On august 4, at 6:08pm, our lives were changed forever.
On august 4, our DNA changed permanently, the expression on our faces, the looks in our eyes, the depth of our breaths. Yet, we were the lucky ones that survived.
It’s 5:50 pm – and I’m rushing to get to my osteopath appointment at 6, my phone running on low battery, I packed my charger with me and left my place in Saifi village – 2km away from the port of Beirut – to get to the clinic, only 1km southward.
I was lying down as the therapist cracked my neck to ease the pain of what I thought was carpal tunnel syndrome. I was relaxed enough so he could manipulate my back, like a ragdoll. Suddenly, we felt what we thought was an earthquake. He immediately got me to step away from the glass windows, a reflex I probably wouldn’t have had, as I struggled to compose myself.
The violent shake was followed by the loudest sound a brain can register (or can’t), and the most pressure a body can handle (or can’t).
What ensued is blurry from my choppy memory, and has been constructed rather haphazardly by my mind, in an attempt to hold on to its function of remembering things. I had a panic attack at the clinic. I was hyperventilating, wearing my mask, gasping for air, when all I could breathe was dust from the colliding walls. My survival meant I had to walk through my attack, and the first thought that occurred to me was that I hadn’t paid for my session. I look to my left, there is no receptionist. No walls, no doors. I find myself on the street looking for a place to charge my phone to understand what is going on. To call my parents, my partner. No place to charge. Injured people, masked, bloodied, screaming, crying, buildings shattered everywhere. Furniture on the roads that flew from the pressure of the blast. I walk in the direction of my apartment. The further I got towards my neighborhood, the worse the damage and the worse the injuries. I almost get hit by cars driving for their lives trying to save what is left of them.
Anticipating another blast, not being able to utter any words, not seeing a television in sight to catch some news headlines, I kept walking aimlessly, getting closer to the blast site-a piece of information I hadn’t yet known.
I was trying hard to stay away from anymore glass windows, all the while realizing there were barely any left. I finally get the idea of walking over to my best friends’ house – halfway between the osteopath and my apartment – only to find their newly built high-rise shattered, its inhabitants bloodied. I see them both running down the stairs in one piece with their cats and I sense some relief. We walk towards each other and cry.
That was as much relief as I’ve sensed since.
We leave the city to go somewhere safe, and I find out shortly after that my friend lost her father, another friend lost his eye, another one completely lost her house, in the aftermath of one of the biggest explosions in history, that happened to be just a few meters away from my workplace, at the Port of Beirut. It wasn’t the apocalypse, nor an asteroid, nor an alien attack.
I also find out that my family and friends are mostly all okay and physically unscathed by some miracle. Everyone I know had some sort of lucky strike. They were gambling with our lives.
Gambling with 2750 tones of ammonium nitrate.
That week, most people were working from home due to a total lockdown imposed by the government because of Covid. That week, we were ‘saved’ by Covid.
The next day, I head to Gemmayze – to help out a family friend who had also lost her home. Citizens mobilized from all over the country, coming together to help every inhabitant in the extremely damaged areas of Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael. An old woman is being begged to get down from her balcony, to evacuate her building because it might fall any minute. “I’m fine here in my home” she says, “I’d rather die in my bed”.
Animal rescuers are going inside the collapsing buildings, to save people’s pets.
Volunteers, the Lebanese citizens, the Red cross, have mobilized to save people’s lives, clean the city and restore it themselves/With their own hands/With no governmental support.
After they bled, they had to cleanse their own wounds.
They have already helped thousands of families from the 300 000 that were displaced from their homes, our homes. Their city, our city. There are still people under the rubble to this day.
The sound of broken glass will haunt me forever. It mimics that of my heart, which is crushed into so many pieces, that there is no way in the world I could puzzle it back together. The shards I still find every day in my plants or in my drawers or in between socks, a month later, remind me of the scars I bare from surviving the mutilation of a city.
Mutilated by whom? We will never know. How much injustice can one bare and how many times can one rise from the ashes? This time there is nothing but ashes, rubble and glass. Obliterating any cliché phoenix from rising.
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