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There is Beirut, its dignified sons and daughters, never bending their backs, under their blue skies and under all skies before August 4. There is the dethroned queen, her assassinated and mutilated children, and her most beautiful quarters razed on August 4. There is August 4, 1979 in France, which prepared the French revolution and remedied social injustice, and there is August 4, 2020 in Lebanon, which claimed more than two hundred and thirty victims, disfigured and maimed seven thousand injured, demolished hundreds of thousands of homes, reducing the Lebanese to bereaved families, homeless, amidst the most absurd impunity. How have Lebanese writers and friends of Lebanon testified to their survival, their anger? How have they immortalized their story and that of the victims in the absence of a history book? Evelyne Accad, a writer, activist, and emeritus professor, narrates, in her flesh and in her words, her last-minute rescue. Writers and artists recount their physical and psychological survival.
Evelyne Accad, a survivor of August 4 said: “I was on the balcony overlooking the port of Beirut, with my 98-year-old aunt Malaké, Tiztu the young Ethiopian girl who takes care of her, Daniel my nephew who just arrived from the United States, and Johnny, the man of all rescues. We heard crackling sounds. I thought it was planes breaking the sound barrier or the threats of the Israelis a week earlier, carried out at that moment. Grey smoke was rising, becoming darker, and spreading above the port. When it began to invade the balcony, I installed my aunt in her favorite chair, between two windows, protected by a wall. I didn’t know I was saving her life. As the smoke filled the inside, I went to close the windows. I started with the kitchen, whose window faces the port. At 18:07, I was closing the door to another balcony and was heading towards the door leading to the reception, when I was thrown forward by the explosion, tossed to the ground, head against the floor amid a deafening noise, screams, darker smoke, a piece of aluminum, a window blown into a thousand shards, everything fell on me. It was the apocalypse! I thought I was dead.” These are the words of Evelyne Accad to This is Beirut, returning to her native country after a long stay in France and the USA. She tells me about her premonitory fears while planning her return to Lebanon. Anxiety had gripped her. She had even written her will. Having already recovered from cancer, she felt as if she was now heading towards her own death, packing her suitcases. On August 4, seated on the balcony overlooking the port, she became the victim and witness of a tragedy. Evelyne Accad recounted her survival in the final chapter of The House of Tenderness, published by L’Harmattan in 2021.
For the “femi-humanist” rights activist, the destruction was measured in loved ones. Her aunt, initially spared, did not survive long due to complications. The petite housewife bled profusely and endured immense pain. Evelyne Accad underwent several surgeries to treat injuries to her skull, disfigured face, and directly under her eye. “I could have lost my sight, like so many other victims whose eyes were gouged out by the criminal explosion,” she added. Her house was destroyed, a storm of glass debris swept everything away, piercing all surfaces. Doors and windows were torn off, furniture demolished, walls ripped open. Three years later, shards of glass are still found in corners and crevices, and physical and moral wounds have not healed. “We descended the stairs, like two human rags walking on debris, then plunged into my car, turned into a gruesome carcass, with Aunt Malaké carried on Daniel’s back. There was glass shattered into a thousand pieces, the roof collapsed, the mirrors torn off. We had to sit on shards of glass piercing and wounding our bare flesh, heading for the mountains, as the capital’s hospitals were overflowing.”
When asked how Evelyne Accad recovered and how she will work, in writing and on the ground, the writer said she first repaired the house thanks to a nephew from America who sent her a substantial sum, as aid never arrived. As the wounds remained raw, she created a cultural and healing center named Beit el-Fouad, (The House of Love), in the port area, as it was the only way to heal and welcome those in search of peace, serenity, and liberation. “We have already set up a literary café named after Aunt Malaké, in tribute to this wonderful aunt who died as a result of the explosion,” she added. There will also be a library, a fully equipped music room, workshops led by Lebanese or international psychologists, therapeutic theater, as well as spaces for reading books, intellectual activities, and a conference room.
Literary works about August 4
Beyrouth 2020, Journal of a Collapse, by Charif Majdalani, published by Actes Sud L’Orient des Livres, was awarded the special jury prize of the Femina. It’s a diary designed from the first of July 2020, during the lockdown, in which the narrator describes the looting of bank deposits, the abyssal devaluation of the Lebanese pound, the unprecedented economic and health crises that are shaking Lebanon and plunging its compatriots into shock, but also into bursts of anger during the protests. This is terribly exacerbated when an apocalyptic explosion comes to mow down thousands of victims and destroy the most lively neighborhoods, frequented by artists and youth, the beautiful emblematic streets of the capital. “Troubles fly in squadrons,” according to Jacques Chirac’s phrase, except that the slightest humor is no longer possible in the face of the infinite magnitude of the disaster, the appalling cowardice of the crime. The last forty pages of the book (from 109 to 149) are dedicated to the scandalous circumstances of the double explosion, to the criminal mismanagement, the victims, and the immense damage. The conclusion tells the story of buying a piece of land in the mountains, which would represent a form of hope and paradoxical attachment to the homeland. The last sentence is a quote about the absurdity of human life.
