My Port of Beirut
Life in the aftermath of the 2020 explosion
MAY 23, 2023
1.
A message appears on my phone screen: “It’s cursed, your poor country!” I imagine the friend who sent the message is referring to the terrible economic crisis that’s had Lebanon plummeting to rock bottom for the last few months, and the Coronavirus pandemic that’s been raging for a few days.
As I’m about to set my phone back down, I notice that I also have seventy new messages on our family WhatsApp group, which has been somewhat inactive recently. Suddenly I have goosebumps. What’s going on? The first of the seventy messages—“All safe?”—is sent by my cousin. My heart drops. Something bad has happened.
With a pit in my stomach, I scroll through the next few messages. The first two—“yes” and “me too” sent one minute later by my brother and sister—confirm the urgency of the situation. The third, a photo of a sofa barely visible under the debris of a smashed patio door with the caption “I was sitting there a minute ago” is sent by one of my cousins, who is at the other end of the city. Another writes: “I don’t have an apartment anymore.” Then I see a selfie of my sister with her face bloodied, all the windows of her office shattered and the furniture in shambles, and my heart starts beating out of my chest.
Immediately my mind goes to an Israeli bombing; it’s been fifteen years now that they’ve been promising one, fifteen years that we’ve lived with their threats 24/7 and their planes flying over Lebanon several times a day for so many weeks. Trembling, I open the L’Orient-Le Jour website, but it’s not loading. Then in the Whatsapp group, my brother shares a short video that was sent to him. The first images of the blast break me into a thousand pieces.
Despair, terror, anguish, devastation, distress. Since the explosion, I’m barely alive, I sob at all hours, I can’t sleep at night, I go to bed in the early morning, I wake up two hours later thinking it was all a terrible nightmare, I realize a minute later that it wasn’t a nightmare, it was real, I weep in my bed thinking of the destroyed silos. I am in Paris, but not for a single second do I think of anything other than Beirut. Beirut leveled, destroyed, traumatized.
I am riveted to my phone, toggling between WhatsApp and Instagram, because that’s where everything is happening. Since the revolution that started in October 2019, it’s the most efficient way to stay informed. Everyone in Lebanon is their own press agency and updates come at the speed of light. Worse than the news are the images—terrible, unbearable. Apocalyptic images of the port and the city streets. And the videos of the explosion. Watched on a loop, watched in slow motion, ten, fifteen times per day.
With the silos destroyed, anything was possible. Now there was nothing to stop Beirut from sinking into darkness.
I cry non-stop, like a five-year-old. I think of the victims, of the dead, of the wounded, mutilated, disfigured. Of those who lost their lives as they lost their homes. Of the houses, palaces, hospitals, all destroyed. Of all this tragedy that struck everyone simultaneously. Everyone in my family has had their apartments destroyed. My parents, my sisters, my brother, my aunts, my cousins. But—I hardly dare admit it—it’s the pulverization of the port silos that affects me the most.
The silos were, for me, the most unshakable symbol of Beirut, barely scratched during the fifteen years of war, standing so tall, so white, in the prodigious light of the port, as majestic as snowy Mount Sannine towering over them in the distance.
As precious as the columns of Baalbek. They were our Egyptian pyramids. Nestled within the port, they were the identity of the city. Their constancy reassured me, their appearance comforted me, I thought of them as a pagan sanctuary that watched over the city. With the silos destroyed, anything was possible. Now there was nothing to stop Beirut from sinking into darkness.
2.
Immediately after the explosion, the wounded and their families head for the nearest hospitals.
The Saint George Hospital, known in Beirut as “moustachfa el Roum,” or as the “orthodox hospital,” is the main one in the area. It’s situated on the hill that directly overlooks the port, 750 meters as the crow flies from Hangar 12.
Struggling on foot through the rubble and debris that blocks the streets, the wounded reach the doors of the hospital, but the hospital is destroyed. Pulverized. The hospitalized patients, the doctors, the nurses—all wounded. Some even dead. The tally will reach twelve patients, two visitors, and four nurses killed. The hospital won’t fare any better than its neighbors. All the broken windows, the exploded walls, the fallen ceilings— but also, the smashed equipment. The incubators, the monitors... The testimonies of the wounded were recorded on video a few weeks after the explosion. It’s difficult to find accounts closer to a horror film than those delivered by the mutilated women and men, blinded, mangled, bandaged, and stitched up, seated opposite the camera. They all describe the blast of the explosion as something monstrous, unlike anything they had ever felt before. They all believed they were about to die. They all, without exception, thought that the explosion had taken place in the hospital itself, in their unit, and that their colleagues in other units would come to their aid. Some believed it was a bombing directly on the hospital.
