The aftermath: how the Beirut explosion has left scars on an already broken Lebanon

Three years ago, a huge explosion ripped the city apart – and with it people’s hopes for rebuilding. The most vulnerable, many of them women, are bearing the brunt of Lebanon’s endless disasters

The fourth of August 2020 was an extremely hot and humid day in Lebanon. I was stuck at home at my computer, working remotely because of the pandemic. I was finishing my afternoon shift as a senior producer and correspondent for Associated Press, covering Lebanon and the wider Middle East. I was at the mercy of an unreliable internet connection and enduring, like most Lebanese, the scorching heat and recurrent power cuts. Lebanon’s power outages date back to the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990, and have still not been resolved to this day.

My house is about 7 miles from Beirut, nestled on a hill that overlooks a small and peaceful pine wood. Beirut and its surroundings had become a stifling concrete jungle, and I was feeling lucky to have trees to look at and access to some outdoor space during the long summer days. I had no plans to go to the city that day. At about 6pm I went to the kitchen to feed my cat, which was waiting for me in the garden. It was our daily ritual. As I opened the window and emptied the canned food into a bowl, I heard the familiar roar of warplanes racing through our skies. Israeli warplanes have been violating Lebanese airspace for decades, but the jet fighters were exceptionally frequent that summer.

A minute later, a loud explosion rocked the house – the loudest I had ever heard in my life. My first thought was that there had been an airstrike nearby. I started shouting helplessly: ‘They hit us, they hit us!’ I rushed to get my phone, desperate to find out if everyone, including my husband and child, were safe. My daughter was with my sister-in-law and was fine. But I couldn’t get hold of my husband, who was on his way home.

I started looking for information on social media. “6.10pm. Was that an airstrike? What was that?” I tweeted. I turned the TV on and unconfirmed reports said there might have been an explosion at the house of the Lebanese prime minister. I tried calling colleagues in Beirut, but could not get through.

Local media was now reporting that the blast, which was felt miles away in neighbouring Cyprus, was an explosion at the port caused by fireworks in a warehouse. Ten minutes later, one of my colleagues called back. She was hysterical – her roof had collapsed and, though she was miraculously unhurt, her house was badly damaged. I couldn’t understand how an explosion at the port had devastated her home, which was several miles away. The first images from the port and the blast started coming in through local TV. I still thought the main impact was at the port itself. Few facts were clear that night. Eventually my husband turned up safe. It would take us, and the entire country, until the next morning to realise the magnitude of what had happened.

I drove to Beirut at 6am to do a live broadcast for Good Morning Britain from a position near the port. Before I even got to the city, I saw windows and doors blown out miles away from the explosion’s epicentre. The destruction started many miles before you entered the capital.

The blast site itself had an eerie tranquillity, the gracious morning light cutting through the smoke that was still billowing above the seaport, its brightness exposing with a piercing clarity the enormity of the destruction. The harbour had been smashed, its tall grain silos stood defeated, one side almost completely collapsed, the other relatively untouched, looking feebly at the devastated city. The damage was like nothing I had ever seen. It reminded me of Homs and Aleppo in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, devastated by months of airstrikes.

Three hundred thousand residents had been made homeless overnight, many were injured and left wandering helplessly, looking for shelter, for help. The destruction was greatest in the eastern parts of the city. Buildings were battered, and naked concrete columns were all that was left of the luxurious skyscrapers overlooking the port. Cars along the road looked as if they had been hit by a giant hammer, and streets were blocked by rubble and wreckage. People were already cleaning up the streets, salvaging what they could, looking for survivors. I did not see any police or army officers helping them. As I approached the inner eastern side of the city, the silence was shattered by the sound of breaking glass, as glass from windows blown out in the blast continued to fall from the frames. People’s feet crunched on shards fallen from buildings as they tried to clear a path through the debris. This shattering noise became the soundtrack to our lives. It was all we could hear, all day, for many weeks.

In 2020, Lebanon was, like most of the world, trying to contain the pandemic. But the virus had hit at a time when the country was already grappling with an unparalleled economic and financial crisis. In October 2019, Lebanon had been overtaken by nationwide protests against the ruling political elite, and tax increases in particular. The country was increasingly looking like a failed state. The Lebanese pound had started to lose its value that summer, and would go on to fall by more than 80%. Banks closed during the protests, and when they reopened, depositors were denied access to their savings. All this was ultimately the result of a Ponzi scheme operated for years by the Central Bank, the commercial banks and the political establishment, in which everyone’s money vanished, mine included.

