Beirut of the World

The scintillating, blue-green waters of the Mediterranean promised to deliver a light breeze to the dense cluster of concrete and plaster buildings bordering its beaches. It was relatively cool in Beirut on December 27, 2020, but sunnier than usual, the cloudless sky threatening no hint of rain. So, from her apartment overlooking the sea and the American University of Beirut on one side and Mount Lebanon on the other, some distance behind the city, Bana called her friends and proposed a drive. She had always loved road trips and nothing seemed better at that moment than just getting out of the city.

The roads were quieter than normal––the COVID-19 pandemic and a mass diaspora had cleared streets that normally would be thronged this time of year with visiting expats and tourists, in addition to the city’s residents. A drive into the Mt. Lebanon range––famous for its concentration of cedar trees in Bsharre, which have been used to facilitate civilizations and empires from the Phoenicians to the Ottomans, and of which biblical references abound––that ordinarily would’ve taken an hour and a half took Bana and her three friends in their small Mitsubishi sedan only forty-five minutes.

But lack of traffic and a sunny winter day are hardly things to complain about, so they happily continued on, not to the iconic Cedars of God, but to a complex of Roman ruins near the village of Faqra. At 1,500 meters above sea level, the Faqra ruins often have a layer of snow blanketing the crumbling marble by this point in the winter season, enough to sustain a small ski resort nearby. But Bana and her friends were fortunate––only thin patches of green grass dotted the rocky soil that the ruins stood upon.

Bana has always had an appreciation for the history contained within buildings. In Beirut, bullet-holed concrete facades exist alongside Ottoman qubbas and cathedral colonnades in an impressive interplay of centuries of global culture and discourse. And the Faqra ruins were no exception––at this site, those same centuries of ancient Lebanese history coalesced into an impressive complex of Greco-Roman and Byzantine architecture. Temples dedicated to the Greek youth, Adonis, and to the Syrian goddess, Atargatis, lie to the south, with the latter having been partially dismantled to allow for the fourth-century construction of a Byzantine church. What struck Bana most about the ruins were their sheer height and grandeur. The dusty marble columns of the ancient citadel dwarfed her, towering at least three stories above. Their immense size was humbling, a reminder of how small she really was in the world. But the columns were also a memory, a memorial to the opulence and splendor of a culture and a world that existed no longer.

In some ways, the Faqra ruins are an ancient reflection of Lebanon’s diverse and complicated history. Situated at the Mediterranean’s easternmost boundary, Lebanon has seen itself occupied and integrated into history’s most expansive empires, from the Assyrians and Romans of antiquity to the French colonials of the twentieth century. Arabic is the national language, but many street and business names in Beirut are of French origin, and French and English are commonly taught in schools. In the thirty-year period between Lebanon’s securing of independence and the outbreak of civil war, Beirut was commonly referred to, by Western countries, as the “Paris of the Middle East”, in reference to both its former status as a French mandate and its position as an international port and center of Middle Eastern banking. It is a phrase that Bana strongly dislikes though, for she sees the city as more than just the sum of its colonial history: “It [Beirut] is not the Paris of the Middle East, it’s the Beirut of the world. Full stop. There is no city in the world that’s like Beirut [...] There is something that draws you in, and it’s in the air, it’s in the atmosphere, and it’s in the small things and the moments in between.” Like the Faqra ruins standing sentinel among the peaks of Mt. Lebanon, Beirut is a homage to its own cosmopolitanism, its very personal history and deep diversity. The city is a testament to the hardiness and generosity of the Lebanese people, a place “not created from a Western gaze or with a Western audience in mind or a Western target. Beirut is for Beirut.” Snow-capped peaks to the east overlook the turquoise sea, so that, however stereotypical the idea has become, it is possible for one to ski and swim on the same day. Walking to the supermarket, she will meet someone along the way, she might even receive a discount from the genial grocer on an item in which she showed a particular interest. In a city of over two million, she will never once go downtown without running into someone she knows or without meeting someone new. Driving on Beirut’s streets should be considered an extreme sport, but it’s all part of the fun of living in such a unique city. The endless kindness and hospitality of Beirut’s people makes “you feel like you’re just one big family.” Despite countless years of imperial and colonial occupation, despite a brutal fifteen-year civil war, despite cutthroat sectarian politics, allegiances, and scheming at the expense of the body politic, the Lebanese people have endured with open hearts for those around them. But there is a reason the streets are empty now. And there is a reason people who can are leaving. They are suffering. And there seems to be no end in sight.