“I felt a terrible pain in my chest, and my face was covered in blood. I thought I was going to die, that the entire building had collapsed onto me. I couldn’t move. A colleague from my unit dragged me out from under the rubble.”
That sentiment was shared by everyone in Beirut that day. Everyone within a two-kilometer radius of the port thought that the explosion was on their own street, in their own building. Another sensation felt by everyone who lived through that cataclysmic minute is the multiplicity of different perceptions experienced simultaneously.
“If all the camera footage from the hospital had been gathered and each of us gave our testimony, we still would not be able to understand all the contradictory sensations felt at the moment of the explosion.”
“We are doctors, we know how to handle tragic situations, we are used to seeing the mortally wounded, we are trained in that. But what we experienced then is unlike anything else, it’s indescribable, it crushed us all at the same time, and destroyed our equipment.”
“It was a slaughter; carnage in the patient rooms.”
“The special equipment was broken, and even the bandages and disinfectants were inaccessible because of the wreckage. There was a man with his skull cracked open, blood spilling everywhere, he was dying. I thought I could save him if I could stop the bleeding. My head and arm were wounded, some superhuman strength enabled me to lift the blown- off doors, step over the collapsed drop ceilings, and push aside the fallen walls to reach the closet where the strips of gauze and cotton were.”
“We intubated the wounded on the ground of the emergency room and stitched up others on the hood of a car.”
“Some used their ties to bandage wounds.”
“The elevators weren’t working. We evacuated the patients from the ninth floor by the stairs, carrying them in sheets, or on pieces of drop ceiling, with a flashlight in our mouths because there was no electricity.”
“I felt a terrible pain in my chest, and my face was covered in blood. I thought I was going to die, that the entire building had collapsed onto me. I couldn’t move. A colleague from my unit dragged me out from under the rubble. We thought our colleagues from other units would arrive soon. We didn’t imagine for a second that they were in the same boat. Once we had managed to leave our building, we saw the scope of the disaster and the influx of wounded people pouring in from the city. I had two broken ribs and a head wound, I was losing blood, but I had enough strength, positioning my phone in my mouth as a flashlight, to hastily stitch up several people on the sidewalk before I fainted.”
The orthodox hospital in the 1980s. Treatment continues behind sandbags.
It was the first time in its history that the orthodox hospital, the oldest in Beirut, had ceased operating. During the fifteen years of war that ravaged Lebanon, it didn’t stop for a single day, not even when the violent bombings came down on the neighborhood, striking some of its buildings directly. The hospital was always rapidly repaired at the first lull, often financed by the USSR, an important source of aid for Greek Orthodox organizations during the war in the 1980s.
I’ve been to the hospital on a few different occasions. That’s where my two sisters were born. Sandbags were piled up outside the windows of the patients’ rooms and the operating rooms, especially the windows facing west. I remember one day, in the early morning, when I walked between two rows of sick beds, lined up to the left and to the right of the hospital hallways, to reach the office of Dr. Fayez Bitar. The patients had been taken out of their rooms during the night because of a bombing. I had also spent the night in a hallway, the one in our apartment, screaming and writhing in agony because of a terrible stomachache, while the shells rained down outside. At the first ceasefire, my mother brought me to the hospital, convinced I had appendicitis. The night’s wounded continued to flock there to the sound of ambulances. After examining me, Dr. Bitar told my mother, smiling, “She’s fine, she was just very afraid.” And suddenly I was also very ashamed.
That fear has never left me.
On August 4, the most seriously wounded are sent to other hospitals. But the three nearest hospitals have suffered as much damage as El Roum. The Karantina hospital is 900 meters from Hangar 12. It is essentially part of the port itself, in the zone where, in the nineteenth century, sick travelers who arrived at the Port of Beirut were quarantined. The Geitawi hospital, which is on the same hill as El Roum, is 1,200 meters from the hangar. The Rosary Sisters Hospital in Wardieh, on rue Pasteur, adjoins my grandmother’s house, and is 650 meters from Hangar 12. Today everyone in Beirut knows the exact number of meters that separated them from the grain silos on August 4, 2020, at exactly 6:07 p.m.