By mid-2020, inflation was soaring, unemployment and poverty had reached new heights, and the collapse of the health sector was a real possibility as hospitals struggled to stay afloat. Covid-19 cases were increasing again, and medical personnel were warning of an imminent disaster. Many, including me, thought the country had hit rock-bottom. Little did we know that a disaster of another kind was waiting around the corner.

After the explosion, I began putting together survivors’ stories, particularly from women. Many of them lost everything that day: the most precious people in their lives, their physical and mental health, their homes and livelihoods, their ability to be happy and to feel in any way secure. Mothers lost their children in the explosion, wives lost their partners, doctors and nurses, first aid responders, refugees, and migrants – none would forget that moment at 6.08pm and the harrowing details of the day that changed their lives.

Pamela Zeinoun, a 27-year-old paediatric nurse, was working at the newborn intensive care unit of Saint George Hospital on the day of the blast. She was doing her usual rounds, checking on babies and briefing their families. “I was in the premature babies’ section with two of my colleagues a few minutes before 6pm,” she told me. “We were assisting a family who were visiting their baby. I was talking to them. Then I left for the neonatal section, where I had a patient. I decided to call my mother – I always call her at that time of the day.

“As we were speaking, I heard a loud boom. It was strong – I could tell it was not normal. I remember turning around to the window and telling my mother that I’d heard an explosion. My mother was outside Beirut, very far from the port, but she told me she heard it, too. A couple of seconds later, I felt the floor jump beneath me. My reaction was to move away from the window. There was a big closet that fell over, and its drawers fell out and knocked me to the floor. Everything collapsed on my head – the ceiling, the glass, the steel.”

The first thought that came to Zeinoun’s mind was the safety of the babies. “I couldn’t get to the newborn baby from where I was. There was a collapsed ceiling between me and the incubator. I could see the baby – she was fine, but I couldn’t move the rubble.

“There was no power. I remember shouting the name of one of our colleagues who was pregnant. I tripped over two nurses. They had cuts on their heads and were both soaked in blood. They were holding hands. I tried to speak to them, but they looked at me with blank stares. They weren’t screaming or crying – they were unresponsive. I had injuries, but I looked OK. I worried they weren’t going to make it. I later found out that they couldn’t hear me, and they couldn’t see because there was blood in their eyes. They don’t remember seeing me.

“I tried to save the four babies in the premature recovery department. I remember carrying one and giving it to her mother. I told her to leave immediately for another hospital. I had no idea what was happening outside, or that most of the city’s hospitals were gone. All of the incubators were damaged, but the babies were still sleeping in them. I started removing the babies one by one. I kept telling myself, I just hope they are not injured, because I would not be able to do anything.

“I saw them sleeping, but I didn’t know if they were dead or alive. The incubators, though damaged, somehow protected them. I carried the other three premature babies in my arms. My constant worry was their body temperature – I kept thinking they would get cold. One of the fathers was still there. It was his baby I had sent away with the mother. I tried to talk to him, to tell him to help me fetch pyjamas for the other babies from a drawer. But I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t utter a word. I gestured with my hands. He understood. He opened the drawer and gave me the pyjamas. I don’t know why I couldn’t talk. It’s as if I was trying to channel all of my power into saving these babies – as though if I uttered a word, I would lose that power, I would lose control.”

Zeinoun got out of the hospital building, the three premature babies still in her arms, and stopped inside the entrance booth of the hospital to decide what to do next. At that moment a photojournalist took a photo of her. It went viral.

“I was getting scared. People were telling me to leave because there would be another airstrike. I started asking people to give me their clothes. I would wrap each baby with whatever I had. A doctor came to me and wanted to help. I refused to give the babies to him or to anyone.”

Zeinoun and the doctor decided to leave the hospital. They walked towards another nearby clinic, thinking that they would get help there. “They told me they could not let me in, there were no incubators any more, all were damaged,” she said. “That’s when I started to realise how huge this was – that it went beyond our hospital, beyond that street.

“I kept pinching the babies. I wanted them to cry to make sure they were alive. I walked with them for an hour and a half on the highway. I thought we would never make it. I wanted to give up many times, but the doctor and I encouraged each other.”

They eventually managed to get a lift in a passing car. “I remember sitting in the middle. There was a driver, his daughter, his wife and their seven-year-old grandson. The boy looked at us petrified. I started crying. I felt so vulnerable. The doctor cried, too. My arms were trembling. The woman was trying to soothe me. Then one of the babies had an apnoea [stopped breathing]. He turned black. I thought he died. I gave the two others to the doctor and started stimulating him, his back, his legs, just so he would cry. He wasn’t responding. But eventually, miraculously, he cried. He came back to life.”