Mon Port de Beyrouth (My Port of Beirut) by Lamia Ziadé, illustrator and author, published by P.O.L editions, in 2021, tells the long nightmare of the almost atomic explosion, which destroyed the port’s silos and half of the capital. The narrator was at home in Paris, where she has been living for thirty years, when she suddenly sees the swollen and bloody face of her sister on the family’s WhatsApp group. Pictures of the cataclysm follow each other. Lamia Ziadé keeps a diary in which she draws the faces of the victims that we should not forget, thanks to the photos, faithful to her own style, consisting of illustrating the written texts, and sometimes interspersing them with newspaper cuttings. She focuses on the port of Beirut, the first brick of which was laid in 1968, the year of her birth. The author of My Very Great Arab Melancholy tells not only her personal traumas, the gaping wounds and the completely destroyed houses of various members of her family, but our powerful and endless Lebanese curse, which begins with successive wars and crescendos. A book that sensitively blends moments of euphoria and rebellion during the protests, with the fury of living in violence and absurdity.
Éclat d’une vie, written by Caroline Torbey and published by L’Harmattan in 2021, is a fictionalized account of life in the wake of the cataclysmic explosion of August 4. The narrator recounts her wounds and traumas, the survival of her husband, her family, and the dramas that befell friends and acquaintances. The book also provides a situation report that begins with financial bankruptcy and the COVID pandemic, and reaches its climax with the story of the city’s destruction. In one of the chapters, the novelist seeks to kill a word: resilience, which defies common sense in the current cycle of disasters and encourages apathy, under the pretext of adaptation. When she reads it in books or articles, she tries to completely obscure it. By rearranging all the letters of this word to find a sort of anagram, she will only find one: “inertial,” derived from inertia, which comforts her in her protest. The title Éclat d’une vie, expresses an antithetical situation, the glasses and lives shattered into a thousand pieces by the port explosion on the one hand, and the glimmer or burst of hope, which appears on the horizon with the news of the narrator’s pregnancy on the other. This is especially accentuated when she attends the funeral of her friend, killed in the explosion and learns the same day that she is pregnant. The act “of praying for the dead while carrying life” symbolizes overcoming and somehow transcends evil.
It should be mentioned that there is also my cry of anger Beyrouth Connection, les fossoyeurs du Liban (Beyrouth Connection, the grave diggers of Lebanon) published by Erick Bonnier, released in September 2020
Collective works on the double explosion
Under the direction of Bélinda Ibrahim, fifty-six famous and less famous authors gave their testimonies on the crime of the century that burned Beirut and its inhabitants in the collective work Beyrouth Mon Amour (Beirut My Love). The book is adorned with illustrations, paintings, and photographs made by twenty-six visual contributors. On the back cover, a poignant excerpt text implicitly reminds us of our duty to remember. The launch took place on October 31, 2020, in the gardens of the Sursock Cochrane Palace, blown up by the double explosion, with the warm and moving voice of Fanny Ardant, reading an excerpt. (The guardian of the place Lady Cochrane did not survive her injuries and died from the consequences of the explosion on August 31).
The proceeds from the work have been directed towards NGOs committed to providing relief efforts for victims, including AFEL, Faire-Face Cancer, Live Love Beirut, Arcenciel, and others.
Sarah Briand, a presenter on France2, harbors a deep affection for Beirut, having spent six years there, from her time at the Lycée Français to Saint Joseph University. She compiled texts from thirty-five Lebanese and French personalities from the world of literature and the arts into a collaborative volume titled Pour l’amour de Beyrouth (For the Love of Beirut), published by Fayard Editions in November 2020. The contributing authors delve into their profound and unshakeable connections with the Mediterranean gem, manifesting their solidarity with hope that Beirut will rise from its ashes. Among the notable contributors, we can mention Amin Maalouf, an inductee of the French Academy since 2011, succeeding Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the recipient of the 1993 Goncourt Prize for The Rock of Tanios, Alexandre Najjar, the 2021 recipient of the Grand Prix de la Francophonie, Charif Majdalani, Tania Hadjithomas Mehanna, Tahar Ben Jalloun, winner of the 1987 Goncourt Prize for The Sacred Night and a current member of the Goncourt Academy, Laurent Gaudé, and Jean-Marie Gustave le Clézio, the 2008 Nobel laureate in Literature. The proceeds are earmarked for the Offre-Joie organization.
