They are the haunting images of Beirut’s injured – their faces covered in stitches and scars from when the windows horrifically blew out across the city.
The cross-section of those injured reveals a cruel truth of the August 4 explosion – it did not discriminate. At least 180 were killed, 6,000 were wounded, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless.
The devastation stretches for miles from Beirut port, the blast zone, where a supersonic boom sent an earthquake-like jolt through the city, pulverising entire blocks.
Now many Lebanese people wonder whether Beirut can ever recover, with fears the blast inflicted a trauma so deep that the generation who would rebuild the shattered city could leave altogether.
Shadi Rizk, 32, a network engineer, had a front-row view of the massive explosion as he worked in a glass building across from the port.
Shadi – who had 350 stitches on his arms legs, chest and face – said it was a ‘miracle’ he survived, adding: ‘The scars that will remain on my face and body will tell my story.
‘They are a sign that I’ve been deeply hurt and a sign that I have healed.’
Shadi, already fed up with Lebanon’s corruption and rolling economic crises, wants to move to Canada.
He said: ‘Anywhere really, just not here. I’ve lost all hope.
‘I do not feel safe here anymore. God gave me another life, a second chance, I don’t want to live it here.’
Lebanon’s entire government resigned after ignoring warnings ammonium nitrate had been left unsecured at the port for years before the disaster.
The explosion was the last straw for many Lebanese who viewed the government as incompetent and corrupt. An unprecedented protest movement sparked in October 2019 was viewed as change-making, but the uprising eventually lost steam.
A doctor in his 40s, who only gave his name as Walid, was at home with one of his sons when he heard the rumbling.
It reminded him of his childhood, as he instantly pulled his son, 17, into the bathroom as the explosion hit, mirroring what his own father had done during the 1975-1990 civil war.
He said: ‘The fear I saw on [my son’s] face … it went right through me.’
The blast sped up a long-term plan for Walid to send his children to France.
‘I would have liked to not make this decision in a hurry,’ he added.
Sharbel Hasbany, a 29-year-old makeup artist who was left with 64 stitches, is also determined to leave Lebanon.
He listed the names of the bars and restaurants he and his friends used to visit in popular nightlife areas not far from the port.
He said: ‘We were there all the time, not knowing we were sitting on a bomb.’
Heiko Wimmen, of the International Crisis Group, predicted a brain drain in traumatised Lebanon, as the highly educated and multilingual middle class opts to leave.
He said: ‘It’s a very bleak and very realistic assessment. People have education and degrees but, more importantly even than that, people have networks.
‘The country may very well lose a generation it needs to rebuild and to achieve the political change that is necessary.’
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