Zeinoun and the doctor finally made it to another hospital outside Beirut and started frantically looking for incubators. “I found one and put all three babies in it. They were all alive.”

I called Zeinoun again a year after our interview. She had been in touch with the families of the babies she saved, and said she often visits them. One of the infants is now living in France. “I didn’t just save them – they actually saved me, too. I was so focused on them. Their weight in my arms was a constant reminder that I had to go on, that I had no option, that I could not give up.”

She wanted to stay in Lebanon to “fight”. “I want to know who is responsible for that blast, who is responsible for me having to carry three premature babies and run for their lives. Someone is.”

The explosion was caused by a consignment of ammonium nitrate, according to Lebanese officials, which had been stored in Beirut’s port for years, but whose origin and destination remain a mystery to this day. It killed more than 200 people and injured about 6,500, many of them critically.

The victims were not just Lebanese. They included nationals from Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, the US and Australia. Even in a country that has seen more than its fair share of conflict, never have so many people in Lebanon experienced the same traumatising event at the same time. The explosion was the result of the criminal and corrupt manoeuvring of the ruling political establishment. The Port of Beirut’s management structure reflects the division of power among the ruling elite – it is very much a microcosm of the corruption in Lebanon as a whole.

Many of Lebanon’s current political leaders were warlords in the country’s civil war, a multifaceted conflict that erupted in 1975 and lasted until 1990. These leaders have been governing the country since then. They head political parties that are sectarian in nature, and they consider themselves the patrons of Lebanon’s various sectarian communities. They have consolidated a power-sharing system along sectarian lines, and have long benefited from it.

Different sects control different state departments and agencies, and everyone gets a share of the corruption ring. This political power-sharing system has also nurtured a web of clientelism that has made these politicians stronger than the state itself. They control its institutions and use its resources to serve their parochial interests. The Port of Beirut is no exception.

One powerful and dominant group at the port is the armed Shia militant group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and is considered to be stronger than Lebanon’s national army, controlling decisions of war and peace, and interfering in regional proxy wars, including the one in neighbouring Syria. Hezbollah has fought alongside the Assad regime in Syria since 2013, providing ground support for the Syrian dictator and preventing his military defeat by domestic and foreign forces.

Lebanon has always been wedged in by regional tensions and conflicts. Its political parties have long sought external support to reinforce their internal positions, while foreign powers have used Lebanon as a pawn to advance their regional hegemonic interests. Lebanon’s judiciary, too, is hostage to the interests of the political establishment. Politicians directly interfere in the appointment and promotion of judges, often along sectarian lines. This largely explains the absence of an independent legal system in the country, and the prevalent culture of impunity as a result.

People wonder to this day why explosive chemicals were left in a functioning port in the heart of a city for years. There is still no definite answer. According to media investigations and a Human Rights Watch report released on 3 August 2021, various senior officials, ministers from different political parties, prime ministers, and the Lebanese president were all aware of the presence of hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate and the danger this posed. But no one took the appropriate action.

How much trauma can one bear in a lifetime? It’s a question I keep asking myself after having lived in and reported for so many years from Lebanon and the Middle East. I am staggered by the level of violence that we have endured and tolerated, over and again. Salwa Baalbaki, a journalist, has survived a lot of violence: the civil war, Israel’s wars in Lebanon, and bombings in the suburbs where she lives. Despite all the trauma she had suffered, she was not ready for 4 August 2020.

Baalbaki worked at the newspaper An-Nahar, Lebanon’s oldest and once most-renowned daily.

We met at the paper’s headquarters in downtown Beirut almost a year after the explosion. She took me into an office overlooking the street, its windows covered with wooden panels. The building’s facades had still not been replaced. It was noisy in the room and I could barely hear her. She spoke in a soft but croaky voice.

Baalbaki had joined An-Nahar in 2004. This was a year before the newspaper’s editor, Gebran Tueni, was assassinated. “I worked with him for about a year before he was killed,” she said. Tueni, an outspoken critic of Syria’s post-civil war occupation of Lebanon, was murdered in a car bomb on the outskirts of Beirut in December 2005. I was still a student at the American University of Beirut that year, and Lebanon was caught in a vortex of political assassinations, mostly using car bombs, which targeted and killed politicians who were advocating for Syria’s departure from Lebanon, including the late prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The bombings also targeted intelligence officers who were investigating Hariri’s murder. The political assassinations would last until 2013, and many civilians lost their lives.

