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That's the thing about this city, it breaks your heart whether or not you stay. You can leave and be forever haunted by a spirit that constantly reminds you that you don’t belong or you can stay, hoping not to die a stupid preventable death and spend the rest of your life trying to convince yourself that you’ve made the right decision. Beirut, also known as the city that never sleeps, not sure if it’s in relation to the wild nightlife or the trauma-induced insomnia. Either way, you get the point.
My eyes are still closed but I can feel my subconscious slipping back into the dark corner of my mind as my consciousness regains the spotlight. I extend my arm and fumble for the phone. The screen light blinds me for a second then it reveals the time: 6p.m. My friend should be here any minute. I dangle my feet from the bed and cold rushes through my body as they touch the ceramic tiles. I get dressed and turn off the air conditioner but leave the window closed so the cool air wouldn't be lost in the midst of August's heat. I step out of the room to find Leo, my German Spitz dog, hitting the door with its paws. I glance at my mom with a confused look on my face, "what's wrong with him?" I ask. Mom shrugs without turning her eyes from the television. I lift Leo up to my waist and go stand on the balcony. He immediately starts fidgeting in my arms. He puts his paws on the aluminum railing and pushes backwards. "What's wrong?" I ask. "You like watching the street." Suddenly, thunder rumbles in the clear August sky on a hot and sunny day. The sound lingers for a while. It's a bomb, I recognize from my transgenerational memory. I turn around towards my mom who is no longer lying on the sofa. She looks at me, "What's that?" she asks. "I don't know" I reply, even though we both know the answer. After all, denial can only go so far. I come into the living room still holding Leo who is now growling at an invisible threat.
6:07 PM: It's not true what they tell you, that your life flashes before your eyes. It doesn't.
My body bends forward, my shoulders closing in on Leo. Mom is grabbing my arm, I think. The sound is deafening. The building is shuddering. The walls are trembling as though in fear of collapsing on their owners whom they've watched grow, laugh and cry for decades. Someone is yelling, "My God, My God, My God, My God... My God." It's my voice. God is not replying. The war they have been warning us about for months has erupted... but why are they bombing our neighborhood? My eyes do not register the glass shattering but the glass shatters anyway. My eyes do not see the objects falling and breaking, nonetheless, objects fall and break. Screams are rising. I hear them but I can't understand what they are saying. Some of them may be calling God too but He's still nowhere to be seen.
Leo stopped growling. He finally surrendered to my restraints. My mom is still grabbing onto my arm. I have to take them to the bathroom. There is a better chance of surviving when all comes crashing down. However, my feet are reluctant to move.
Silence spreads in ripples through the shouting crowd as everything settles into a giant ball of dust. The building stops shuddering. The screams fade into the toxic dusty air. My eyes follow the trail of broken glass which leads to a wide gap in my bedroom wall where the window used to be. The aluminum frame is on the floor along with some concrete from the wall. Shards of glass embedded everywhere: my mattress where I was sleeping peacefully few minutes ago, the wardrobe, the door frame. The kitchen cabinets are broken. The refrigerator is not in its usual place. The statues of small chubby chefs that decorated the kitchen for as long as I can remember are on the ground in pieces. The magnets that we spent years collecting from different countries we visited are broken in half. The phones keep ringing: Relatives calling from a safe distance. I call the friend who was supposedly coming over. No answer. I redial, "What happened? What happened? Tell me what happened... Every... everything is... shattered on the floor.... The bbbuilding nnnearly collapsed."
"I don't know.... Breathe... breathe." he says.
A WhatsApp notification pops up on my screen showing several text messages: my American friend all the way from California, my Italian friend all the way from Bolzano and my polish friends all the way from Gniezno. Are you okay? I saw the news. There was a massive explosion in Beirut. The third largest accidental non-nuclear explosion in the world, resulting in 200 deaths, 6500 injured and 13000 homeless. That’s the thing about wars and explosions, one “accidental” explosion and all of a sudden your existence, your identity, your laugh and love and life are reduced to a meaningless insignificant number, a body count with no soul to account for, and in this case, no body either. That’s the thing about Beirut, it’s stuck in a vicious cycle of destruction and rebirth. No wonder why its emblem is the phoenix - a mythological bird consumed by the flames and risen from the ashes - What a masochistic city! And what a masochistic population, fooling itself to believe that it is “resilient” while passing their traumatic legacy to their children and grandchildren and thus creating an immortal trauma everlasting in a mortal being.