**********

Bana, whose round, youthful face belies her worldly experience, speaks with a brio and authority uncommon among most twenty-two-year-olds. Though she is half-Lebanese and half-Syrian, she was born in Abu Dhabi as the third of four children. She moved to Saudi Arabia in eighth grade, but every summer, she and her family would spend a few months in the small village of Hammana nestled high in the Mt. Lebanon range, where there was no WiFi and Beirut was not home, but a weekend getaway. It was something to be excitedly anticipated, a destination preempted by her dad approaching her on a Thursday or Friday evening and saying “‘Ok, tomorrow we’re going to go to Beirut.’” Back then, Beirut meant that they could go see a movie at Concorde Cinema, whose underground screening rooms epitomized movie-going for Bana and her father; or that they might go share a burger at Bob’s Diner, a 1950s-style, neon-lit American diner with black-and-white checkered floors and bright, Turkish lamps hanging over each booth; or it meant that they would go shopping at the ABC mall in Achrafieh, a suburb of Beirut where luxury shops and glass-fronted towers meet hundred-year-old gardens and the wrought-iron balconies and sloping mansards of nineteenth-century French and Ottoman homes. Little seemed cankerous on the surface, for at this time, “Beirut was like a paradise.”

But just because weekend trips to Beirut were eagerly anticipated, that didn’t mean that time in their village during the week was wasted. She now counts many of the people she met in Hammana as among her best friends and even family. Bana and her friend would spend hours picking cherries off the trees, would often skin their knees falling off bikes, or would gather both of their families together to watch movies in the evening. The world seemed a little more removed when in Hammana, but even when it was brought to their doorstep in a cascade of bombings during the 2006 Lebanon War, and eight-year-old Bana saw with her own eyes neighbors’ homes burning to the ground and families displaced, she always had her friend’s family and her own––they would huddle together through the night and by the morning, they were making cereal with Nesquik chocolate milk for the whole neighborhood. Somehow, miraculously, life in Hammana always seemed to return to the tranquility it had grown to know.

So, every summer, before departing Abu Dhabi or Saudi Arabia, Bana and her family would spend days preparing and packing, not because the summer would be difficult to pack for, but because so much excitement was devoted to the pre-departure process. Her parents would take her on a full shopping spree so she could prepare for a summer of new experiences and memories: they would spend hours excitedly flitting from store to store looking for gifts for their neighbors in the village, buying everything from lotion and perfume to shirts and sweaters. Once their bags were packed and everything else set in order, they would board a plane and fly to Beirut-Rafic Hariri Intl. Airport on the edge of the sea, where, upon stepping off the plane, she’d be smothered by the now-familiar blanket of humidity and, after securing their luggage, taxi drivers would clamor above the general hum of the city, and each other, to help the family of six with their bags. It was about an hour drive to Hammana, to the place where Bana first became accustomed to the affable nature that now seems to her ubiquitous in Lebanon’s people. Upon arriving in the small mountain village––which resembles something akin to those Tuscan villages in postcards nestled among hills with cream-colored brick facades and reddish-brown clay roofs––she would get out of the car and run up the stairs of their apartment building as fast as she could to the third floor where there would be a sign waiting for her and her family on the front door, decorated by their neighbors, which said “Welcome home”. And every year the same sign would be posted, differently decorated perhaps, but always with the same love and congeniality behind the message from those who were not just friends, but family.

As she grew up, Beirut assumed a more consequential air. By the time she was ready to begin her undergraduate studies, the city was no longer a weekend outing during a summer vacation, but home, a sprawling metropolis that she would have to learn to navigate as a resident rather than as a visitor. Though she loved the city, she originally wanted to attend school in the U.K., but her father implored her to study in Beirut instead: “[He] told me, ‘I would prefer if you just get to know your city and have all of your milestones in your city and be around your family and even get your driver’s license here. And then for grad school, you can go wherever you want.’” She acquiesced, and, despite the socio-political turmoil that would later dog her time in the city, it was a decision that, even now, she does not regret.