At the orthodox hospital, a baby is born at the exact moment of the blast.
This photo taken by a press photographer was seen around the world. Young nurse Pamela Zeinoun, after managing to extract herself from the debris, removes three premature babies from their broken incubators. The entrance to the maternity ward, as well as the emergency exit, are blocked by rubble, but she manages to carry them outside, where she discovers a horrific scene in the parking lot: the ground is strewn with the dead and wounded. She decides to go to the nearest hospital to find them an incubator. With the babies in her arms, she walks for forty-five minutes. The neighboring hospitals are destroyed and cannot help her. On the highway, she stops a car that brings her to the maternity ward in Zalka, in the north of Beirut. The babies are saved. In this photo, she is at the welcome desk at the orthodox hospital, where, before leaving, she calls her mother to let her know she’s alive.
Doctors and nurses sit one after another in front of the camera to give their testimonies. “What I first heard, felt, was an earthquake. The monstrous explosion didn’t come until later.”
3.
The mutual aid in Beirut during the weeks after the explosion is as spectacular as the blast itself. Countless NGOs, big and small, arrive on the scene. They replace the failing and criminal government. Certain among them, created during the war in the 1980s, have become quite robust in domains as diverse as health, construction, education, food banks intended to help disadvantaged Lebanese people and refugees alike. They have literally become a state within the state, and in fact the government sometimes subcontracts them for projects it is unable to complete successfully, such as the construction of schools or prisons.
These volunteers are the ones who reconstructed the nation. The volunteers, versus the vultures.
After August 4, thousands of volunteers join them. In forty-eight hours, six thousand people answer the call of Offrejoie, one of the most structured NGOs. The associations that date from the war have been joined by a number of newcomers, many born out of the October 2019 revolution, and by young Instagram activists who use their influence to build rapid and efficient solidarity networks. Regular citizens have taken matters into their own hands. They are the real Lebanon. A plea is broadcast over every network: Send donations from governments and international or private organizations directly to the people on the ground. Please do not give anything to the corrupt government.
Not far from the port.
In the first days after the explosion, the only sound that runs through the dazed city is the delicate whispering of glass debris, the squeaking of shards being swept away everywhere.
The inhabitants of Beirut have cleared the grounds and cleaned their city themselves. No aid from the city, the state, or the army; quite the contrary. The people who aren’t dead or wounded, or only slightly hurt, grabbed shovels, brooms, brushes, and tidied the street. They removed the debris and the broken windows, helped the old, sick, and wounded leave their houses or apartments, then repaired the most urgent things, roofs, doors, windows. From the first day, even in a state of emergency, they sifted through it all, because everything, or nearly everything, is salvageable in a country in crisis. The glass, the wood, the moldings, the iron, the tiles. They did things right. For the old traditional houses, this work is particularly important because such homes must be rebuilt from the same elements. These volunteers are the ones who reconstructed the nation. The volunteers, versus the vultures.
Glued to my phone, I scrutinize the slightest sign, the smallest action that could signal the beginning of the end for those crooks who have led Lebanon to its demise—in vain. Days pass and nothing happens. Except for all the new, endless horrors. Political, economic, or related to security. My poor country is in agony, my city is on its knees, and these monsters are still cracking the whip. Worse than before. They are more thieving, more dishonest, more criminal. Now they fire live bullets at protestors, jail them, bring them in front of the military tribune. Fear reigns now, as in the worst of totalitarian countries. Yes, in Lebanon, country of free expression, refuge for the revolutionary silenced or imprisoned in any other Arab country, the people have been handed over to the Sulta.
“They are the real Lebanon…”
Crutches, wheelchairs, and walkers are manufactured in the workshop of arcenciel, one of the oldest NGOs in Lebanon.
They are more competent and useful to society than any minister or banker.
Repairing the roofs of Beirut.
