When I started reporting on the explosion and its aftermath in 2020 for AP, a lot of women came forward. They had powerful stories and always opened up to me. They were looking for a safe space and trusted me with their pain. A year later, when I decided to write a book about the explosion and Lebanon’s collapse, I realized that, without doing it on purpose, most of the accounts I had were from women. Women were the best storytellers, maybe because they rarely have a platform to talk. They never get to write history although they are major players in it. They were all survivors of the explosion but their loss and tragedy went beyond that day. When I interviewed them for the book research, I realized that generations of women were doomed to see history repeat itself, they were condemned to endless cycles of violence again and again because of the prevalent culture of impunity in Lebanon. Many of them are survivors of the civil war, Israel’s wars but also discrimination and unfair laws. I wanted this book to be about them and by them.
It was quite different as my interview methodology relied on open and very general questions, following the style of interviews for oral history. I asked the women one general question and let them talk and guide me through the themes they wanted to bring up. Sometimes a woman would speak for an hour answering just one question. I rarely intervened. I ended up with long interviews, many of about 2 to 3 hours. I also went back to see some of the women more than once. In the writing, I also followed a new style, combining narration which is similar to the journalism writing I am used to but then there were no quotes and rather long unfiltered paragraphs from the women’s interviews. I wanted them to own their stories as much as possible.
It was the themes beyond the Beirut blast that the women brought up. For example, I went to see Mona, a woman who lost her daughter in the explosion. I asked Mona to talk about that day but instead she focused on her story of domestic violence and the abuse of her former husband. There was also Salwa who insisted on bringing up the civil war again and again, a sign that she never healed from that. Or the women like Liliane and Karlen who on top of surviving the explosion were fighting for custody and their rights as mothers.
That Lebanon’s woes have not started today but that this time the crisis in the country is like no other. That the Lebanese are not resilient but survivors of endless violence and hardship. That history repeats itself in Lebanon and the Arab world because of impunity and only when justice is served can we really hope to rebuild home.
