On Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2020, Lebanon was under a COVID-19 lockdown. The government had lifted the restrictions for one day so people could run errands, and I had made plans to meet my best friend for a walk at 6 p.m.
I got out of bed, changed into my workout clothes, and started walking down the stairs. That’s when I felt the ground shake. A few seconds later, I heard a loud noise. I ran downstairs and found my parents standing in the backyard, looking up at the sky. I thought it was an earthquake. My parents thought it was an Israeli airstrike. Then we heard another explosion. I remember my cat letting out the strangest meow I had ever heard.
I said, “Maybe they bombed Beit al-Wasat,” the headquarters of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who had been assassinated in 2005. The verdict from the international tribunal investigating his assassination was expected to be announced that week, so in that moment, it didn’t seem impossible.
A few minutes later, my friend texted me that she was outside. I got into the car, and we started talking about completely mundane things. She didn't hear the explosion because she had been driving with loud music, and neither of us checked our phones.
Then our phones started ringing. People were calling and texting to check whether we were okay. At first, we thought they were being dramatic. What had even happened? Why was everyone making such a big deal out of it?
While walking, we could hear televisions playing loudly from the houses around us. That was when I first thought, This must be serious. Then her parents called and told her to come home immediately.
When I got back home, the television was blaring in the living room. My dad was sitting there, staring blankly at the screen. When I spoke to him, he responded harshly. My dad is never rude to me. He must be very upset, I thought.
I sat down and opened Instagram. That was when I saw the video. I still do not know how to describe the feeling. I only remember that, the moment I watched it, it felt as though my entire life had fallen apart. I could not believe what I was seeing.
My feed was suddenly flooded with videos and photographs. On television, reporters were panicking and pleading with hospitals to open their doors and prepare for the injured.
I stayed awake until six in the morning that day. I could not sleep. I could not stop scrolling. I could not stop crying. By that time, theories were already spreading. Everyone had a political explanation. Everyone had someone to blame. People warned us not to go to Beirut, but somehow, I found myself getting into a car with my friends and heading there anyway.
As soon as we reached the city, there was blood on the sidewalks. Shattered glass covered the streets. Stores were destroyed. Hundreds of strangers moved through the damaged neighborhoods carrying brooms, shovels, food, and water. Buses filled with aid kept arriving. I was wearing a mask, but I no longer cared about COVID.
I picked up a broom and began cleaning an older woman's home. She was Armenian and did not speak Arabic. She was in shock and seemed unable to understand what was happening around her. I spoke to people throughout the day, but no one seemed to understand what had happened. I remember a girl with blood covering her head describing to me what had happened. When I asked why she wasn't at the hospital, she simply smiled and said, "Oh, it's fine. Everything's fine."
When I returned home that day, the television was still on, and my mother and sister were arguing about my sister’s car. She had gotten into her third accident that month, and my mother was furious. They were talking about the damage, the repairs, and whose fault it was, while a reporter in the background pleaded for blood donations. I could not understand how we were still talking about a car.
I stood on the couch and screamed, “How can you argue about a fucking car when the fucking capital has been destroyed?” I was shaking. I was crying. The anger I felt was indescribable. I had never felt anything like it before.
On Aug. 8, my sister and I drove to Beirut to attend a protest. Thousands of people had gathered. Hangman’s nooses were hanging everywhere. In that moment, people did not want reform or resignation. They wanted every politician responsible to be dragged out and executed.
The scene was gruesome. Dust and smoke were still rising from the port. Shattered glass still covered the streets. It was a bright, unbearably hot summer day. I marched through Beirut with tears running down my face. I was angry, but more than anything, I was devastated. I wasn’t the only one. For the first time in my life, I saw hopelessness and despair in the eyes of Lebanese people.
Then I remember hearing people scream. Everyone was running. The army had started firing tear gas at us. My sister, protective as always, tried to shield me, but there was nowhere to escape. The gas was everywhere.
Yet, I remember thinking: who cared about being tear-gassed while people were still trapped beneath the rubble? Who cared about that while hospitals were overflowing with the injured? Who cared about anything when the capital had just been destroyed?
I did not care. Not that day, and not for a very long time afterward. There was a life before Aug. 4 and a life after it. When your own government steals the feeling of safety from your home, something inside you changes. I could have been in Beirut that evening. My parents could have been there. My friends could have been there. We were spared. For a long time, I believed that meant I had been given a responsibility. God had given me another chance, so how could I live my life without demanding justice for the people who did not receive one?
For years, I thought about the explosion almost every day. I researched what happened, who was responsible, and how years of negligence had allowed it to happen. I truly believed justice was possible. Part of me still does. But I no longer think about it every day. Sometimes I feel guilty admitting that.
Maybe it is because so much else has happened in Lebanon since then. Maybe it is because so much has unfolded in my own life. Maybe the human mind cannot remain in a permanent state of grief and anger, no matter how much it once believed it had to.
And still, my story is not even a survivor’s story. I was not pulled from beneath the rubble. I was not bleeding in the street. I did not lose a parent, a sibling, a child, or a home. Thousands of people carry stories far more devastating than mine. I know people whose clothes were soaked in blood. People who lost their parents. People who buried their loved ones in pieces. I know someone whose brother had to be buried twice because his body had been torn apart. That is graphic. It is gruesome. It is difficult to read. But that is what Aug. 4 was. It was not clean or symbolic. It was bodies, blood, shattered glass, collapsed homes, overflowing hospitals, and families searching for people who would never come back.
Six years later, we still do not fully know what happened. We still do not know who will be held responsible. We still do not have justice. I have spent countless nights researching, crying, talking, watching footage, and trying to understand. I have been sad, furious, exhausted, and consumed by it. For years, understanding the explosion became my way of grieving it.
Every August, I returned to Beirut to demand justice. I protested outside the courthouse when activists were arrested for demanding accountability. I wrote my bachelor’s thesis about the explosion, then my master’s thesis. I spent years trying to understand what had happened.
I still do not understand.
I do not understand how the people responsible can walk freely through the world. I do not understand how they can go home, eat dinner, spend time with their families, travel, work, and continue living as though nothing happened. I do not understand how someone can carry responsibility for this much destruction and feel none of its weight. Maybe they do feel it. Maybe guilt follows them into their homes and keeps them awake at night. But we have never seen accountability. We have never seen remorse. We have only watched them protect one another, obstruct the investigation, and wait for the rest of us to become too tired to keep asking questions.
Perhaps that is what they have always counted on: that grief will eventually exhaust us, that life will distract us, and that time will make our demands quieter. I have built a life since Aug. 4. I have studied, traveled, laughed, loved, and worried about ordinary things again. But every time I hear a loud noise, I am back on the stairs in my workout clothes, halfway down, before I understood anything.
Somewhere inside me, it is still 6:07 p.m.
