Beirut 2020

by Charif Majdalani

  During that evening of August 4, I had to take Nadine to the hospital. She was injured, she had told us so over the phone in the first minutes. She was at home with Camille when the first explosion happened (which we hadn’t perceived on our side of the city, because it must have blended into the same thundering roar as the second one). They had jumped up just as the second and more destructive one detonated and its blast pulverized all the furniture and shot the pieces all around them. When they recovered their senses, they went outside to try to go to the emergency room at Rezek Hospital, walking through the rubble, the dust, the broken glass, and no doubt also the wounded and first responders and traffic jams of honking cars filled with the injured. But the emergency room was already at capacity. A pharmacist dressed her wound, but hours later she was still not well. I went to pick her up from her place, to try to get her to the Hôtel Dieu hospital, even though we knew that the chaos there had gotten even worse. The lack of electricity made the spectacle in the streets completely nightmarish. We had the sense that we were driving through a city that had been bombed for hours and hours. The headlights from the cars that were crawling along and the few places that were still lit up gave the visible destruction a phantasmagorical appearance. The noise of broken glass under our tires was constant, and the sidewalks looked like they were covered with the first fall of snow in some northern city. The traffic jams to get to the hospital were endless because some of the thoroughfares were blocked by ruins and collapsed buildings, and the emergency services and ambulances were howling without ceasing.

  It was clearly impossible to get to the emergency room, and we had to content ourselves with some brief treatment outside the hospital walls, in the midst of immeasurable chaos and hundreds of casualties who were being attended to by the overwhelmed medical staff while lying on the ground or at the edge of garden beds covered in blood.

  When I got home, I found one of my children’s friends there. His parents had dropped him off at our place, after he had gone to his aunt’s place and seen how she was injured and her house in ruins. He is the sweetest and gentlest boy, and he was trying to hide his anxiety and agitation that evening, but he couldn’t keep still or stay seated for more than ten seconds at a stretch.

  Since the evening of August 4, this: Reina is in intensive care, critically injured, Jad has a few superficial wounds, but no longer has a house, Omar is injured, Karim had left the office before the explosion happened, and so had his employees, which is just as well because there is no office anymore, Paula is unhurt because she went into the party headquarters’ kitchen at the moment of the explosion, but Salam, who was in the large hall, has a head wound, Monique has an injured leg, she was attended to hastily at the hospital entrance because there were more urgent cases, a dentist friend put stitches into Nathalie’s back without anesthetic, Paula and Marwan’s venerable publishing house is destroyed, Karine’s house is blown to smithereens, Sandra’s house is in ruins, so is Pierre and Nada’s, Jean-Marc is dead, Michel’s hotel is destroyed, Hatem’s offices are smashed to pieces, Walid stitched up and dressed his brother’s and nephew’s wounds at home in the middle of the wreckage, Ralph’s boutiques are nothing but heaps of rubble, Sophie’s house is shattered, so is her mother’s, Kamal’s restaurant is a wreck, Rabih is injured and his workshop no longer exists, Michka is in the hospital in critical condition, but she’ll pull through and so will her husband, the Moussas are safe but someone at their place was hurt and just a few seconds would have turned it into a tragedy, Marianna’s house is badly damaged, Chantal was injured in her house and her mother died at her side, two people died in the Haifa building, the one where Marwan has his studio could collapse at any moment, Malak no longer has a house, there is nothing left of Rosa-Maria’s store, Raïfé’s house is in ruins, Marylin’s mother is injured, the Coptis are miraculously safe, they were found under the rubble of their beautiful old home which almost completely collapsed on top of them and they were presumed dead, Tanit’s gallery no longer exists, nor do Sarah’s workshops, Tia is lightly injured but her house is destroyed, Bertrand’s house is a ruin, he survived only by a miracle, and his children the same, but little Alexandra died