If she hadn’t moved to Beirut, she would never have discovered the hidden restaurants and clubs that lie just below the surface, glittering gems waiting to be unearthed. If she hadn’t attended the American University of Beirut, she would never have met so many people from around the world, from the U.S., Europe, and South America, who came to the university to study and who wanted to stay longer than their allotted semester, for they loved the city as much as she did, as much as she always had: “I would see them weeping the day before they travel back.” And though, like every city, Beirut has changed over the years, she feels as if she has evolved along with it: “Places that I used to pass by all the time and never look twice at, like Salon Beyrouth [a restaurant] [...] I ended up celebrating my 21st there and it instantly became one of my favorite places ever.” Amongst branching trees and loosely-hung LEDs on a pristine marble patio, Bana experienced poetry readings, a buffet complete with open bar for her friends, and nights with jazz music where the traditional oud took center stage. Beirut is a city where cultures and history do not just collide, but intermingle and intertwine, each separate cultural nuance as difficult to extricate from the other as two distinct vines tangled around one another. At Salon Beyrouth, traditional Lebanese dishes, such as kabab keraz (minced lamb and cherry sauce)––which traces its origin to neighboring Syria––sit comfortably alongside the distinctly English combination of fish and chips, all served under the French name (and spelling) of ‘Salon Beyrouth’.

To be sure, she loved her time in Abu Dhabi, but for Bana, what distinguishes Beirut from Abu Dhabi is that Beirut does not shirk its history. While there are “super modern”, twenty-first-century buildings with a characteristic emphasis on rectangular forms and showcasing of horizontal planes, and upscale apartments that cost as much as three million dollars, they often exist alongside buildings which still bear bullet holes from the civil war in their flaky plaster or brick, buildings which have been converted into luxury hotels whose wartime facades are part of the aesthetic appeal. But Beirut’s architecture is more than just a conglomeration of memorials––just like its people and cuisine and daily life, its edifices are a testament to the global influences that have shaped the city for centuries. Ottoman arabesques often adorn walls which stand alongside twenty-first-century skyscrapers, while the Central Bank and New Beirut Souks (a shopping center in Beirut’s Central District) were designed by Swiss and Spanish architects, respectively. The Neoclassical St. George Maronite Cathedral stands right down the street from the iconic blue-domed Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque, the former’s campanile having been shortened several meters to align exactly with the latter’s four minarets in a symbolic display of interfaith harmony among Maronite Christians, Sunni, and Shia Muslims. “Every single block on the pavement and every single scratch on the wall has a story behind it. And I think it’s what adds to the vibrance of Lebanon and Beirut.”

But those same scratches and paving stones tell a different story too. One which has plagued the nation for decades and whose legacy seems to quickly be spiraling out of control.

**********

April 13, 1975. Though intersectional violence had been ratcheting up over the last few years, the explosion of a busload of Palestinian refugees––orchestrated by the Christian Phalangists (today, a political party)––proved to be the precipitating event for a fifteen-year civil war. Factious militias, which already controlled sections of Beirut, mutually escalated the tensions into all-out general warfare. The government had no power to quell the violence, for even the army split according to its members’ respective allegiances. Beirut was divided into a Muslim West and a Christian East, becoming not just a literal battleground, but also a figurative representation for the country’s seemingly irreparable political divisions.

Syria intervened in an attempt to stabilize the situation and protect its own regional interests, while Israel was simultaneously funding and training foes of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), notably the Lebanese Front. Israel’s involvement eventually escalated into an all-out invasion that pushed as far as Beirut’s suburbs, thereby prompting the creation of Hezbollah to push out the fledgling nation. Continued foreign patronage throughout the late-1980s allowed militias on both sides to participate in smuggling and the drug trade, fueling the collapse of the nation’s currency and ensuring a general loss of popular support for either side. By late 1989, parliament (nominally still in power as a political body, though most of its members belonged to warring factions) had agreed on the foreign drafting of the Taif Accords, promising an end to the war but simultaneously reinforcing the sectarian system by solidifying the sects of the troika: the President, Prime Minister, and Speaker of Parliament (though ‘taif’ refers to the city of Ta’if in which the accords were drawn, the word is also a cognate of the Arabic ‘taifya’, which means ‘sectarianism’). A year later, the violence had all but died out.

The true toll of the internecine war will never be known, but some estimates put the death count at more than 100,000, with 1,000,000 displaced and several billion dollars accrued in property damage. Whole swaths of Beirut were left covered in rubble and choked with dust.