And yet, the thawra, the revolution begun October 17, 2019, continues. There’s no longer a big crowd. People are tired, emptied, disillusioned. People fear repression by the Lebanese Internal Security Forces and the army and intimidation by Amal, a Shiite party, and Hezbollah’s men. But some citizens still take to the streets every day. Several times per day. They stand strong on every front, every topic, don’t let anything go. Vigilant. They are Lebanon’s only chance, there is no other. Them, and those who care, who feed, who clean. Sometimes, maybe often, they are the same people. They are the ones who prioritize the country and society ahead of their own interest or that of their sectarian community. Lebanon is not a country where that comes naturally. These men and women are heroes, they are courageous and fight in hope of finally constructing a nation. That also does not come naturally. The word “hope.” What madness.
Many protestors will lose an eye…
For a year now, I’ve been following several leaders of the revolution on Instagram, checking for updates almost every hour, glancing only distractedly at the other accounts I follow. There’s the loudmouthed activist and the social activist, the pro-bono lawyer, the militant journalist, the actor ... There are collectives that get things done, people on site, people who circulate information and analysis, who manage the operations ... There is also the incredible ThawraMap, which, thanks to a vast anonymous and effective network, tracks politicians in real time, and alerts thousands of followers to their presence in this restaurant or that mall so they can show up and harass their prey until they leave or at least bombard them with shame, assuming the politician in question has even a modicum of self-respect.
Some Instagram accounts of the thawra.
And then there are the accounts that make us laugh. Ammounz, for example, the most foul-mouthed girl you could imagine, who makes short videos in which she addresses the president or the prime minister in extremely informal Arabic. And FarixTube—Farid Hobeiche—whose subtle and hilarious videos describe the daily life of the Lebanese in the shitshow that is their country.
Someone has just posted a photo from a protest last November, the Eden Bay protest, with a nostalgic caption. Suddenly, I shudder. That protest—I was there. The distance that separates me now, always on the verge of tears, crying several times a day, from that moment of euphoria and wild hope is so dizzying it makes my head spin. I am teleported back to November, I relive my thirty days in the thawra as if I were there, as if I could turn back time then stop it and resume the course of events when everything was still possible.
4.
Today, more than a year after the beginning of the thawra, nearly six months after the port explosion, I have no more hope. The situation is beyond tragic, on every level. Coronavirus rages, the hospitals are full, even utilizing their parking lots, their staff are completely exhausted, Hariri is back and as incapable as before, Hezbollah is still present, Aoun and the rest are still there, the thawra is savagely repressed, the economic situation is catastrophic, several assassinations have taken place, visibly linked to the port explosion, whose investigation is a great farce. The Lebanese people are distraught, hopeless. Israeli fighter jets fly over Lebanon, including Beirut, with a dreadful racket several times per day, very low in the sky, terrorizing an already traumatized population.
We will not overcome August 4. Not without a miracle. That is our only chance.
A Lebanese friend who lives in Paris told me a few days ago that she stood in front of the half-open door of her seven- year-old daughter’s bedroom and glimpsed her on her knees next to her bed, hands clasped, in the middle of praying: “And please, God, help Lebanon.” “I had goosebumps,” my friend tells me, “I saw myself at her age, in the same pose, saying the same words. It will never end, it’s a curse!”
For several weeks now, I’ve been obsessed by knowing the exact date the silos were constructed. Finally, I have the information before my eyes: first stone, September 1968. So I was not only born with the violence, but also with the silos. Inauguration, August 1970. Fifty years ago.
The port silos so staunchly resisted the explosion that they saved a part of Beirut from destruction and saved many lives. The neighborhoods located to the south-west of the silos, opposite from hangar 12, were relatively spared. All the experts agree that if it hadn’t been contained by the silos, the explosion blast would have caused much more damage to the west, resulting in many more victims.
Since August 4, the silos have been photographed from a single angle, the side of the explosion. They are a gaunt, disfigured, mutilated, monstrous carcass.
Seen from the other side, the west side, they are still very white and very straight, mostly intact. I see it as another symbol, that all is not lost. All the more so because the west side is the side that catches the light. The light that comes from the sea. The light of the setting sun.
Paris, January 20, 2021
Excerpted from My Port of Beirut by Lamia Ziadé, translated by Emma Ramadan. Published by Pluto Press.
All illustrations by the author.