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‘Our homes are open’: Tales of kindness in beleaguered Beirut

Volunteers clean rubble from the streets: REUTERS
Volunteers clean rubble from the streets: REUTERS

Every few years the Keshishoghlian family’s home is blown up and they have to move and start a new life again.

In 2012 they fled the regime bombardment of Aleppo. Six years before that they escaped Lebanon, during the war with Israel. This time, the explosion that obliterated their house was not a barrel bomb or artillery shell, but nearly 3000 tonnes of explosives that caught fire in Beirut’s port just a few hundred metres away.

The blast tidal-waved through the centre of the capital, taking windows and doors, belongings and bodies with it.

Large cracks now splinter the walls of the battered building, where the Syrian family of 11 live.

“We are afraid to sleep here,” says Alice Keshishoghlian, 39, a mother-of-three as her young niece softly cries in the background.

“All the children are scared. But we don’t know where to go.”

Alice is among 300,000 people – more than 12 per cent of Beirut’s population – who the Lebanese authorities estimate are now homeless due to the destruction wrought by the blast.

Among them are as many as 100,000 children, according to the United Nations child agency Unicef.

Some families have returned to the battered shells of their buildings or moved to second homes or in with friends and relatives. Others like Alice do not have that option.

With no help from the authorities, which have faced stinging criticism for their inaction, ordinary citizens have stepped in.

A helicopter drops water on smouldering buildings in Beirut’s port (Getty Images)
A helicopter drops water on smouldering buildings in Beirut’s port (Getty Images)

Multiple initiates sprung up over the last three days since 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate caught on fire, resulting in the one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in modern history.

Within hours of the blast, which destroyed whole swathes of Beirut, Wajih Chbat offered up his hotel in Bcharre, 100 kilometers northeast of the capital on social media. Hundreds of others like him followed suit, using hashtag “OurHomesAreOpen” to offer spare rooms, empty apartments, schools and even monasteries to those in need of a place to stay.

In several tweets, people offer to pay transport costs.

One initiative called “Beitna Beitak”, or our house is your house, which was initially set up to house some hundreds of medics and hospital staffers during the coronavirus pandemic, began matching the homeless with places to stay.

The have arranged a two-months free accommodation for Alice and her traumatised family.

“So far we have housed maybe 20 families since the blast, as the government isn’t do in anything,” says Melissa Fathallah, a one-time wedding caterer who is also a certified Red Cross first responder and well-known activist.

She says found out about Alice’s case when a volunteer cleans up team clearing the blast debris from her apartment said the building was not safe to live in and called the initiative.

“Everything that was fixed to the wall blew off and the building is leaning to the left. They can’t stay there,” she adds.

Alice, meanwhile, points out the fissures that had appeared under her feet on the exposed staircase.

“We are refugees from the Syrian civil war. Every few years there is a conflict and we have to move,” she laments.

Across the most ravaged streets of Beirut the absence of a government response was palpable. Bar some members of the security forces, citizens, non-government organisations, activist groups and aid agencies were clearing up all the debris.

Volunteers like Heba al-Hakim, part of the union of progressive women, were busy logging the destruction of each home on questionnaire forms.

“We are documenting what exact damage they have sustained, what they need like access to somewhere to stay, food or water, so we can present it to the local municipality,” she says as she fills in the details of the destruction to one man’s home.

“We have collected 300 of these questionnaires just today.”

A few metres way Bechara Gholam, a 70-year-old local notary, tours his family home and office that has been so gutted in the blast, it looked like warring tornadoes had wrestled over the property. Over the weekend he said he would begin collating all the documents needed to present to the authorities to file for compensation.

“We will be the intermediary between the people and the government,” he tells The Independent, in the blasted remains of his office.

“In this neighbourhood alone there were 12 dead, and 90 injured and a woman pulled out from under the rubble yesterday.

Volunteers arrive on Gouraud street in the Gemmayze neighbourhood of Beirut to clear debris (Anwar Amro/AFP)
Volunteers arrive on Gouraud street in the Gemmayze neighbourhood of Beirut to clear debris (Anwar Amro/AFP)

“Yet the government has not yet started any initiatives to log the devastation, it’s all people volunteering.”

The office of Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hassan Diab did not respond to a request for comment about the situation.

The government has promised to support citizens impacted by the blast, advertising zerp per cent interest loans.

But frustration has turned to anger in the last few days – the justice and education ministers were heckled by clean up crews, who through water and chased them with brooms.

Anti-government rallies have been called for Saturday.

“Look around you,” one man gestures, with a bandage on his forehead and carrying a bag of belongings out of his broken flat.

“Do you see anyone from the government here?”

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