Beauty no antidote to Beirut’s legacy of loss
Ihave developed a strange habit of late. An hour before I sleep, I tune into either BBC or CNN. Having caught up on the day’s news, I wait for the foreign voices of TV anchors to first turn into a drone, then into lullaby. I often wake up in the middle of the night to fresh updates of Donald Trump’s dangerous shenanigans, but on most days, I do not mind these rude interruptions. Even though my subconscious mind isn’t well put together, it is, I tell myself, well informed. On occasion, however, my plans backfire.
A little over a month ago, on August 4, I couldn’t fall asleep, no matter how hard I tried. Both the BBC and CNN had begun to flash breaking news, pictures of Beirut’s historic port exploding. The television didn’t make the blast any less deafening or scary. Hours before the Lebanese government could wrap its head around the cause of the explosion — a large, volatile consignment of ammonium nitrate — reports of devastation had begun trickling in. Houses, storefronts and bystanders had been blown to pieces. The CNN bureau had been destroyed. I was anguished. Beirut is my favourite city in the world.
In 2006, when Israel began pounding Lebanon with bombs, my editor called me and said, “You’re going to Beirut.” I was only 22, but my boss was one of those rare men who did not see inexperience when he looked at youth, he saw hunger. He was also one of those rare editors who believed that one could only make sense of affairs at home when one understood the world. A war, even if being fought between Israel and a terrorist Hezbollah, had ramifications for us all. To show that violence is futile, he believed, it needed to be widely reported. As I was parachuted into Lebanon, I knew he was right.
For my first few days in Beirut, I embedded myself with the Red Cross. I was asked to shadow Sana’a, a volunteer not much older than me. She translated the Arabic I heard and read. She spoke English with a delectable accent. She was the most beautiful woman I had seen. Even when she took me to meet Fadiya Al Ahmar, I spent more time looking at her than a nearly nine-months pregnant Fadiya, who had been caught in Israeli-Hezbollah crossfire just a few days ago. “I am taking pills to calm myself, knowing they could be dangerous in my present state. I am so frightened my milk will be poison for my baby,” the 30-year-old told us. After my interview, Fadiya hugged me tight and cried inconsolably.
Driving into Dahieh, a predominantly Shia suburb in Beirut, the windshield of my car would sometimes be hit by pamphlets that Israeli aircraft would drop from the skies. “Get out or get killed,” the flimsy papers would read. Lebanon’s youth had begun to take this message seriously. Mohammad, a man I met in Dahieh, a Hezbollah stronghold, said he didn’t want take sides in the war: “I like sitting on the fence, it takes less place.” Checking into a hotel with his family, Mohammad confided he wanted to move to Europe. Bilaal, a 14-year-old, watched Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone once every month. All he wanted was a life in the US. Even in 2006, Lebanon was, sadly, a country you survived or escaped.
Fourteen years ago, Beirut still had wounds that hadn’t healed. A 15-year long (1975-1990) civil war had left its people scarred and distrustful. Rafic Hariri, one of Lebanon’s beloved prime ministers, had been assassinated in 2005. Israel and Hezbollah were only compounding Lebanese trauma. All of 1,191 civilians are believed to have died in the 2006 Lebanon War, but the number of people who left the country as a result of it is estimated to be much, much higher. In recent years, a financial crisis has brought Lebanon to its knees. With inflation above 50 per cent, the life savings of several Lebanese people have now been erased. A banking scandal has made it difficult for many to access funds or take loans.
The nostalgia of tourists and travellers is inevitably myopic. It misrepresents both the past and present. When I think of Beirut, I remember the Raouche Rocks that I could see from the city’s exquisite beach. I long to return to the Roman Baths in downtown Beirut and walk past the Parisian cafes that surround Nejmeh Square. When I was 22, I believed that beauty and disaster could coexist, but watching the Port of Beirut being blown to smithereens, I knew that beauty is only a ruse. Rather than help us ease another’s pain, it only tries to make us forget their suffering altogether. Sana’a had told me, “I don’t care how bad it gets. Beirut is my home. I’ll do all that I can to protect it.” I imagine her fighting alone.