SPEAK UP FOR THE PEOPLE OF BEIRUT

News stories, like explosions, are momentary. They are over in seconds. On our television screens we saw a flash - a flash the likes we have never seen before. A flash that wiped out thousands of lives, ripped off limbs and tore out eyes. In just one hideous moment children are without mums and dads, mums and dads are without children, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles and loved ones are lost or maimed. It is a story that shook the World to its core. We talked of its unimaginable scale, of its implausibly long reach and of the horror-stricken, blood streaked faces of survivors – all in desperate search for lives to save. These are people whose whole world exploded before their very eyes. Hospitals hit, doctors, nurses and patients hit (many killed) and, all this in the midst of a pandemic already threatening to overwhelm its health system.

Wrong on every count

If you were to point to the wrong time it would have been this. If you were to point to the wrong city, it would surely be this one. If you were to point to a people undeserving of more pain it would be this people. Why would any God inflict this on a city that has endured fifteen years of relentless war, many weeks of bombing, multiple explosions and the assassination of its president? Why, oh why Beirut. I have no answer.

Here is the capital city of a country already impoverished by inept and corrupt leadership, swelled by 1.5 million Syrian refugees and almost on its knees – they were already at their wits end. Then this.

My cousin SuzanneCassirTahi is no stranger to the horrors of war. During the 15 years’ war and after weeks in intensive care, she herself narrowly survived a bullet wound. She wants me to keep writing about the situation there. This is a city I love. When it bleeds, I bleed - so I need no persuasion to use my pen.

Suzanne tells me it is the citizens of Beirut clearing the industrial scale debris – each day uncovering more horrors. It is these same citizens who provide meals to the hungry, shelter to the homeless and comfort and care to the bereaved and dispossessed. It is these citizens who offer comfort and counsel to traumatised children – 50,000 of them homeless.

This is not a great multi-national intervention. It is those in the eye of the storm who are standing up and responding. It may have disappeared from our front pages, but for the people there it is merely the start. It is almost impossible to describe the immensity of the challenges they face and will face for years to come. What can we do? Give? Of course. But more important. Keep it front of mind during the coming months and do what we can to ensure the UN and our Governments do not avert their focus and support the citizens of Beirut. Any messages you leave here will get to the people of Beirut. Just imagine if this was our city.