Memories of the civil war have not faded entirely, for, while sections of Beirut have been rebuilt to cater to wealthy foreigners, there are still buildings which boldly showcase their scars, bullet holes gaping dark to the streets. But while Bana feels that the pockmarked edifices of the city add a historical vibrance, more consequential vestiges of the war have the opposite effect, contributing to the city’s dissolution and decline. In 1991, one year after the last bouts of violence fizzled out, Lebanon’s parliament passed an amnesty law, pardoning all crimes committed before March 28, 1991, with a notable exception for assassinations (attempted or carried out) of religious and political leaders, and foreign and Arab diplomats. Effectively, most violations of human rights during the civil war, no matter how grossly inhumane, would go uninvestigated and unpunished, all in the name of turning a new page in Lebanon’s history. But what the law has ultimately done, other than allowing criminals to walk free, has been to allow those intimately involved in the civil war, those who spearheaded campaigns or, according to Bana, even fired the guns themselves, to hold political office and dictate the trajectory of the country. Consequently, the history of Lebanon from 1991 to today has been one of irony: while the nation does not shirk its history, it also refuses to confront and come to terms with it; while amnesty was ostensibly granted to move Lebanon forward into the future and out of the darkness of the preceding civil war-years, it has also ensured that Lebanon stays stagnant, privy to the sectarian whims of the same men who violently paralyzed the country for fifteen years. “A large number of our political class today are either descendants of warlords, or are the warlords themselves. The leaders of political parties are literal warlords. They’ve physically killed people. They weren’t just giving orders. They were there with their machine guns.”

And yet, despite its contribution to the factional violence and squabbling that has defined Lebanon’s politics from 1975 onward, the sectarian system has proved durable, thanks in part to the nation’s populace. A large number of Lebanese citizens belong to one of the numerous factions that occupy seats in Lebanon’s parliament and thus, often demonstrate a blind loyalty to the group they believe has their best interests at heart, whether for religious, economic, or even generational reasons. “It’s unbelievable because there’s no sense of accountability. And even if there was, no one cares, because people think ‘this is my sect and my religious affiliation, and if they’re not going to protect me and my interests, who else will?’” Such a mindset has proved detrimental to Lebanon’s postwar progress, contributing to what Bana sees as a form of national paralysis at the behest of an archaic and defective system of alliances.

The nation’s sectarian reliance is one of the reasons that Bana even decided to pursue a degree in Political Science and International Law. At her university, she had professors who disliked her simply because of her last name (in Lebanon, last names often denote sect affiliation). One professor in particular was outrageously biased and when she complained to the department chair, she was told nothing could be done about that faculty member because they had connections to politicians and could help the university politically. The Taif Accords presented itself as a fresh start for Lebanon, but its name was a dead giveaway––and thirty years later, little has changed politically as there has been no amount of local or regional enforcement to do away with the sectarian system. If a university can still play according to the old rules, there is little hope that parliament will be any different. And for Bana, these destructive loyalties are not just endemic––they are virtually fused into the Lebanese mindset, promoting an ‘us vs. them’ rhetoric which blames the other side for any problem: “On some level, there’s been a lot of brainwashing in terms of why you should vote for this person, why you should stay loyal to this party. And then that’s created a domino effect of catastrophe upon catastrophe happening in this country and nothing changing.”

Indeed, it seems as if one thing has led to another since the conclusion of the civil war. The assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 prompted the Cedar Revolution which called for the withdrawal of Syrian troops (who had remained in Lebanon for over twenty years). A year later, the 2006 Lebanon War broke out at the southern border between Hezbollah and Israel, resulting in over 1,000 Lebanese casualties and extensive damage to Beirut’s southern suburbs due to consistent airstrikes on infrastructure. When the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, hostilities spilled over into Lebanon, with numerous incidents of sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia groups in the streets of Beirut and Tripoli.

But the story of Lebanon is one of adaptation. Despite the Lebanon War, despite assassinations, despite bombings, and despite intersectional violence, this was the Beirut of Bana’s youth, one where cinemas, diners, and shopping malls were frequented. This was the Beirut she fell in love with and the one where she saw firsthand the generosity and amiability of its people. It is the memory of this Beirut, and the knowledge of what it can be, that drives her to want to help in any way she can. And October 2019 seemed to offer that hope for change long sought for.

