed around 200 lives.
Two weeks after 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate exploded close to the heart of the tiny city, the blast’s effects are still seen everywhere we turn: In the dents on the cars that stop next to you when traffic lights turn red, in the broken glass now haphazardly piled up near garbage bins, and in the rubble of buildings still being cleared out.
Eventually, all physical damage will be repaired and the sympathies of the world will turn elsewhere. Meanwhile, those who survived the blast are left with haunting new memories of a war waged against Beirut.
The repercussions of the ongoing war are not so different from those of the one our parents endured between 1975 and 1990, when a civil war was fought by politicians who remain in power to this day.
In both cases, people were forced to abandon their homes, shut down their businesses, and toss their ambitions aside to focus on how they would get through the next day. The war riddled historic buildings with bullets, and the August 4 explosion has now destroyed them completely.
“People who lived through the Civil War tell me they’ve never seen anything like what happened after the August 4 explosion,” says Karem Monzer, a video reporter who works with me at Beirut Today. “Years of work, everything that people had built, were destroyed in a few seconds.”
Since the Civil War, our political ruling class has not been held accountable for its crimes. Accountability for today’s crime –the biggest non-military explosion in modern-day history –may also never be achieved.
Karem was on the streets documenting the aftermath less than an hour after the explosion, giving himself just enough time to check up on the safety of his loved ones before diving into work. On the ground, he lived through the chaotic scenes that could have been mistaken for a movie on the Civil War.
“I don’t understand. Nothing’s left,” his voice quivered over the phone that night, the sound of sirens blaring in the background as he walked through the rubble. At the time, he was filming almost robotically. Now, he has processed enough to recall the finer details –the smell of blood, the crunching of glass beneath his feet, and the screaming of the injured as they sought out hospitals they didn’t know were also wiped out in the blast.
The imagery of the explosion shattered the worldview of yet another generation of Lebanese youth. Despite the country’s economic and political instability, many of us mocked our parents for fearing the return of a sectarian war. The world seemed like a relatively safe place, but the destruction of our city pulled the rose-tinted glasses right off.
“When the explosion happened, my immediate response was to assume that Beirut was being actively bombed,” says Lynn Sheikh Moussa, another Beirut Today journalist whose window frames were blown out entirely by the shockwave. “I was instantly reminded of the 2005 explosion that killed ex-Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and the 2006 War that came after that.”
Similar to most, my mother thought that an Israeli jet had struck a nearby landmark. Without thinking, my aunts grabbed their crying children and huddled them near the exit of their homes. Because of how powerful the impact and sound of the explosion was, similar stories emerged from across the country.
“My mom and uncle assumed it was the beginning of a war. I could only cry and calm my grandmother down until news came out of what it really was,” reflects Lynn.
Perhaps a war would have been easier to understand and accept. Instead, years of unmet promises, political corruption, and criminal negligence have decimated our city and shattered any wavering hope we had left.
The dangerous ammonium nitrate was stored at the Beirut port –near hundreds of thousands of residents and the city’s main grain silos– for six years before the blast. Politicians knew, but failed to act before the explosion shattered our right to peaceful living.
For the past six years, we’ve unknowingly held meetings, celebrated birthdays, and gone to university in places within the blast radius of the deadly chemical material that was sitting in our port. These places, and with them our lives, are now in ruins. We see ourselves in the people who lost their lives, loved ones, and homes. That could have been any one of us, a sentiment shared by our parents growing up in times of war.
Even before the explosion, people in Lebanon were finding it hard to make ends meet in the middle of the greatest economic collapse the country has ever witnessed. Today’s profound economic hardship is unmatched even by the Civil War.
“We were already holding on to some form of hope for the country before a blast wiped out a fifth of the city,” Lynn says. “I thought there might be hope for me to stay, but I can’t imagine myself staying put for just another explosion to occur in the coming years.”
I watch the funeral procession of 15-year-old Elias El-Khoury, who died two weeks after the blast due to sustained injuries. As his school friends carry his white casket, an overwhelming sense of helplessness takes control of my thoughts. I think of all the first experiences that he will miss out on, who he could have become, and what comes next for the inconsolable people he left behind.
The bombings, assassinations, and Civil War of the past 40 years exposed our parents to the notion that anything could happen at any time. A new generation now shares the same collective trauma of the one that came before it.
Today, nightmares plague our sleep, we have an aversion to windows, and we flinch when loud sounds take us by surprise.