Gregg Carlstrom reports on the emotional impact of last week’s explosion and, in a second dispatch, Lina Mounzer describes the bewildering months of living with spiralling inflation
Alm
ost a week after the explosion that shattered Beirut, which ended more than 150 lives and ruined hundreds of thousands more, the shock has not worn off. At times it feels as though it never will. Phone calls, conversations with waiters, cashiers and taxi drivers begin the same way, with questions about health, family, home. Strangers greet each other with “hamdellah ’al salama” – thank God for your safety – a phrase that in happier times might be used to welcome someone back from a trip.
The soundtrack of the city, its honking horns and revving engines, the church bells and the adhan (the call to prayer), has been turned down. In some places now it is just the breaking of glass, which crunches underfoot, crashes down from buildings and crackles as it piles up. No block in the city centre seems to be unscathed. The skyscrapers that loom over downtown are husks. The stately old homes in east Beirut have had their windows blown out. Balconies are canted at odd angles, air-conditioners dangle by threads, if they have not collapsed altogether.
