“Book the quickest ticket and get out of there”, his panicked voice says over the breaking line, “it’s not worth it”.
But it is worth it. Anyone who has ever experienced a Mediterranean sunset from a mountain’s peak in Laklouk would know, every damn second is worth it.
You get there two days before it happens. Oblivious to the deadly nitrate sitting, just as oblivious as the other 5 million people, you don’t know how many of them were roaming the city then. The city that had been rebuilt from rubble, not once or twice, but seven times. The city that never sleeps, as they say, or as you like to say, the “Mother City”. It is a mother after all. The way it opens its arms into the vast Mediterranean, to a world that keeps on hurting her. Her arms are wide open, ready to invite in all that wish to enter, and ready to protect all that stay.
You get there two days before it happens. The city you left as a little girl but refused to let go of. Poverty separated you once, but you won’t let it happen again.
It’s been 100 years since Lebanon was declared “Greater Lebanon” in September of 1920, and nothing has changed since then. The same corrupt, deceitful men took the lead and have been passing it down to their sons, breaking the country with each passing year. What a way to celebrate the 100th year, what a time to be in Beirut.
The flight attendant tells you to sit on the left side of the plane, “it’s a view to die for” she says, her hair in a neat bun and her smile glowing.
It really is a view to die for. You’ve witnessed it over 34 times in 23 years, and you think about it every night before you fall asleep. The view is sort of dream-like, the way the city erupts out of the ocean, luring you in. It is home after all, and when it loves you correctly, you will never get enough of it.
Home has been confusing all these years. You’ve been split in two ever since your father, an ancient butcher, was forced to get on a plane 20 years ago and pave the way into the newly discovered land, settling in a state called Massachusetts where they have trouble pronouncing the letter “r” and seem to really not notice the unimaginable amounts of snow during the dark months. Home has been—well—lost.
You do manage to find your way back home, every summer of every year you’re away.
Nothing gets in your way; school knows you will always miss June and they eventually stop asking why you go to a miserable country every summer, they eventually stop telling you to “be careful”. Miserable country, the audacity. They don’t know how that miserable country makes you feel. They don’t know how your hair stands on its ends when that plane lands in the heart of Beirut, just as you finish taking in the view from the left window seat, the view you grew up on every single summer. Home isn’t there at all, home is here. You are home.
August 3rd, 2020
The rock-hard August air hits you right in the face as soon as you take the first step out of the safety of the airport. You’ve missed this air. You’ve missed every single thing about it, it’s been seven months since you moved back to that cold State, and you still need to constantly remind yourself why you moved in the first place. You’ve counted down to this very second, and it’s finally here. Your ears are immune to the car-horns that honk 24 hours a day, you might have even missed hearing them. A tourist might have asked what was wrong with the drivers, but you aren’t a tourist even if the luggage men think so and even if the letters USA are printed on your hoodie that was made in China. You couldn’t ask for a better night, the moon shines, directly above you, like it’s been following you on your journey.
You can instantly tell; this month is going to be something out of a movie.
Beirut isn’t a city you live in; Beirut is a city that lives in you. It’s always there, no matter how far you wander into the World, resting at the back of your mind, reminding you to come home after you’ve stayed away for too long. Ready to slip to the tip of your tongue when someone asks you where you’re from. “I’m from Beirut”, you say, proud to be from a little place with a big reputation. It’ll never let you forget it, not for a single moment. You’ll always find time to talk about Beirut, introduce it to your foreign friends, you’ll tell them of her beauty and how she’s been hurt and that they should visit.
A reputation isn’t always good. Murders, executions, wars, uprisings, bombs. Bombs. Bombs. Bombs. They were always there, to accompany the essence of the word “Beirut”. You can’t change anything, no matter how you want to see it, the city has lived a long and excruciating life. Those men have tormented it, but it refuses to die. Because Beirut is a city bigger than those ruling it, it has seen endless kingdoms and empires, Kings and Gods. The Pharaohs, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Phoenicians, and Ottomans were unable to end the city upon their ends, and neither will these half-men. You know the city will survive, you just know it.
Your relationship with Beirut has been one that goes back and forth to a point where you question your identity. Are you a tourist? A rich, educated American? Or are you a citizen, one that suffers alongside Beirut. Is that what it means to be faithful to you, Beirut? Must one hurt with you?
It’s late when you get to your village, 20 miles north of the city. From your balcony on a mountain top, the city seems calm, as calm as it has ever been. You can’t believe you’re here, you slowly lift your fingertip and trace where the city meets the ocean, a rugged but beautiful line.
You reach the Port of Beirut, your finger completely covers it. What a powerful place, a gate for nearly everything passing into the Arab world, the only source of bread for millions of people.
Your boyfriend slides a tan hand around your waist, interrupting your thoughts, and tells you that you should get some rest, “we have a long day tomorrow, you need to get at least a few hours of sleep.” You give in to your jet lag and follow him inside, realizing how much you’ve missed him in the seven months apart, how much his voice has changed.
You remember the night you told him you’d decided to leave. You were on the same balcony, watching the shady-orange sunset disappear into the Mediterranean when his bushy brown eyebrows slightly moved and his emotional eyes looked away from you, towards the city. He gave you his support, and that was enough to bring you back home.
August 4th, 2020
Home.
