Picking up glass:
The human stories behind the Beirut Blast
On 4 August 2020, a huge explosion became the latest tragedy in a string of devastations for the nation of Lebanon. But hope has not left Beirut, in part because Christians around the world have been a light in the darkness to those in need. Here are the human stories behind the blast – and here’s how BMS World Mission supporters can keep hope alive in Lebanon.
“We all went to help her pick up the glass the next morning. Claudette was very emotional. She was saying that they were sitting right where the glass fell just ten minutes before the blast happened… if it had happened ten minutes earlier, we would’ve had people injured, or even dead…”
Daniella Daou is picking up the pieces of the last few months, turning them over in her mind and trying, gently, to put them back together. It’s been seven weeks since the explosion in Beirut’s port area that killed at least 200 people and injured thousands. There’s the memory of clearing broken glass from the floor of the GateWay Bookshop, where store manager Claudette Jarjoura and her customers narrowly escaped horrific injury. Then there’s the past year for Lebanon, punctuated by political protests and gunfire in the streets. Between the Covid-19 lockdowns, and all the shifting unrest, there is so much brokenness, so many painful shards of glass to reckon with. But restoration and recovery, picking up the pieces for herself and for so many other Lebanese citizens, is exactly what Daniella and her team feel called to do. Even when they’re hurting too.
“Until [the explosion], we thought we’d been through it all…” says Nabil Costa, President of BMS World Mission partner the Lebanese Society for Education and Social Development (LSESD) where Daniella works. Coronavirus cases are back on the rise in Beirut, and Daniella estimates there are now more than 600 new cases a day. With tens of thousands of people made homeless by the blast, the idea of self-isolating in separate family units is woefully unrealistic. How can you, if your home has been destroyed? “Forest fires and financial crisis,” Nabil continues, “Bankruptcies, unemployment, a refugee crisis, revolution in Lebanon, Covid-19…” The explosion was devastating, but it came on the heels of so much else. Daniella’s friends are understanding more of the trauma their parents – the civil war generation – lived through.
“We haven’t had any blasts in a while,” says Daniella, explaining the state of confusion so many were thrown into after the explosion, unsure if this was the sound of terrorism, an assassination, or old echoes and ghosts of war resounding in their heads. At a counselling session for LSESD staff, a psychologist explains the idea of ‘intergenerational trauma’: children growing up with inherited anxiety and stress from parents raised in a warzone. It’s a concept that resonates with the team. Daniella thinks of the young people she knows just finishing university, hoping to get married and find work – and terrified for their future. They can’t bring themselves to go downtown to near where the blast happened, or sleep near glass windows. They’re not sure whether they can, or should, stay in Lebanon.
But it’s the generation after Daniella’s that worries her the most, a generation who have never lived through such things before. It’s the happy, confident toddlers in LSESD’s educational outreach programme (SKILD) who have suddenly stopped talking, who are back to wearing nappies and who cling to their mothers’ legs where they used to roam carefree. The children who display worrying signs of trauma in the sensory playground set up by the SKILD team to support vulnerable families. The teenagers who don’t have the right language to communicate how they’re feeling. “Because you’re not injured, part of you feels guilty… so you want to help others,” Daniella says. But when you see little being done on a national scale to help those suffering, it can be hard to stay positive. “Of course,” Daniella adds, “we know there is hope, because we know where our hope lies”.
Any money raised through this, or any other disaster recovery appeal in excess of the amount required will be used by BMS World Mission to support other work in areas of significant need.
Hope is what’s galvanised the team on the ground – hope in God and hope brought about by the incredible generosity of Christians around the world and in Lebanon itself. Partnering with BMS World Mission, the LSESD team is able to ensure that relief programmes are in place to support people in need, to bring help in whatever form it’s needed. The past month has been spent locating vulnerable families who can be rehomed in LSESD’s buildings and getting hot meals to people whose homes have been destroyed. There’s also a commitment to restoring a sense of security by repairing doors and windows and handing out PPE. The scale of the need makes it a momentous task. LSESD is contending with the damages done to its own buildings, too – the bookshop and their educational centre, Beirut Baptist School. Wonderfully, generous BMS supporters have raised an astounding £85,000 towards the effort so far, enabling 40 families to be housed and many more to receive psychological and practical support.
Hope, beyond all things, is what is keeping Daniella and her colleagues looking beyond themselves, despite all they’re going through. Beyond themselves to a nation in need around them, and beyond themselves to the Saviour who promises to walk with them through the storm. At Beirut Baptist School, glass crunches under Chaplain Tony Haddad’s feet. “Even with the damages around us, this is still a unique setting,” he insists. The school is just one of LSESD’s buildings seriously affected by the blast, but Tony isn’t seeing ruins, he’s seeing redemption. “This will remain a lighthouse, because the keeper of the lighthouse is our Shepherd the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Words by Hannah Watson
Editor of Engage, the BMS World Mission magazine
