It has been a year since the Beirut port explosion ripped through the city. While there are still more questions than answers, justice and accountability remain a distant dream.
I never wrote anything about the Aug. 4 explosion in my mother tongue. Because I am a mother. And the explosion made me a fragile mother. And with this fragility, my mother tongue too became fragile. My writing today is an attempt to recover my mother tongue.
A heartfelt eyewitness account of August 4, 2020. Wissam was with his friends in Karantina until an hour before the explosion. Moments later, he rushed back to a scene of utter devastation to see if any of them were still alive.
With its call for “internationalization,” the Maronite patriarchate has played a card as old as Lebanon itself, to save both itself and the country, while placing Hezbollah in a position of direct rivalry with the largest Christian sect in the region.
“I want to know where my son is. Until now I don’t have any information about his fate.” It has been over two months since the Beirut port explosion, and still people are missing …
Elias Khoury has become the symbol of our failure to convince his generation – our sons – that Lebanon is a country worth living in. Our sons would say: ‘Look at Elias’ photo. Is that what you want for us too?’
“Those who killed my daughter are politically supported. I don’t belong to any political party, and I don’t have enough money to hire a lawyer to get my daughter justice from those who killed her.”
The tourism sector is a vivid example of the country’s economic decline, with enterprises partially or totally closing down, reducing employees’ salaries, or laying them off completely, particularly by forcing them to offer their resignations.
