by Michael K. Lavers
A massive explosion that killed more than 200 people in Beirut on Aug. 4 nearly destroyed the offices of Lebanon’s oldest LGBTQ advocacy group.
Helem’s offices are located less than a mile from the city’s port where the explosion took place. Helem Executive Director Tarek Zeidan on Monday told the Los Angeles Blade during a Skype interview the blast damaged buildings up to 10 miles away.
“You can imagine how close we were,” said Zeidan. “Nothing much of inside the center remains: Doors, windows, fixtures, furniture, everything was blown out.” Zeidan said the explosion injured several Helem staffers.
“They had to be taken to the hospital that night for their wounds to be stitched, but thankfully no one lost their life,” he said.
Initial reports indicate a fire that ignited more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut’s port since 2013 sparked the blast. The explosion took place against the backdrop of Lebanon’s economic and political crises that the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated.
Before the blast LGBTQ people were already suffering due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Helem created a “community kitchen” to provide people in need with hot, nutritional meals twice a week. It also worked with the American University of Beirut to create a clinic within its medical center that would provide free diagnostic services to LGBTQ people. Read more via Los Angeles Blade
Statement from Executive Director Tarek Zeidan
This morning I cried for the last time.
I pulled myself out of bed and carried my body to Helem, our community center which is less than 700 meters from the epicenter of the explosion. I had gotten photos of the center on the night of the blast and I was bracing myself for a second emotional breakdown. The team and I have worked night and day for years now in order to have a community center we can be proud of and they told me that nothing remains. The doors and windows have been pulled out of their sockets. The kitchen is in ruins, and the equipment all gone.
Armenia Street, our street and the heart of Mar Mkhael, is in total ruins. I walked it slowly towards the center and saw the buildings of old Beirut, those not yet raped by Solidere and cannibal developers, gutted to their knees. Not a single building was spared, not a single apartment intact. The old stores which we bought our food and stationary from, the bars where we drank, all have imploded, drenched with blood and glass. On the street, scouts, students, NGO workers, nuns, homeless men and women, and elderly residents all working to remove the tons of debris from the sidewalks. You could only see eyes above the masks, and each pair of eyes was either drenched in tears or blank. No chit chat, no discussion, just people silently sweeping and grieving shoulder to shoulder. The people of Beirut stooping together, barely standing.
Nowhere could you see the government in Mar Mkhael, not a single aid worker or person in uniform in sight, and even though I already knew it, seeing how we have been first attacked and then utterly abandoned still filled me with rage and dread. What few members of the army and the internal security forces on Armenia were standing among the carnage smoking cigarettes and watching us. None of them lifted a pebble. You cannot not weep when walking Beirut today, you cannot not feel the knot in your stomach and the gash in your chest when you look at her.
I walked into the center already making lists in my head, already thinking of what it will take to fix this, how will I convince the team it is worth it to rebuild, to fight, to stay? Advocate for the community? what community? how was it worth it to talk about organizing another food drive, another campaign, another protest? Why bother changing laws in a lawless land? Build coalitions with allies that emigrate? fight workplace discrimination in businesses that burn? I wasn't sure I wanted to do any of that myself ever again. I didn't want to rebuild, I want to destroy, to inflict pain, to draw blood for blood. I wanted nothing but retaliation and retribution. If I ever prayed it was for the old god, the god of fire and brimstone, the god of the Old Testament, the destroyer sent to wipe it all away, them and us, in fire and flood.
I finally reached Helem and walked inside. The center looked different from the pics they sent me with so much light coming in from the broken windows and doors, now removed and stocked outside waiting for the municipality to come remove them. The floors were not dirty, they were swept clean and the couches dusted and packed neatly in the meeting room. The kitchen was functional and smelled of coffee and the offices had all of the files and folders back neatly on the shelves. No dust or glass to be seen anywhere and the stench of rust absent.
Inside the center, the staff and about a dozen volunteers were conversing and joking, having waltzed into the doorless center and begun cleaning and rebuilding the day before and early this morning.I had no idea they were doing that, no one told me. I didn't mobilize or organize anyone, I didn't ask anyone to show up. I didn't call for a meeting or ask for a favor. In fact I ordered everyone to stay away from the center because of the fumes and to give me time to think. But they ignored me completely. They walked in and cleaned and fixed and hammered and organized as I stood there feeling completely useless and weeping like an idiot. Mama Jad was standing in the middle of the now windowless and doorless center smoking a cigarette. She flashed me a smile and said :"now I can finally smoke inside the center without hearing you bitch about it".
I don't know if I deserve the human beings I work with. I don't know if we the people don't deserve Beirut or if she doesn't deserve the people rebuilding her as we speak. I cannot explain what it feels like to be lifted when you buckle at the knees by the very same people you feel responsible for lifting. There can be no going back or away anymore, the land is just land were it not for the people that sculpt its spirit. The people I share my life's work with is the reason why now I have the strength and the sense of self worth to even write this. There is struggle to be waged after we grieve and bury our dead. There is restoration to be planned, and revenge to be had. There are people to be with, and work to be done. I am sad and burdened and grateful to be alive.