It was morning. March 30, as I remember. 1989. I was 24 years old then.
I woke up to the foul smell of fire and burning diesel.
Slowly stretching my body I sat in my small narrow bed and tried to look out of the window with my eyes barely open. My bed was stuck to the window wall so without effort, I put my chin on the frame of the wooden window and looked outside. As soon as I tried to open my eyes I felt a burning sensation. It was snowing outside.
But wait a minute. Snow in Beirut? It couldn’t be!
I tried to knock some sense into my still sleepy brain and pushed my head out of the window trying to open my eyes wider. I looked right and left with blurred vision.
It was snowing all right, but it was black and gray ashes falling from the sky!
I looked up. There was no sun. The morning sky was dark orange-grayish with lots of black-and-gray ash flakes dancing around and slowly descending to the ground. Cars were gradually being covered by this strange ash.
I was on the first floor, and I could see people running outside with clothes wrapped around their noses and faces! That is when I realized the continuous low-frequency rumbling sound from a distance.
What was going on?
I felt the sudden urge to jump out of my bed and go wash my face, eyes, and nose as the burning sensation became worse in my eyes and my nose too. It was starting to get difficult to breathe…
I washed my face and eyes, gargled, and tried to clean my nose … with my fingers… it was dry!
Black solid pieces came out… It was clear that throughout the night I had breathed in ashes from the burning gas tanks…
I hurried to clean up and came out of the bathroom. It was around 8:15 AM and everyone was awake. My parents and our hosts were hurriedly moving back and forth in the house with wet handkerchiefs held on their noses. No one was thinking about the breakfast. Quickly wearing my pants and T-shirt, I went to the saloon. I found my dad and his friend, still in pajamas, listening to the news with a small transistor radio between their heads.
“Dad, what’s going on”? I asked in a worried voice.
He waved his hand vertically at me as if to silence me and changing his facial expression he said “Aren’t you living in Lebanon”?
I remembered a day before, when the huge gas storage tanks in Dawra, just 1 kilometer away from our location, were on fire because of some shells that fell very close to them. The fire brigades had tried to put out the fire but were unsuccessful because the continuous shelling did not allow them to work, and the fire was too huge to control. The fire had continued all through the night, heating the contents of the huge tanks.
My dad did not understand Arabic well, so he made every effort to make sense of the news he was listening to. I was interrupting him. So I left.
Our hosts were the family of my father’s friend. A few weeks ago we had fled from our apartment because it was on the seventh and last floor of our building, and hence it was very dangerous to stay because of the unscheduled and continuous shelling. We had learned that during war higher locations were considered strategic and were always targeted first. So, my father had arranged for us to stay at his friend’s apartment for a short while which was on the first floor of a building and about 15 minutes’ walk from ours.
Standing in front of an open window I gazed outside. Was it morning or late afternoon dusk? It sure looked like the end of a day. There was no sun, and thick orange-gray smoke was covering the sky above. I watched the people below. I have always been fond of watching facial expressions, and people doing things, routine things in normal life. From my first floor window, I could see the worried and frightened faces. Some were running, while others were just standing and talking in groups of 2 or 3 under a balcony or in a building entrance. It was obvious that everyone was talking about the explosion which would occur at any moment now. Since morning, all the radio stations were continuously repeating and telling people to take caution and stay safe inside, wrap wet cloths around noses and keep the children, pregnant women, and toddlers safe. Everyone was advising about what to do so as not to get poisoned during this disaster. A horrible disaster was looming over the city.
Yes, it was serious. Very serious.
There was fear of being poisoned by breathing in the poisonous air, and also the fear of the eminent and anticipated big explosion of the city gas tanks.
As I was watching the confused people outside, my mind drifted to other thoughts about hardships, unbearable life conditions such as power blackouts for most of the day, water and food shortages, limping education systems, and suddenly …
The deep rumbling sound became louder and louder as if a fire-breathing dragon was exhaling. People panicked and ran hoping to find shelter here and there. In a few seconds, the streets were nearly empty when …
B-BOOM!
The sound of a huge explosion propagated through the air and the streets. The buildings shook. My heart leaped out from my chest. Glass doors and windows trembled. Women’s screams filled the air. Hot air gushed into the streets as if the gates of hell were suddenly opened. Then I heard a strange whooshing sound like a big rotating metal fan. The sound was strong at first and gradually it faded away.
It was 8:45 AM.
“Dad, it finally exploded”, I shouted.
“Yes, yes. Stay inside” he raised his voice. All the radio stations went wild, and everyone was talking at the same time. Down on the street, people shouted and ran. There were announcements on the news that chunks of huge broken metal pieces had flown away from the gas tanks in the Dawra gas storage and were falling in random places.
After a few minutes of hesitation, I dared to look out to the sky again and saw black smoke slowly spreading everywhere and covering the whole area. The smoke was too much and the poisonous smell was intolerable now. Everyone frequently washed their eyes and faces!
The bombings and the shells had stopped for a while without any agreement between the opposite parties.
I wrapped and tied a wet t-shirt around my head, covering my nose and mouth.
“Mom. dad. I am going home. I want to check if everything is ok there”.
“Be careful. Don’t forget to feed Sevoug”, said mom in a worried voice and quickly handed me a plastic bag which I knew contained leftover bones and some meat from last night.
I went out to the street. Sirens from the fire brigades continued. As I hurriedly walked, the black smoke above me started to change into dark gray and then light gray. It was a sign that the fire brigades were working now trying to put out the fire.