  And also this: he was lifted up and thrown against the TV, the couch flew up into the air and fell on top of her, I walked through the streets like a sleepwalker before I realized that everyone around me was injured, she was sitting on the stairs covered in blood, but I had no idea what to do to help her, they ended up side by side on the ground, but neither of them could get up, we lost track of her and finally found her at the Bhannes medical center, the waiters rushed in shouting, then everything collapsed on top of us, I heard her moaning but I was pinned under the windowpane, she was hanging up the laundry and she rushed inside but then a piece of aluminum then an air-conditioning unit fell on top of her from the upper floor, all the furniture in the room was sucked toward the back and a table flew up and smashed into his chest, she went out of the store barefoot in the debris and the shards of glass, her shoulder broken and her hand in shreds, and a motorcyclist took her to the hospital on the back of his bike, a piece of a window collapsed and broke his shoulder and tore off his ear, she had to be taken out like a puppet through the broken car window, when I got up again, his face was covered in blood and he was shouting and gesticulating at the wrecked house, they stitched up her wound standing up in the hospital corridor, it was chaos, my lab coat was covered in blood but I didn’t know where I was hurt, I could hear screaming but I didn’t know if it was the patients or the nurses and as I tried to get up I saw that the machines had crushed the patient on his bed, she realized that her mother was killed instantly she couldn’t do anything for her anymore, she went out into the street with a huge wound in her arm, a car stopped and picked me up there were already three other injured people inside and blood everywhere, I never found out who the driver was, she was found curled up in her armchair, she thought she was dead, we barely had time to react to the first explosion when suddenly everything collapsed around us and I was lying underneath part of the counter with a terrible pain in my stomach, they found it almost impossible to lift up the iron gate that had crushed him, the dust was suffocating, I couldn’t breathe anymore or see anything all I could hear was the screams, she was thrown into the rubble and when she landed she had no injuries but she was dead, I wanted to go back and get my glasses after the first explosion they were on the table I could see them there within reach but I couldn’t move toward them and I realized I was injured in the leg and three seconds later there were no glasses and no table anymore and if I had been able to reach them I would have died, he finally managed to get out from under the shelving that had collapsed on top of him but he couldn’t stand up so he crawled to the doorway of his store, she is so thin the blast broke one of her ribs, it was chaos in the emergency room there was blood everywhere shouting crying people on the floor, on the countertops I was dressing the wound of a little boy lying on a desk when I raised my head and recognized my mother in the crowd completely covered in blood, I found myself on all fours I had blood and white dust on my hands and my nose was bleeding, the table was hurled against her and tore off her arm, they tried to open the car door but they realized he was already dead, he said he saw the bookcase fly into the air with all its contents and after that he heard her scream, when I stood up again there was blood on the walls and bits of furniture, I didn’t find them straightaway and I started calling for them screaming their names before I saw them coming toward me in the white darkness with blood on their legs, his lungs burst, everything collapsed there was nothing left, they found him dead two hours later, maybe she’ll make it, I don’t know what happened to my cats

  In five seconds: two hundred dead, one hundred and fifty missing, six thousand injured, nine thousand buildings damaged, two hundred thousand homes destroyed, as well as hundreds of historic or heritage buildings and four hospitals, ten thousand retail stores, workshops, stalls, boutiques, restaurants, cafés, pubs
all reduced to rubble, scores of art galleries and studios belonging to painters, sculptors, stylists, designers, architects all swept away. In five seconds.