Between 2013 and 2015, suicide bombings linked to the Syrian conflict also rocked the city of Tripoli in the north of Lebanon. Various explosions also targeted residential areas in the Beirut suburbs during that period, where Baalbaki lived, killing scores of civilians.

“When I walk on the street, I don’t feel safe,” she said. “When a car passes by, I imagine it might be loaded with explosives and it’s going to detonate.”

On the day of the explosion, Baalbaki was working from home because of the pandemic. But she came to the office in the afternoon to submit a story about Lebanon’s economic crisis, which she had been working on for the launch of An-Nahar’s new Arabic website. “I finished it, and I remember telling my editor that I felt like something was about to happen, and I just wanted to submit the story and get it done with. I swear I said that.” But Baalbaki never had time to hand in her story.

“I remember waking up and standing by the wall. I saw that my arm was injured, but I only looked at it once, because I was too scared. It was a deep wound. My hand was barely attached to my arm. The tendons and ligaments of my wrist were all gone, torn. I had to hold it with my other hand. I just couldn’t look again. I never looked at it until after the surgery.” Her voice cracked and she paused. She was shaking.

“I stood by the wall waiting for another airstrike, because I remember hearing Israeli jets before the explosion – that is what I heard. I know their sound all too well. I have survived many of Israel’s wars in Lebanon.”

Almost every survivor I interviewed talked about hearing jets. I remember hearing that sound myself. But forensic experts have linked that roar to the intensity of the fire and the combustion of oxygen and chemicals in the air, as well as to the smaller explosions preceding the blast. There has been no credible evidence to this day documenting an airstrike, or even the sight of jets.

The following is from an account of the blast that Baalbaki wrote on Facebook:

“I was standing and waiting for my death, then someone shouted, ‘Salwa, you are bleeding to death, come here.’ I still can’t remember who it was. We were literally in open space, everything was gone. If I had not been standing by the wall, I would have fallen out of the building. Only the columns were still standing.

“I walked on the debris towards a colleague – his name is Khalil. The moment I spotted him, I had a flashback. I was taken back to a moment in the civil war. I was a young girl, and a man was sitting the exact same way – we were outside our house and he was injured. He was crouching and bleeding to death. He was sitting the exact same way as Khalil, and screaming, ‘God, where do I go now?’ It was the exact same scene. Horrifying.”

It was that post that made me want to talk to her. It was the testimony of a generation of women with lingering trauma and no proper healing. One traumatic event took Baalbaki back to another.

“I have no hope in this country any more. I am only still here because I need to take care of my father. Everything disgusts me. The corruption, the way politicians deal with people, it is disgusting. They don’t care. But we are to blame. I want to leave this country, even though I love it so much. I have the right to live. My father is old and I can’t leave him. But the fear of war never leaves me.”

Like most Lebanese, Salwa Baalbaki is not living, just surviving.

It has been four years since the onset of Lebanon’s economic crisis, which the World Bank describes as one of the worst crises in the world since the 19th century. And yet Lebanon’s government and politicians have not taken any measures to mitigate or alleviate its impact on the population. Nothing has been done: no reforms, no structural changes, no meaningful change of power and no accountability. The most vulnerable Lebanese, including women, are bearing the large brunt of this crisis.

The women are also victims of Lebanon’s modern history of protracted conflicts. Many of these women have suffered and continue to suffer silently. They never get the chance to heal. They are lurching from one crisis to another. They have endured patriarchal laws and discrimination and have been forced to be resilient, but are in reality just survivors of the country’s perpetual dysfunction and impunity. While I have given up and left the country, many of them have decided to stay and fight for justice. They cannot find peace without accountability.

I met Dalal El Adm, who lost her daughter in the explosion. She has set up an educational foundation in her daughter’s name, the Krystel El Adm Foundation, raising funds to help families put their children through school. With the collapse of Lebanon’s education system, a country once hailed for its schools and skilled workers is in danger of raising a lost generation.

“We lived through a lot during the civil war,” said El Adm. “It is more than 30 years since it ended, but the war is not over. It never ended. We are moving backwards every day, there’s nothing worse than this. I used to compare myself to the Palestinians and think that at least if I left, I still have a country to go back to, I still have a land. But now it feels like that has also been taken away from us. It is our duty to protect this land.”

History repeats itself for Dalal El Adm, but she is still not giving up. She decided to stay and fight.

This is an edited extract from All She Lost: The Explosion in Lebanon, the Collapse of a Nation and the Women Who Survive, published by Bloomsbury Continuum and available at guardianbookshop.com

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