After the Blast

This article was published online on March 12, 2021.

I had never really thought about my windows, about the thickness of the panes or the type of glass. Like so many things that I’ll never again take for granted, they were simply there, and then they were gone. My apartment in the Lebanese capital is a brisk walk away from the city’s now-infamous port, the site of a massive explosion on August 4. Shortly after 6 p.m., some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, recklessly and improperly stored since 2014 in a facility called Warehouse 12, suddenly ignited. The explosion was one of the largest nonnuclear blasts ever recorded, with a force so great that it rattled windows in Cyprus, about 150 miles away across the Mediterranean Sea. It sent a mushroom cloud into the sky and lethal shock waves mostly through the eastern half of the city, killing more than 200 people, injuring more than 6,000 others, and damaging 85,744 properties: schools, stores, hospitals, and homes—including mine.

I wasn’t in my apartment at the time, and in an instant, I didn’t know if I still had one. Hundreds of thousands of people were abruptly, violently rendered homeless by the blast. My neighborhood of restaurants, bars, and art galleries, many lodged in Ottoman-era buildings with elegant trifora windows, for years as a journalist. Several neighbors were injured by flying glass and debris, requiring medical