how a woman became afraid of fireworks
A story inspired by true events
Published on: 02/03/2022
Written by Maylis Moubarak
Scroll down
Written by Maylis Moubarak
Scroll down
August 4, 2020 - 6 PM
It was a regular, mundane day. She was on her couch in her living room, working on her laptop, writing the last chapter of her book. The sun's late afternoon rays pierced through the windows and tinted the room in a light amber mist. She liked this hour of the day.
She thought about what she was going to cook for dinner. Scents of grilled fish and zaatar drifted through the room; her neighbour was preparing the family meal, which smelled delicious as usual. Birds were humming a serenade outside, and she felt grateful for that day.
She lived in Achrafieh, a charming neighbourhood in downtown Beirut, Lebanon. Characterised by a combination of worn-out buildings, historic houses from the 19th century, and Dubai-inspired 50-storey glass towers, Achrafieh is a peaceful place to live in. Tradition mingles with modernity, rich housewives in denim shorts chat with middle-class Muslim women in hipster coffee shops, and men smoke their chicha on the streets. Achrafieh is a tale of differences, a perfect representation of Lebanon's core disparities and multicultural beauty.
She sank into the couch. She looked at the sky and noticed it had changed colour. A yellowish, silver hue took over the clouds—an unusual shade for this hour of the day.
Watercolours by Bénédicte de Vanssay Moubarak
Then she started hearing popping, hissing and crackling sounds. The noise intensified.
She stepped outside and noticed that her neighbours were also out on their balconies, tilting their heads towards the sky that was now grey and cold.Then the hissing, crackling and popping suddenly burst into an enormous, roaring, ear-splitting explosion that pierced through the sky and the walls.
At once, everything around her cracked into a cloud of smashing glass, wood and concrete. The couch, with her still on it, got projected three meters away from the wall. She saw her laptop disappear from her hands, her books fly out of the shelves, and her mind collapse into utter panic.
What just happened?
She woke up in horror and stared at her flat, destroyed. It was as if it had been blown away and sucked in by a tornado. Broken glass was screeching under her steps. Appalled, she realised she was unharmed and suddenly recalled the blast.
She had seen thousands of pieces of glass whistle by her ears―knives ferociously aimed right at her―but that only grazed her face, millimetres away from her skin.In seconds, her life had changed. She staggered away from the scene, dazed and frightened, and went outside.
The blast had shattered entire buildings. The windows of the 50-storey towers a few streets away from her home were all crushed―not a single frame had withstood the explosion. Cars had been smashed with brutal force. Entire flats had collapsed onto the streets.
People were voiceless, their eyes filled with despair. No one could speak. No one could cry. Only one question was in their minds: why?
Drifting amid the ruins, their souls in fragments - witnesses of their city yet again destroyed by something beyond their control.
She came back inside, her eyes brimming with tears, her head in shock, her thoughts frozen. She was going around in circles in the house, incapable of recognising which broken piece belonged to which object that no longer existed.
Unconsciously, she kept playing back the blast, the incommensurable strength of the sound of the explosion. Her on the couch, blown away with gale force, glass grazing her skin, the alarms ringing, the blood and the cries.
She found her phone intact on the floor, under torn pages of a book. She called her husband. And burst into tears.
Pictures by Jo Kassis and from Buzzfeed