I crouch down by my bedroom door and I weep, still clutching my phone in my hand. I receive a notification from Facebook asking me if I’m safe. I stare at it for a while thinking carefully about my answer as though it is a multiple choice question. I click “I’m safe” but I’m not okay, I think to myself.
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Thank you for recreating this for those of us who could only read about it or watch the news in horror.
I'm glad you are safe. I hope you will be okay.
Life is difficult enough without so much hatred.
You are a good writer. I hope to read more.
Peace.
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Thank you so much for leaving this comment! It's heartwarming. You're very nice. People like you give me hope and help me see that there so many good people in this cruel world.
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I also heard about that blast. What caused it was sitting in a warehouse for, what, four years before it exploded? Good grief!
Anyway ...
Shoukri, merci, and thank you for your story.
Btw, I just read your comment and your story is true. I was hoping it was about a fictional narrator and that you were much further away from the blast than they were.
Also btw, are you any relation to General Aoun? My ex-roommate is (if he's still alive) from East Beirut and we used to talk a lot about Lebanon back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My ex-roommate served in the Lebanese Army and was in West Beirut when the war in 1973 started. He told me a lot about what happened (truth is decidedly much different than fiction) and I'm surprised he survived it all to emigrate to America in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I think he's in his late 60s now (he was born in the early or mid-1950s).
One editing comment:
my polish friends ["polish" should be "Polish"]
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Hello! First of all, thank you for taking the time to read my story and write this comment. I really enjoyed reading it.
Actually the amonium nitrate that caused the explosion was sitting neglected in a warehouse for 6 years...
We've spent 6 years unknowingly living, sleeping, partying, etc. next to a ticking bomb.
And yes unfortunately, I live in Beirut close to where the explosion occured.
No, I'm not related to President Aoun. We just happen to have the same last name.
I'm also glad that your ex-roommate survived the war and I hope he had a good life after it.
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You're welcome.
Still ... 6 years just sitting there ... *shakes head in disbelief* It could've been so much worse. I can only hope that those who were responsible have (or will be) punished for it. This wasn't just irresponsible, this was idiotically irresponsible. Because if they didn't get punished, rest assured, something like it (or worse) will happen in the future. A slap on the wrist isn't a deterrent; it tells you, "Oh. Well, if that didn't make them punish me sufficiently, then I can just go and do it again, and maybe it'll be even worse next time."
Oh. Btw, speaking of President Aoun (I forgot that he was also president, not just general), my ex-roommate had a videotape of a party at the presidential palace in Beirut. People having a great time. High-end synthesizers and keyboards from Europe. My ex-roommate said, "See all those people?" I nodded. "Almost all of them are dead now," he said.
Same here. As far as I know he's doing quite well. If it weren't for him, I would have more gaps in my knowledge areas than I have. Also, he was a great cook. He made things like boiled bulgur wheat flavored with lamb juice (yummy!) and -- my all-time favorite -- hummus. I've never had better hummus than his homemade hummus. I'm not as big a fan of baba ghanouj, though, because it really depends on the eggplant. If the eggplant is over-ripe, it can make the baba ghanouj really bitter. I remember the last time I had dinner at his and his girlfriend's townhouse. If the cook is Lebanese, the table will be *covered* with dishes to choose from. Usually far more than the people present can eat. He also introduced me to fresh coconut. We would buy coconuts from the local grocery store, Magruder's, and use hammers to crack open the nuts. Sometimes the "milk" was sweet, sometimes it was sour. But the "meat" was really really good. He also told me what it was like when he first came to America. Apparently, in Lebanon, if you go out to eat, everyone tries to pay the bill. Instead of competing, he *let* his friends pay. He said he didn't pay for a meal for the first three or four months he was in America. He said that, in hindsight, he shouldn't have done that. It wasn't polite of him. Hey, if it had been me, I would've done just what he did.