What started as general outrage over a series of tax resolutions involving a proposed tax on WhatsApp quickly evolved into mass protests against Lebanon’s highly divisive sectarian system. Protestors flocked to Beirut’s Riad al-Solh Square on October 17, 2019, to demand the dissolution of the then-cabinet, with greater aims of toppling the entire system of governance which had come to be defined by nepotism and clientelism. Standing in front of some of Beirut’s biggest banks, with the Ministry of Finance and Parliament just a few blocks away, men and women chanted “Kellon ya’ane kellon [All of them means all of them]”. Tires were set ablaze while riot police threw tear gas in vain attempts to disperse the crowds. Protestors blocked roads and schools were shuttered. “No one had the energy to think about university.” At Bana’s university, the revolution broke out two days before school elections. In Lebanon, university elections are simply a microcosm of the nation’s system––most clubs on campus are financially supported by the country’s political parties. Faux titles like ‘communications club’, ‘youth club’, or ‘social club’ belie their true nature as being veritable proxies for the parliamentarian parties backing them. But when the revolution began, everybody running for university elections under a party withdrew their names in solidarity with the movement. For Bana, this move was welcome, but also frustrating: “Why couldn’t you act sooner, like you had thirty years’ worth of proof in front of your face?!” Regardless, for those few days in October, it seemed no politician would be safe from the furor of their constituents who had long suffered at their hands.

The October 17 revolution was largely a millennial-driven one. At the time, youth unemployment rested around thirty percent and the nation was deep into an economic crisis. “We were the ones leading the protests on the streets. We were the ones coming up with the chants.” October 2019 reignited Bana’s faith in her generation because for the first time since the Cedar Revolution, the Lebanese people were saying, “Enough.” October arrived suddenly, but not out of the shadows. The economic devastation, long looming since 2008’s global financial crisis, was at a tipping point. Since 1997, the Lebanese lira had been pegged to the U.S. dollar, originally at 1,507 liras to 1 dollar, in an attempt to encourage local bank deposits and property purchases; much of Lebanon relies on tourism for income and U.S. dollars have long been the primary currency utilized by visiting foreigners. But the global financial crisis, and foreign sanctions against Hezbollah, only resulted in dwindling investments and aid. Lebanon overwhelmingly relies on foreign imports (to the tune of around 80% of its products), so any prolonged period of interruption to the nation’s fragile economy only spells impending disaster. The Syrian civil war only compounded the disaster, leading to an influx of over 1.5 million refugees which the state was not prepared to handle. Eventually, banks began to force customers to take their money out in liras rather than in dollars, but the lira was still virtually worthless. So, a black market for U.S. dollars took shape, demanding higher prices for the coveted currency. And just weeks before the revolution, wildfires rampaged across the country, in part because the state simply didn’t have the means to handle the crisis––aircraft that could have fought the fires remained grounded, having long before fallen into disrepair, and craft that were employed could only carry a meager amount of water. Moreover, rather than handling the crisis, many politicians tried to turn the devastation into a sectarian issue, with one Christian M.P. conspiratorially, and falsely, claiming that the fires were only occurring in Christian areas. For nearly thirty years, parliament had proven that all they could do was squabble and give political leg-ups to friends and relatives while neglecting the country they had been trusted to govern. The system’s cracks were wide and the revolution intended to break through them completely.

By the third day of the revolution, over two million people had taken to the streets to demand the end of Lebanon’s sectarian system. Despite arbitrary arrests, tear gas, rubber bullets and pellets, brutal police beatings, and counter-protestors throwing rocks, those two million people endured in solidarity and defiance. For Bana, seeing the crowds swell with anger and hope for a country they believed in felt like a true turning point. “I thought ‘there’s no going back now’. Everything’s going to change. There might be some hope.” And it seemed that two million others shared that same hope.

Yet, from the outset, Bana had reservations. When politically-backed students withdrew their names from university elections, she was thrilled, but also suspicious: “These people were backed by [the parties] for years and [...] God knows what these parties paid for––probably their tuition, their homes, their parents’ jobs. I get this noble front they’re trying to put on, but at the same time, I don’t see how there’s no ulterior motive.” Though the revolution resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his cabinet, little had been promised in terms of dismantling the system. In a speech a few days after the protests began, Hariri promised 50% salary cuts for M.P.s (which ultimately never happened) and early elections––but this was a far cry from a complete governmental overhaul. Hariri’s resignation only assured that someone similarly entrenched would take his place. So the protests continued into 2020, until the COVID -19 pandemic forced people off the streets and into their homes to fume in isolation. In the end, things didn’t just stay the same––they got worse.