  In September 2013, the MV Rhosus, a cargo ship registered under the Moldovan flag, sailing from Batumi and transporting 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate destined for Mozambique, makes a stopover, for reasons that no one has yet been able to ascertain, at the port of Beirut, where it is deemed unseaworthy and unable to continue on its voyage. The owner of the ship, a Russian by the name of Igor Grechushkin, refuses to pay the port fees, the cost of the necessary repairs, and the crew’s salaries, and abandons the vessel to its fate. The owner of the cargo, a Georgian company called Rustavi Azot, renounces its claim to possession of the goods. In March 2014, this cargo is finally off-loaded at the port and stocked in Hangar number 12. A few months later, the ship sinks at the dock and the cargo is no longer claimed by anyone. Nobody cares, or only vaguely, and memos, but only memos, are sent by various offices to their overseeing ministries, without ever being taken any further. Some of these memos do reach the highest levels of the government, which accords them no attention whatsoever, and the cataclysmic cargo continues sleeping there for six years in the most perfect indifference. Except that experts in industrial chemistry consider it unlikely that the explosion was caused by the declared quantity. They think that the damage would have been much greater than it was. And yet that figure of 2,750 tons does appear on the manifest registered by the port authorities in September 2013. A portion of the ammonium nitrate might have been taken away and used in between times, which would mean that the cargo was not forgotten, was not sleeping, but was actually being used by a party whose identity remains a mystery, and used thanks to the complicity, corruption, collusion, political calculations, or strategies of a countless number of people.

  Now of course all the aberrations regarding the history of this terrifying stock suddenly make sense. The lies no longer appear to be intended to cover up negligence or amateurism, but rather to hide more disturbing truths. An owner who abandons his ship, a ship that sinks in port, a company that no longer claims its cargo that is probably worth a fortune, a destination country that declares as naturally as you please that it has ordered a new supply because the first one simply never arrived, without worrying about the reasons why: everything points to this being a B-grade novel and leads us to believe that Lebanon was in fact the final destination. And especially that the stocked raw material was very probably being used, and from the very first day. The control that Hezbollah wields over the port inexorably leads to the conclusion that this use was being made under its aegis, and obviously for military purposes. Which would explain the silence of the port authorities, who would have turned a blind eye out of fear, collusion, or corruption.

  As for finding out what directly caused the catastrophe, the hypotheses are numerous: an accident, an attack, airborne or not, or sabotage. The only certainty is that there was something burning for fifty minutes in a warehouse next to Hangar number 12. Everyone saw it, I followed the progress of the fire myself with relative indifference, not knowing what it would lead to, thanks to video clips shared on a WhatsApp group chat. What caused the fire remains a mystery, as do the contents of that neighboring warehouse. On the videos, at one point you can clearly distinguish strange streaks of light and crackling sounds, which led some port officials to claim that there was a stock of fireworks stored next to the ammonium nitrate. Those shameless lies and pantomimes only gave further credit to the hypotheses that the burning neighboring warehouse in fact contained weapons or munitions, which would make the contents of the two hangars absurdly homogeneous and consistent.

  Whether the fire was accidental or whether it was arson, whether there were weapons nearby or not, all those distinctions no longer matter anymore. Whatever the case, whether it was one or the other or something else altogether, whatever the circumstances that led to this situation in the port of Beirut, the result is one and the same: on August 4, 2020, at 6:07 p.m., the cargo—or whatever was left of it, whether it was heated by the nearby fire or blown up by a nearby explosion in a weapons store or bombed from the air—exploded. Six years of lack of transparency and accountability, the result of thirty years of corruption and lies, of mafialike practices, of collusion between the various arms of government, the various ministries, political parties, and their clients, of devious geopolitical scheming and sinister warmongering by bloodthirsty, criminal militias, all this was concentrated, condensed in the most terrifying manner, and generated that five-second apocalypse.

  Ever since the first night, our children have had spells of deep depression. They’re having trouble making sense of what has happened to us. The solution they found in the end was to go out on the ground, to join the thousands of people—young people in particular—who have started on the work of cleaning up, of clearing away the rubble, in the absence of any involvement or assistance from government agencies, which have all completely disintegrated, or from the cabinet, which is nothing but a farce. We helped them get in touch with volunteer organizations, most of which are overstaffed and don’t need any more workers. Never, since the beginning of the uprising last October, had such a spontaneous movement pushed so many people out into the streets, and never had the devastated streets been so full, invaded by a tide of people carrying brooms, shovels, masks, helmets, offering food and drink as if they were in a rage to do something, to refuse to allow themselves to be beaten, in a kind of festival of despair. They worked amidst the ruins of collapsed houses and wrecked small buildings, in the shadow of the huge destroyed skyscrapers, vanquished monsters that are still standing, disturbing and fascinating at the same time, like fearsome ghosts but also the proof that we are not on our knees.

