Five Seconds That Flattened Beirut

A Lebanese novelist recalls the shock and chaos of Aug. 4, 2020, when an explosion tore through the country’s capitalHoussam Hariri/NurPhoto/Getty ImagesOn Aug. 4, 2020, a fire at a warehouse on the Beirut waterfront ignited a cache of ammonium nitrate, an explosive material that had been stored at the site for more than six years. The giant blast sent a shock wave through the heart of the Lebanese capital, killing some 200 people and injuring thousands.

At 6:07 p.m. I’m working on the terrace and I stand up to take a plate of fruit I’ve just finished back to the kitchen, when I get a voice message. I set the plate down on the little table, open the message and start listening to it, standing up. Suddenly the floor begins to move with incredible violence, accompanied by a sort of hideous roar. I’m petrified as I feel the terrace come and go beneath me like an old swing, and I think it’s obviously an earthquake. My mind freezes.

And then everything suddenly stops moving and roaring, and I’m about to rush inside. But at that moment I’m nailed to the spot again, submerged by the deafening, interminable blast of a monstrous explosion, and this time my eyes seek out the familiar landscape around me, the trees, the buildings in the distance, everything that is always there before me and which now seems to be thunderstruck by the ghastly soundtrack flattening it.

When this horror is over at last, I finally run inside while realizing that I still don’t know what has happened. An earthquake, sure, but then why that explosion? Or an explosion, OK, but why an earthquake just before it? But there are more urgent things to worry about: my son Nadim who has blood on his legs, and my wife Nayla who has gathered up the children and is holding them together in her arms like a rampart against who knows what.

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