Lebanon’s economic situation was dire as 2020 wore on amidst a pandemic that had completely halted tourism, the nation’s main source of revenue. As the country continues to spiral into hyperinflation, black market exchange rates have now hit as high as 22,000 liras to the dollar. In 2020, banks were still forcing customers to withdraw in liras which had long ago become worth less than the paper they were printed on. “We’re economically much worse off than we were in the civil war. And that’s really outrageous to say, but it’s true. My dad lived in the civil war, and he told me, ‘Yup, at least at that time I had control of my money and I could take out my money from the bank and use it.’” Banks began to close their doors at 12:30 p.m., when most people were at work, in an attempt to discourage withdrawals. So, if she wanted to cash her paycheck, Bana had to show up at 11:30 in the middle of the work week. By the time she reached the counter at 11:40, the teller tried refusing her request, saying that the bank was about to close. “I was like, ‘no, you close at 12:30 and I’m here fifty minutes before that, so you better give me a goddamn number because I’m not leaving until I get my money.” She got her waiting number, but the teller refused everyone who stood in line behind her, men and women “who had debts to pay, bills for their kids, tuition. And it’s just humiliating because you have to beg and cry for a number to wait in line [...] having to beg for your own money, it’s just so degrading.” Despite receiving a waiting number, when she approached the counter again, they still tried to refuse paying her. They tried telling her the system was down, even though it had allegedly been down for several months already. They tried telling her that she was asking for too much to withdraw, but she persisted in her demands. “I didn’t have a debt to pay, I just wanted [the money] before the value of the lira dropped even more.”

Moreover, the outrageous black-market exchange rate for dollars forced her into a tight spot when trying to secure her tuition for law school in London. She was told that, in order to pay for her tuition, she would have to take the money out in Lebanese liras (at an insufficient, capped amount) and then buy dollars at the black-market rate. “You’re talking about literally paying more than triple the amount for tuition.” But that wasn’t all. Bana was told that her inability to pay tuition was not a big deal because she was going for her second degree. They told her that she shouldn’t be allowed to do it because she didn’t need more than a bachelor’s in her life. “So I literally tried to sue the bank so they’d let me pay my tuition.” She questions why she has to go to such great lengths to live her life: “Why does it have to be so painful and so difficult to do something? Like, it’s your money.” Once upon a time, Lebanon was known as a great place to store away assets. Everyone had a bank account from which they could freely withdraw their money. But in a matter of weeks, the banking sector had all but collapsed. And now, “[The lira] is like a dead currency on the planet.” On August 3, 2020, Bana recalls that she was telling a friend, “It can’t get worse than this. Economic crisis, hyperinflation, revolution, COVID. Like, there’s nothing that could top this.”

On August 4, 2020, Bana was taking a nap when she felt her bed shaking. She woke up thinking it was her cat jumping onto the bed, as was often the case. But her cat wasn’t in the room. And not only was her bed shaking, but her desk, and her entire room, were swaying right to left, right to left. She jumped out of bed, adrenaline coursing, looking for a safe way to get out of her room, for a shelf outside the door had just fallen, blocking her exit. She could hear her mom and sister screaming in other parts of the house, but she had no way to safely reach them. Then came the sound, its shockwaves so powerful that it physically shook her to the point that she lost her balance. The building was trembling, feeling like it would fall apart at any second. Car alarms up and down the street below belted their klaxons into the humid evening.

Earthquakes are not unheard of in Lebanon, but no earthquake could produce a sound that strong. “It felt like, ‘this is a bomb, this is war. And the next thing that will get hit is my building and I’m about to die.’” There had been tension the previous week at the southern border, so in those first few seconds of terror, a foreign attack seemed likely. So she began grabbing things she thought she might need in her inevitable displacement if the explosion turned out to be a declaration of war: passport, gold, cash, “anything I’ll need to just get out of here and survive wherever the hell I’m going.”

But when she turned to her window and looked out across the buildings below her, she saw a dense maroon mushroom cloud rising up against the early-evening sun from the Port of Beirut. Houses and buildings were utterly obliterated around it. And immediately, her thoughts flew to her brother and father, who were not at home, who were somewhere on the streets of Beirut, who must surely be dead because nobody could survive an explosion of that magnitude. So she began the process of shoring herself against the grief she knew must come so she could be strong for her remaining siblings and her mother. But, if this was truly the start of a war, then she, and her sister, and her mother were likely to die as well, and her brother (who lived overseas) was going to have to plan five funerals.

