Icon: enlarge
A Lebanese woman protests in Beirut in October.
A year ago hundreds of thousands went to the demonstrations, today many want to leave the country
Photo:
ANWAR AMRO / AFP
The worst thing about an injury is often not the pain, but the scar that reminds you of it afterwards, over and over again.
There is a scene in the author Pierre Jarawan's book, it takes place in Beirut in the 1990s, the civil war is just over.
15 years had passed since it started in 1975 until the end of 1990.
A lot of time for crime and injury.
And in this scene it says:
The war was over. Amnesty laws signed. Excavators moved in and gradually banished what had happened from the cityscape.
Rubble, the scars of a city.
In "A Song for the Missing", author Jarawan portrays the generation after the civil war, women and men, now between 30 and 40 years old.
You still remember the ruins from that time, and the crises and wars that followed.
A generation that people abroad like to talk about that they can celebrate as if there was no tomorrow, there in the party districts of Beirut, in Gemmayze or Mar Mikhael.
Yet, says Jarawan, the people in Lebanon always reckon that there may be no tomorrow for them.
Now the country is in ruins again due to a massive economic crisis, and at the latest since the beginning of August 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the port of Beirut.
When hundreds died and the homes and homes of hundreds of thousands shattered.
SPIEGEL
: Mr. Jarawan, when the disaster happened in the port of Beirut, you wrote: "Everyone over 30 in Lebanon knows what to do in the event of an explosion."
What do you mean by that?
Pierre Jarawan:
There is a tragedy in the realization.
Unfortunately, explosions and firefights trigger automated processes in humans.
Anyone who has lived through the civil war remembers what to do next.
But the younger ones also know that, they experienced the July war in 2006.
Even after the civil war, Lebanon never came to rest.
SPIEGEL
: In your book, shortly after the civil war, a school girl said:
"We're all a hundred years old."
What have the crises in Lebanon done to the people, especially the young?
Jarawan
: One speaks of the "lost generation".
Some have known nothing but war throughout their childhood.
This generation never really gained a foothold afterwards.
She was overwhelmed by peace.
Traumatized.
And currently, after the explosion in Beirut, there are again around 80,000 children who urgently need psychological help but are not getting it.
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Mourners after the explosion in Beirut in early August
Photo:
Hassan Ammar / AP
SPIEGEL
: Why was the war never dealt with in Lebanon?
Jarawan
: First, because those responsible for massacres and war crimes came to power after the war and thanks to an amnesty law they could easily stay there.
But also because you are dealing with 18 different religious groups in Lebanon.
That means: with 18 different versions of history and the past.
To date, there is no history book for school lessons that covers the years of the civil war.
Because to this day no one can agree on a story.
Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Druze, they all have their own victim and perpetrator stories.
In the beginning, repression was certainly an important reflex in order to be able to continue at all.
But later it should have been dealt with urgently, and that never happened.
SPIEGEL
: In the past year, many Lebanese people broke their silence.
Hundreds of thousands of them took to the streets.
What happened?
Jarawan
: There were different triggers that came together: devastating forest fires that were ignored by the government.
A tax that should be waived on WhatsApp calls.
Many people have realized that the power elite doesn't care about the people.
Because already in 2019 - before the explosion in Beirut - the situation in the country was catastrophic, even then people thought, it couldn't be worse.
There was a currency crisis, people couldn't get their money.
Poverty rose and even reached the middle class.
It all drove people into the streets.
SPIEGEL
: Then came the year 2020, a pandemic that the country has nothing to counter - and finally the disaster in the port of Beirut.
But hardly anyone takes to the streets anymore.
Jarawan
: Possibly the explosion was one neck blow too much.
300,000 people were left homeless in seconds.
In relation, it is like when 4 million people in Germany - all of Berlin and the surrounding area - lose their home.
Right now it is simply a matter of survival for the population, of getting the food on the table.
The Lebanese have always imagined a lot, including violence, but this explosion has thrown even those who believed they had already seen it all.
SPIEGEL
: You have relatives in Lebanon.
What are you talking to them about?
Jarawan
: My cousin is 25, he says he wants to leave the country.
More than half of Lebanese people are expected to be below the poverty line by the end of the year.
Those who are young have little chance of a job or an education.
For years it has been the case that fathers go to the Emirates, earn money and send it back so the child can study.
To then leave the country with education.
The Lebanese diaspora is huge, the countrymen live in Canada, Brazil, Germany.
The boys who are still in Lebanon also want to go there.
What was true in the past is all the more true now: Nobody in Lebanon is making more plans.
You ask yourself immediate questions, you improvise - and that can mean packing your bags overnight.
Many Lebanese are already boarding refugee boats heading for Cyprus, they just want to get away.
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