  In the end, Saria, Nadim, and their friends were asked to go to the Saint George Hospital, where the damage is enormous. But when they got there, there were already so many volunteers that they were not able to help. They were then sent to an apartment where they were needed and put in charge of sweeping away the rubble and sorting out what could be saved, with the help of the family of the old couple that lived there. The two old people had been injured. There was blood on the floor and in the debris.

  They were also called on to clear out a doctor’s office. When they came home, they had photos of objects that made them laugh: a Bakelite telephone, an old cassette and record player unit, both items of complicated machinery in their eyes, which reminded them of the cockpits of spacecraft in outdated science fiction movies. They didn’t always understand what these objects were for, and I wondered what they were all doing in a modern-day doctor’s office. Saria told me that it was actually the office of an old physician, who had died a long time ago, but whose children had kept it in its original state ever since. She showed me a picture of a fifty-pound note, out of circulation since the 1980s, which she had found in a drawer that had been thrown out of its compartment by the explosion. I imagined that this was the last fee the doctor received, which had stayed in a drawer for fifty years.

  That doctor’s office preserved from the world’s forward march for fifty years obviously made me think of Iver Grove, the house described by W. G. Sebald in Austerlitz. But unlike what happens at Iver Grove, where the present makes cautious contact with what had stayed suspended for forty years, here time had been kept at a distance, and now brutally rushed in. It did so with the same violence in many other parts of the city, where the past was held differently, compressed and almost embalmed with the miserly jealousy of aristocratic family traditions and genealogies. In many of the historic homes in Beirut’s ravaged neighborhoods, the ancient furniture and decor are now nothing but dust, ruins, and debris. The slow, meticulous sedimentation of time was swept away in a few seconds by the blast of a vengeful and incomprehensibly cruel present.

  There are countless videos of the few seconds that preceded the explosion, then of those that followed it. Often the phones that were filming the warehouse fire
jumped out of the hands that were holding them at the moment of detonation and after that there is nothing but a horrible mishmash of images. However, on recordings from public and commercial surveillance cameras, you can see a live stream, from above and in a kind of panoptical view, of the assassination of the city. The most difficult to watch are those from the hospitals, where you can see simultaneously and in a few seconds how the walls and ceilings in the patients’ rooms, the hallways, the operating theaters, and the nurseries all collapse and crumble onto all the equipment, the furnishings, the machines, onto the patients, the medical staff, the visitors, and the newborn babies in their cribs.

  The terrifying stories and eyewitness accounts of the thousands of casualties, of survivors, and of all those people struck by the sinister blast—we hear them and will continue to hear them for a long time to come. But we will never hear from the few dozen men and women who were at the port that Tuesday at 6:07 p.m., in front of Hangars 11 and 12, or at the foot of the grain silos. Those key witnesses of what happened at the very heart of the catastrophe are permanently silenced. There is nothing left of them except scraps of their last moments before they unknowingly entered what would be the last circle of hell. The firefighters and the young women paramedics called to the blaze, who can be seen in old photographs standing together in their uniforms, looking like science fiction heroes in astronauts’ suits; the Syrian or Lebanese dockworkers who had stayed on after their regular shifts to do a couple of hours of overtime to earn three more dollars; the foreign workers, from Pakistan or Bangladesh: we celebrate them as heroes but their deaths are not accompanied by any stories. No one will ever be able to describe the astonishing violence with which lives—and the very materiality of bodies—can be erased at the precise place where 2,750 tons of explosive material explode.