To compound her sense of panic and helplessness, cell service in the city went out. For ten minutes, she was unable to text or call anyone to find out if they were alive. All she could do was huddle in her apartment with her sister and mother, and hope that somehow, miraculously, her father and brother had survived. “It was the longest ten minutes of my life.” With the pandemic having shut down much of the city, traffic was virtually nonexistent; there was no reason why they shouldn’t be home within ten minutes unless they couldn’t get home. But they returned, shaken, yet otherwise unharmed. What they described seemed like a disaster movie: glass raining down around their car as they drove, buildings falling apart around them so that her father had to swerve and maneuver around entire chunks of edifices. Ten minutes was enough time to send the three hospitals near Bana into overdrive––out her window, she could see broken glass coating the street and she could hear screams from the hospitals where the injured were quickly being brought.

Once her family was decidedly safe, Bana began calling and texting her friends, everyone she knew who still resided in the city, to ask whether they were still alive. “That’s a text message that I never want to have to send anyone.” Thankfully, everyone was safe, though one friend, had they not left their home earlier in the day after Bana canceled meeting up with them, would have lost their life as their entire building had been reduced to rubble.

News about the explosion and its origins quickly spread. By the next day, it was common knowledge that the blast had not been a foreign or domestic attack, but something altogether worse: a further result of government incompetence. In 2013, dock authorities had confiscated just under 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate from a Russian cargo ship. Instead of selling or disposing of the volatile compound, authorities stored it in a warehouse for over seven years where it finally ignited in a fire, creating a blast that has since been estimated to be a tenth of the intensity of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Over 200 people died and nearly 6,000 were injured.

And so, four days later, protestors took to the streets once more, despite the pandemic, to demand the dissolution of their government. They had suffered enough, years had been wasted with frivolous change that never fixed any of the problems at hand. Even though Bana had felt like the 2019 October revolution had the potential to provide the clean slate Lebanon desperately needed, she truly believed that the August 8th protests following the explosion were different: “Just out of respect for everyone who died, [people] need to let go of these loyalties they have.” Hassan Diab and his cabinet resigned, but not without a fight––Bana saw three of her friends get shot on TV by police, and her professor get shot in the eye. “I’m watching the news and suddenly, I’m seeing my friends and my professor bleed out on TV. To be alive after the explosion, to have survived that, only to get injured very intentionally by the security forces and the army, it’s just––it’s just unbelievable.”

But in the aftermath of the explosion, Bana found her focus shifted from national reform to grassroots trauma management. She wanted to help those same people who had been so kind to her for years, and who had suffered for so long. It was an idea that came to her after hearing about her friends’ experiences during the explosion and having to deal with her own subsequent trauma. One friend was on the street when the blast occurred and was thrown backward with such force that he appeared to his friends to be almost a kilometer away. He was helped to the hospital––trying not to slip on pieces of brain which littered the floor––where he had to stitch himself up because there were not enough staff to assist. Another friend, a nurse, had glass explode in her face, and two of her coworkers died right in front of her. For Bana, anytime her sister is out and doesn’t answer her phone for more than a couple hours, she believes she’s dead. When she recently heard a garbage truck outside banging a can against its hull, she thought another explosion had taken place, and immediately, adrenaline began coursing through her again. “The survivor’s guilt is so strong because when you look at everyone suffering, you think, ‘What did I do to deserve to be alive? Why don’t they deserve the same?’”

This question of why some deserved to live while others lost their lives, the desire to help those who survived with very similar feelings of trauma and guilt, inspired her and her friends to co-found an initiative which offers psychological first aid to survivors and which goes a step further in recruiting practicing psychologists to train volunteers to assist in the administration of such first aid. The initiative is currently in the process of becoming legally registered. Despite her eagerness to help, though, she has found it difficult to go to the blast site. “It’s so heartbreaking. It’s also tear-jerking going by the places where I know people got injured. You even sometimes see small drops of blood that haven’t been cleaned up. It’s just really heartbreaking.”

