"This is a curse, my poor country my love": Lamia Ziadé's graphic story on Beirut's explosion

A message is displayed on my phone screen."It's a curse, your poor country.The friend who sent it to me surely speaks of the terrible economic crisis which has been rushed for a few months Lebanon at the bottom of the chasm and the epidemic due to the coronavirus that has grown there for a few days.While I am about to rest my phone, I realize that I also have 70 new messages on our family WhatsApp family, however recently quite inactive.I suddenly have goosebumps.What's going on ?

The first of the messages, "All Safe?"Is sent by my cousin.My heart is collapsing.Something seriously happened.With my stomach, I fly over the following messages.The first two - "yes";"Me yes" - sent one minute after by my brother and my sister, confirm the urgency of the situation.The third, a photo of a sofa that disappears under the debris of a bay window in crumbs, with the legend "I was sitting there a minute before", is sent by my cousin, while another writes: "I no longer have an apartment.A selfie from my sister, the blood in blood, all the windows of her broken office and the furniture in pieces, and my heart is beating.

I immediately think of an Israeli bombardment, we have lived with this threat, night and day for over fifteen years.I open, trembling, the site of the East day, but it no longer works.Then my brother transfers a little video to the group that was sent to him.The first images of the blast break me in a thousand pieces.

The pagan sanctuary

Epouvante, terror, anxiety, despair, shipwreck, distress.The vision of the port is apocalyptic.We think we are at the gates of hell, the dread is no longer measured.

Since the explosion, I no longer live, I sob out every hour, I don't sleep at night, I fall asleep in the early morning, I wake up two hours later, telling myself that I made a horrible nightmare,I realize a minute after it was not a nightmare, but reality, and I have tears in my bed thinking of sprayed silos.

For ten days, it's been like that.I am in Paris, but not a single second I think of something other than Beirut.Beirut on the ground, destroyed and traumatized.Beirut, capital of pain.I am suspended on my phone, between WhatsApp and Instagram, because that's where everything is happening.Since the October 2019 revolts, it is the most effective way to be well informed, to be really in the field.Each Lebanese is a news agency alone and the news is transmitted at lightning speed.

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