I'm not sure if this is telling things I shouldn't say about him, but his family used to own factories and had a house in Jounier (spelling? It's pronounced "Zhunyay"). Also, his last name is Saliba. He lives -- or used to live -- in northern Virginia. He's really smart, really nice, and really funny. Last time I saw him, he was building computers for people and running an Internet service from his townhouse. When I was his roommate, he was taking classes for his Electronic Computer Engineering major in college. Like you, he's also fluent in Arabic, French, and English. When I first met him, his English was good; it improved a lot after that. He said he appreciated that I corrected him when he made a mistake in English. He said that he'd originally learned English by reading books written in English, which, of course, doesn't let you *hear* how it's supposed to sound. One thing that definitely made him different from most guys: his signature was readable. Not messy, not sloppy. *Readable*.
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Unfortunately, the people responsible for the blast were not brought to justice and I have reasons to believe that they never will be because our system is massively corrupt.
The story about your friend telling you about how all the people in the video are dead gave me chills. Sadly, a lot of people died in the war believing that they were dying for a greater cause, when in the end, the people who declared war on each other, leaving orphened kids, widows, grieving mothers, limbless veterans and damage everywhere, after the war ended they shook hands, smiled for the cameras and took a seat at the table governing the country till this day.
On a more cheerful note, I really like how vivid your memories are of you and your ex-roommate. Coincidentally, I really like homemade hummus as well, and I'm not a fan of baba ghanouj either.
And yes, it is very true that when we go out, we fight over who gets to pay the bill and many times we just give up and "let" whoever is insisting more pay.
You're correct it is Jounieh. And the last name of a very good friend of mine is also Saliba.
Being trilingual is very common among Lebanese people because French and English languages are both included in our schools' curriculum. They start teaching us these languages at the age of 3. Which is very cool but also sometimes confusing because we end up shifting between all 3 languages in the same sentence.
My signature is readable too. I worry about this sometimes because it's very easy to forge.
Have you ever visited Lebanon?
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Very sorry to hear that, but not surprised. *SIGH* I'm not sure it would've been any better were Gemayel still alive and President. Then again, when he *was* president, he was pro-Lebanon and that annoyed a lot of Middle Eastern politicians who weren't pro-Lebanon (like the ones in Israel, for instance).
Not just shook hands but kissed each other on both cheeks (like Judas did to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane). The ancient Greeks invented politics as we know it today. I wonder if they ever suspected what it would evolve into. They probably would've said, "We warned you! We warned you! But did you listen? No-o-o." Then again, like America in 1776, the Athenians decided that only land-owners and slave-owners could vote (women and slaves weren't allowed to). Yet they called it a democracy. *rolls eyes* Churchill once said, "Democracy isn't the best system of governing. But the next one down is even worse."
I *like* Baba Ghanouj as long as it isn't bitter-tasting. But, like with guacamole, you have to be careful when ripening organic ingredients. It's hard to tell sometimes when something isn't ripe enough or is overly ripe. With avocados, supposedly it's when the little knob (or whatever it's called) "pops up". Still, it's kind of like a guessing game for me. I check the avocado for firmness vs. softness and hope that I'm using it at the right time.
My mother and my late stepfather (neither of whom are Lebanese) would squabble a little over who would pay for meals out. My late stepfather usually won the squabble. When my late father was alive, I don't think my mother squabbled with him about paying bills for eating out because we didn't eat out that often when I was growing up (at least not until I was a teenager).
You could ask your very good friend if he knows about a Lebanese man named Andre Saliba who emigrated to America in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Andre's sister Rita emigrated to Paris (France), but isn't alive now. I don't remember when she died (20 or 30 years ago?). Not sure how many of the family are still alive. Andre said that his brother (who looked the same but had dark eyes and dark hair instead of dark blond hair and green eyes) failed the grade school exam (where you had to pass both in Arabic and in French). His brother might or might not be still alive. Oh the stories I could tell you about Andre's experiences in the war in Lebanon. Like the day when the food truck arrived and the snipers would be watching to see how ran to the truck and try to shoot them. Or the day the war started in 1973 and he had to help the Lebanese general and the army people who were in West Beirut escape to East Beirut (back then, the PLO was better armed than the Lebanese Army was). And still more stories. All true, no doubt, but sometimes wild enough to curl your hair (if it's straight).