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Etched upon Beirut’s municipal flag is the two-thousand-year-old lapidary which was once allegedly carved over its world-renowned law school: “Berytus Nutrix Legum” (Beirut, Mother of Laws). But today, Beirut’s parliament is defined by its rampant corruption, nepotism, and clientelism, predisposed to disregard its own constitutional enumerations (such as those forbidding arbitrary arrests). And in the end, despite all that Lebanon’s people have suffered and fought for, the same men who spearheaded the civil war and subsequently ran the country into the ground maintain their tenacious hold on power. Former-Prime Minister Hassan Diab and President Aoun promised a transparent investigation into the blast, but in February, the lead investigator was removed after he accused senior lawmakers of fatal negligence. In the weeks that followed, the World Bank threatened to withhold coronavirus vaccine funding from Lebanon as the nation’s politicians were found, in a blatant show of favoritism, to have been inoculated in a legislative building without prior approval. Clean-up efforts immediately following the explosion in August were not orchestrated by the government, but by private contractors, volunteers, and even foreign workers who had flown in. And a mere two months after the explosion, just a few days after the anniversary of the October 17 revolution, Saad Hariri once more assumed the helm despite his ousting at the clamor of his constituents one year ago (Hariri has now been replaced by Najib Mikati). Now, after seeing two mass protests fail in the space of a year, Bana is more cynical about Lebanon’s future: “I just don’t see a way out unless we guillotine the current political class, or they vanish. I don’t see a way out as long as they’re in charge, as long as they’re playing their cards and people are following them. I don’t see anything changing.”

Though Beirut’s politics are virtually stagnant, the city itself has changed much over the years that Bana has known it. When she exits the plane at Beirut’s airport now, she is no longer greeted by the helpful smiles of taxi drivers, but by the smell of trash (a vestige of Lebanon’s years-long garbage crisis). Concorde cinema closed its doors years ago––the last movie Bana remembers seeing there was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part 2. Bob’s Diner shuttered only a few years ago. And ABC mall, badly damaged during the August explosion (though it has since been repaired), is now surrounded and enclosed by numerous other shopping centers so that the allure it once held for her is somewhat diminished. In the weeks following the explosion, nobody was on the streets; Beirut “looked like a dead city.” Amidst one of the strictest pandemic lockdowns in the world (a 24-hour curfew was imposed, with groceries delivered to doors), Bana was not able to leave her home and explore the city she was so accustomed to traversing for over two months. There are no more discounts at the grocery store from genial grocers, for if they have managed to survive the economic devastation and pandemic closures, their shelves have been wiped clean. And though the lockdown has been lifted and the plummeting value of the lira continues to inspire anger, Lebanon’s critical fuel, electricity, and water shortage prevents many from organizing in a protest.

But what hasn’t changed are the nation’s people; their selflessness is especially evident in the hardest of times. Bana recalls that mere minutes after the explosion, once service had been restored, people across the city were posting on social media about where to get first aid, where to get supplies, where to seek psychological help, etc. In many ways, the city’s people are interconnected despite sectarian allegiances––when some suffer, the rest are there to help and lift them up.

There comes a point, though, where suffering becomes so frequent and acute that you can’t hold out any longer. Lebanon has reached that point. The chronic fuel and water shortage plaguing Lebanon’s people in recent weeks has no end in sight and is prompting concern, for Bana, that the crisis will be used in next year’s election as political bait to promise constituents results that will not be obtained. Moreover, President Emmanuel Macron’s heavy involvement in Lebanese governance and aid since the August 2020 blast has left her concerned that a form of neo-imperialist control looms. And, perhaps more concerning of all, in 2019, over 66,000 Lebanese emigrated, up from 33,000 in 2018. In the weeks following the 2020 explosion, Google searches for ‘emigration’ hit a 10-year peak. Among youth in Lebanon, there is a growing sense of hopelessness, contributing to a veritable ‘brain drain’ of the nation’s brightest young minds. Bana has already had to say goodbye to several of her friends, friends who will not return and will become part of the growing global Lebanese diaspora. And she feels the same way––she has no intention of staying in the country to work and settle. Yet, Beirut is home. She still feels “that sadness about leaving Beirut.” The city and its people have proven to be generous, hospitable, and irrepressible. She knows what Beirut can be and she does not want to give up that hope entirely, though her cynicism grows by the day.

Lebanon’s history has been characterized by its people’s ability to move on from trauma, to adapt and survive. But adaptation comes in many forms. On the way home from the Faqra ruins on that sunny December day, she drove by the Port of Beirut. A long line of cars were parked along the street bordering the port and people milled around the blast site. After taking a closer look, Bana realized that these people weren’t just milling around––they were taking pictures, selfies even, with the blast site. “It was just weird and insensitive because it was beginning to look like a tourist spot [...] over two hundred people lost their lives in that instant; how tone deaf is it for them to do that?” Lebanon’s future is precarious, and though there is still hope for change, it dwindles by the day. “Who knows, in twenty years, things might change. I have no clue because the October revolution was the biggest revolution [in Lebanon’s history]. It was the most amount of people on the streets, the most incendiary protests that have ever happened. And we’re worse off than we were before.”