The fight to save icons of the Beirut blast, two years on

AT GATE 9 OF BEIRUT’S PORT IN MID-JULY, ALL EYES were on the mammoth concrete grain silos. There was a blazing fire, and plumes of smoke were billowing out of the northern block of silos. Rima Zahed was here at a protest holding a portrait of her brother Amin, one of the 218 people who were killed in the catastrophic Aug. 4, 2020, explosion at the port, which left the silos a disemboweled shell of their former selves. Zahed feared the additional damage would cause them to collapse—and denounced the Lebanese authorities for not stamping out the blaze.

“The authorities told us that the fire was extinguished despite the fact that it was