When my ex-roommate would talk with his Arabic-speaking friends, I remember sometimes he'd insert an English word or two. After the phone call ended, I'd ask him, "Why do you use English words sometimes? I thought you were still fluent in Arabic." He explained that it wasn't for lack of fluency; it was because there were some terms that exist in English but not in Arabic. He also had a friend named Abdou who *loved* to drink Arak. Abdou would come over the townhouse I lived in with Andre and another roommate and ask where the Arak was. I'd tell him I didn't know where Andre hid it. I also remember watching Andre add water to Arak. It was like adding clear liquid to clear liquid, which shouldn't have made any difference. But it did, because the mixture of liquids turned white. Weird. And Arak smelled just like licorice (which I don't like the smell or taste of), because both have anise in them. Btw, Anise happens to be the name of a mutual friend of theirs. He used to run a deli in Vienna, VA, called Al Nakheel. I think his kids still work there or maybe they're someone else's kids. I used to love being in the deli because of all the Middle Eastern stuff on the shelves and behind the counters and hanging on the walls. I used to buy really good baklava there (almost as good as my mother's baklava, back when she used to make it) as well as hummus and spices like cumin, which I like putting in hummus. It also smelled wonderful in the deli. I remember the day when they were mincing parsley and adding olive oil to it. Just pick up the minced parsley with pita bread and munch until the aftertaste got too strong, and then I'd have to stop for a bit until the aftertaste faded enough. I also used to buy zaatar bread there (yummy!).
I didn't think about that. That the clarity of signature makes it easier to forge. Maybe it's a good thing that my signature isn't that clear (though it's still far easier to read than my oldest brother's signature, which has degraded to the point where it's just two long wiggles; he would've made a good doctor or lawyer, just from his signature).
I haven't visited Lebanon (my mother did back in 1971 as part of a tour group to Lebanon and Israel). The closest I've been to Lebanon is western Turkey. My late father was stationed (when he was still in the US Army) in Izmir from 1969 to 1972. That was the last country I lived in overseas before my father was transferred to America (we lived in Germany for two years before we moved to Turkey). We had a really nice Turkish maid in Izmir. She taught me some Turkish, which, sadly, I've forgotten in the nearly 50 years since then. I've wanted to go back there to visit, but I doubt I'd recognize much from the early 1970s. I've watched videos of people going on walks through Izmir and for the most part I don't recognize anything (besides store names, I mean). My middle brother got to visit Turkey about 20 years ago or so, though. He really enjoyed being there again. My mother and my stepfather went there about 25 years ago or so (there was an earthquake in Crete or Istanbul, but whichever it was, they weren't there; they were either in Crete when it hit Istanbul, or they were in Istanbul when it hit Crete). One of these years I'd love to visit Greece (including Crete), Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, etc. But I don't think it'll ever happen. I have the free time right now, but I don't have the money. If I were very poor, that would probably be an improvement. Right now I think I have about $40 in the bank. No joke. I've had to borrow *a lot* of money from my mother over the last two years or so and have zero idea how in the world I'll ever be able to pay her back. *If* I'll ever be able to. And her financiail situation isn't that much better than mine.
Sorry for babbling so much. It's really wonderful to hear from someone who still lives in the Middle East.
Ma salaam (or Ma saleme as the Palestinians say it). I'm not sure if that's "hello" or "good-bye" or "see you later". (What little Arabic I've learned hasn't been used much in the last 20-odd years). Hawaiian makes it easy: "Aloha" means both "hello" *and* "good-bye". I haven't been to Hawaii, either. That's another place I would love to visit someday ... if I could.
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I don't like baba ghanouj (which weirdly translates into "pampered dad" btw) because I don't like eggplant whether bitter or not. I don't like avocado either (people usually gasp when I say this out loud).
My father was in the Lebanese army as well and fought during the war. He never talked about it though. I guess he was just trying to suppress the memories and go on with his life. My uncle tells me a lot about the war though and how he and my dad escaped a very close encounter with death on several occasions.
Btw, I asked my friend if she knows Andre Saliba and she said she doesn't (but it would have been awesome if she did).
Ma' saleme means goodbye. although in Lebanon we mainly just say it in English "Bye" .
Marhaba means Hello. But often times, we say it in French, "Bonjour".
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I would really appreciate your comments and feedbacks on this story which also happens to be the true story of how I experienced the Beirut blast.
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