Black ashes fell everywhere around me. I stopped to blow at the top of a car and the accumulated ash just spread in all directions. As I walked, I watched people around me. Some were walking fast or running, some others were frozen and were looking dumb. Kids were playing with the black ash. An old woman sat at the entrance of a building holding her head with both her hands. I suddenly remembered that this was not a stroll in the park, nor was it a scientific expedition. So I hurried to reach home. On my way, I stopped to buy two medium-sized cans of Zwan meat for Sevoug.
Upon reaching our home area, I looked around. The situation was the same. I ran up the stairs to the seventh floor as there was no electricity, as usual.
I opened our home front door and went in. Everything was normal. Then, out of nowhere, Sevoug ran to me and jumped at me with her tail between her legs and licking my hands non-stop. The poor creature was crying… My heart broke every time I saw her in this state. Sevoug was our small dog of Caniche breed.
I sat down on the floor and she licked my face, hands, and anywhere she could reach. She was crying very loud now. I held her and sensed that she was trembling. I hugged her and she stopped crying.
After a while, I stood up and went to the kitchen to prepare the food I had brought with me. I prepared it and renewed her water bowl.
I checked all the rooms. Everything was fine. Then I went to our large balcony. From the seventh and last floor, everything could be seen clearly. Most of the sky was gray now and smoke was still rising from the Dawra region. Ashes were still falling from the sky and the foul smell was still haunting everybody. People walked in the streets searching for open shops to get some canned food. Ambulance sounds were heard from afar. Very few cars could be seen in the streets as there was a shortage of benzene. I slowly gazed around me for a while. I missed the view from our large balcony. It could never be compared to the limited view from the window of the first floor we were living in now. It felt so good to look at the mountains and the endless sea. I wanted to take in some fresh air but couldn’t. It was poison to my lungs!
I went inside.
I sat on the couch to rest for a while and Sevoug came to lie beside me. She had already eaten all that I had given her. She snuggled her head under my hand wanting me to pat her. I stayed with her for a while to comfort her and make her feel good.
Though we were temporarily staying in another home now, every day one of us tried to come home to feed our beloved Sevoug, check on her, and stay with her for a while. This was a time to check the condition of our home too. As every day there was random shelling and bombing of our areas, we could not know if our apartment was hit or not. So, the everyday visit was a priority.
But why didn’t we take Sevoug with us to the other house where we were staying and sheltering.
We couldn’t. These people were cat lovers and did not like dogs. They praised their cats all the time and could not tolerate dogs. They did not want our dog in their house because our dog would disturb their cats… and they had many, even a pregnant one! So we were obliged to leave our poor Sevoug alone at home, visiting her every day before noon for an hour or two, feeding her, and checking the condition of our home at the same time.
Oh, something else. Our building did not have a decent shelter for us to use! So we were obliged to stay elsewhere.
Sevoug was happy with me for a short while. She ate, drank, and played with me. I could sense that she was calm now and her wagging tail never stopped moving.
Finally, I decided to leave.
I hugged Sevoug, held her head with both hands as she licked my forehead and all my face…
I smiled and then went to wash my face.
By now, Sevoug knew that I was going to leave. She just lied there on the sofa with her head resting on both her paws, looking at me with very sad eyes. She cried a little bit with a low sound and watched me as I closed the door and left.
I went down the stairs of our building and heard some people talking about a large metal piece of the exploded gas tank that had landed on a building just three blocks away from ours, and had destroyed half the building… It was a commercial and public building of 5 floors where a radio station, a print house, a library, and other offices existed. I knew that building well. It was a cultural center for our community. I did not go there as I heard that they did not allow people to approach the building. I saw it a few days later. It was a disaster! Nearly half the building from the top side was gone!
I walked back to where my parents were but this time I took a different road to watch and see what had happened in other nearby streets. I walked on broken stones and metals which had fallen from the buildings. In random places, metal water hoses were sticking out of the asphalt and spraying water all around. What a waste of water! These were the results of the continuous bombardments of the previous days. I walked on gray and black ashes. A man was washing his car with the water that was spilling in the street. He had attached a rubber hose to the broken metal hose and was using it to wash his car. I walked by and smiled at the man’s creativity. Two blocks away, I saw another metal hose sticking out, but this time people had put a faucet on it and there was a queue of men and boys beside it. Each was holding an empty gallon in their hand waiting their turn to fill the gallon with water and take it home.
About a hundred meters away was another long queue in front of a bakery. People in the Middle East consume bread with everything they eat, so bread is essential with every meal.
I watched as I walked without talking to anyone till I reached. My mom looked at me and asked “Sevoug?”. “She is ok”, I said in a low voice and nodded. “Don’t worry mom, I fed her and refilled her water bowl”.
That day, when we were having lunch, dad said that they had announced something interesting on the news. Apart from the shocking news of the gas tank explosion and the metal pieces landing over a wide area destroying homes and buildings, there was news that the government of Israel, our southern neighboring country, had distributed gas masks to its people to protect them from the poisonous gases spreading from our gas tanks even before the explosion occurred!
This was ironic…
Israel’s northern border is more than 100 kilometers away from the explosion site, and yet their government had distributed gas masks.
What about us then? We inhaled all that poisonous gas and ashes for more than 24 hours, and then inhaled them after the explosion too! We were only one kilometer away!
Our government did not talk about that. No one did. No one cared!
But our misfortunes were not over yet!