Description
By (author) Ziadé, Lamia; Translated by Ramadan Emma
Short /annotation
Beautifully illustrated, intimately personal and politically trenchant account of Beirut”s catastrophic 2020 port explosion
In August 2020, Lebanon was in the midst of the global pandemic and a devastating economic crisis. People protested in the streets, calling for the removal of a political elite accused of greed, negligence and incompetence. The Lebanese people felt as though their country was staring into the abyss. But the worst was yet to come.
On the evening of August 4, 2020, Hangar 12 of the Port of Beirut exploded, and then exploded again. A shockwave moving faster than the speed of sound tore through Beirut, leaving nearly 200 people dead, 6,000 injured and 300,000 homeless. The blast had been caused by the storing of thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate alongside a stash of fireworks – a deadly arrangement about which the government had known, but done nothing.
For six months straight, French-Lebanese author and artist Lamia Ziadé wrote, illustrated and recorded every new piece of information, every photograph of the wreckage or the wounded that made its way around WhatsApp groups, Instagram and Twitter. In My Port of Beirut, Ziadé weaves together the play-by-play of the tragedy with her own personal stories, as well as the historical and political background that made such a catastrophe possible and, perhaps, inevitable.
Table of contents
Prologue: August 4, 2020
1: The Sirens of the Port of Beirut
2: The Heroes
3: “A steamer enters the haze of the port of Beirut”
4: The Enchantment of Objects
5: The Saint George Hospital
6: Lady Cochrane
7: The Third Basin
8: My Sister’s Friends
9: Guilt
10: Sacy and Noun
11: The Criminals
12: Report on the Port, 1956
13: My Father’s Stubbornness
14: A Peaceful and Gentle People
15: My Sister on the Telephone
16: Who?
17: Beirut, Nest of Spies
18: The Port, Like the Country
19: Thawra, Birth of a Nation
20: October 17th
21: A Turn for the Worse
Review quote
”A very moving tribute… the Franco-Lebanese illustrator and writer has been developing a very personal literary genre for several years, made up of very colourful texts and drawings, reproductions of photos taken from private archives or press articles… Here, she erects a mausoleum to the victims of the disaster, and over the pages, the simple succession of their faces and their names creates intense emotion”
Review quote
”Lamia Ziadé tells here in the first person the contemporary history of her native country, its violence, the very year of her birth in 1968, which is also that of the first stone laid for the port silos, for which she has had a passion since childhood… Through this emblematic place that she makes her own, her port of Beirut, she writes a Lebanese autobiography of words and images that will speak to every reader”
Review quote
”Magical… Lamia Ziadé works as an alchemist. My Port of Beirut tells the story of the explosion as she experienced it: from afar but in the heart. She draws the faces of the victims, collects the stories, reproduces the graffiti against the corrupt leaders, and explains these destroyed buildings which to us are only buildings for us but for her are symbols, memories, her life… A book of love, mourning and anger.”
Review quote
”Lamia Ziadé tells not only her personal trauma but also the story of the familiar and common violence that crossed her country (and all her life since her birth in 1968) and to which the explosion of the 2,750 tons of nitrate from ammonium from hangar 12 gives an overwhelming sense of endless curse… She mixes narrative and drawings, entangling
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.