There’s nothing like waking up at home. The droplets of sweat on your forehead tell you that the town lost electricity sometime during the night. But you don’t need the air conditioner and you don’t need your dead phone when you’re home. You realize that your phone has filled in for your loneliness, and that you are lonely in any other city but here, here you are home. You’re perfectly happy waking up to nothing, and everything all at once. Your senses set it and you can smell your old room, the mattress that hasn’t been slept on in months and the dust on your bookshelves, but you push those thoughts away.
6:07 pm.
The company that makes Pop Rocks doesn’t know what they’re talking about, popping candy is nothing like an explosion. Pop rocks are ants, and the three tons of ammonium nitrate catching fire are the sun, they are incomparable.
At exactly 6:07 pm on the 4th of August, you hear the boom, just as everyone does. You don’t physically feel the rattle, but it later stays with you, mentally, for over 219 days and nights. It’s always there, at the back of your mind, ready to remind you if you ever feel too safe or too comfortable. You can never be safe. Ready to knock and say “you’re alive, but hundreds of your
people aren’t. You’ve got a roof over your head, but thousands of your people don’t. You’ve got a job and food on the table, but millions of your people are hungry.
Hungry.
They’ve turned your people to hunger and homelessness. Beirut can’t provide for them anymore, and you don’t know what to tell your foreign friends. Is this the city you’ve been talking about all this time? Is this that same train wreck? How dare you feel proud to be from a country like that. But still, you are proud. No matter what you read on the news or what the people you meet classify you as, (you terrorist).
At 6:07 pm, the ancient city comes shattering down in pieces of debris that kill hundreds of people, trapping them under the fallen city. When nitrate ignites, it plays games. The explosion is preceded by a fire, which the volunteer fire-fighters are called down to set out. They are the first to go, not one of them a day over twenty-four.
The phones begin to ring, and they don’t stop until everyone is checked on. You offer your home to your city relatives who no longer have one, but for how long? Could your four walls possibly substitute for theirs? A tear of relief sneaks down your cheek as you see your grandmother let out the breath she’s been holding when her sister picks up the phone, only 20 miles away. 20 miles had never seemed so far before. She tells her sister not to worry, she could stay with them as long as she needs to, and then she looks above, silently thanking something bigger than her for her sister’s survival.
You didn’t have to see that, but you’re thankful that you did. You’re thankful that your loved ones are safe and that the Mediterranean took on half of the blast, protecting the rest of the country. That ocean you’ve been watching the sun set over amazes you once again. Ocean and land are one on this Earth–they protect each other–, just as you and your country are.
Beirut is not simply only Earth and land. Beirut is home to the Phoenician alphabet and the largest Temple of Jupiter. She is home to the world, and yet she takes up so little space in it.
She is Home, to you.
And so, you decide to stay despite everything telling you to go. You decide that those politicians and their violent ways have taken enough of your life away from you. You whisper a quick response through your phone that crosses oceans in seconds and you hang up, ready to be there for your country. The next few days flash by in less than a moment. You’re left with only the memories of the aftermath. As you walk the streets of Beirut, shattered glass sticks to your Nikes. Your mask is fixed under another mask, the pandemic is the least of your concerns with poisonous nitrate floating in the air surrounding you. The sight is nothing you’ve seen before.
The sight is nothing you can describe. A building that once stood 20 stories high is crumbled at your feet, ready to be picked up by you– a… tourist? Are you considered a tourist now? You look around you and see hundreds of young men and women around you trying to do their part in this mess. An old lady with day-old dried blood above her left eyebrow is limping, calling out for a girl named Sophia. Her broken voice is an arrow piercing you directly in the heart, she never does find Sophia. But Sophia makes it to the news channel three nights later, a French search- and-rescue team had found her. You wonder if that old lady is relieved or terrified, sometimes it’s better to live with a little hope left.
August 30th, 2020
The next four weeks go by in a flash, but your mind is physically stuck on the 4th, it refuses to move a step forward. You clean your city alongside your boyfriend, a form of bonding you’d never thought you might do. You smile together when you pass by an elderly couple holding hands, and then you both hide tears when you remember that this couple is outside because they’ve lost their home. Instead of sun and sand, your vacation was filled with dust and debris, but you think you chose the path that’s supposed to fill the hole the explosion left inside of you. You think your little patriotic acts will be enough, but millions before you have tried, Beirut is polluted with politicians. You’re certain that they knew about the events of the 4tth .
Not a single one lost a hair, a home, a car, or a son.
When he was 24, the British philosopher Alain de Botton wrote his novel On Love and said, “Must being in love always mean being in pain?” (Botton, 1994). As your departing plane rises into the air, leaving Beirut behind, you don’t choose the window seat. You sit in the middle isle with your eyes closed and your heart broken. The flight attendant’s voice rings in your brain, “it’s a view to die for”.
So many have already died for this view.
You choose that seat because you don’t want to see the fallen city, you want to remember the view how it’s supposed to be, not how it currently is. The eve of August 3rd is the last time you see your city from above, and you’re going to remember it. Leaving Beirut never feels right, your knee jots up and down in anxiety, and you don’t bother to stop it.
You impatiently raise your pen to your cheek and click it so you can scribble a reply to Botton in your notebook, he was 24 then and writing about pain, and you are 23 now and experiencing it. Well yes, Botton, being in love does mean being in pain, especially if you’re in love with Beirut.
March 8th, 2021
You dump some Pop Rocks into your mouth as you write down your memories, nearly half a year later. As the rocks being popping along the surface of your tongue, you think the company should remove the slogan “taste the explosion” from their packaging, these people really don’t want to taste the explosion.