IN BEIRUT – Joseph Ghafary spent 15 years fighting on the front line of Lebanon’s civil war to survive with barely a scratch to his thumb. It would not be until 30 years later that he was to suffer an injury worthy of war, losing his leg when a mammoth explosion rocked his capital city, Beirut, two years ago on Thursday.
As the Middle Eastern nation marks the anniversary of the blast, when hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely at the port detonated, killing more than 220 people, injuring 7,000, and causing billions of dollars worth of damage, the population is still facing a series of overlapping crises.
This was no more evident than on Sunday, when four days before the anniversary, a portion of the port’s deteriorated grain silos which have been burning for weeks – the fermented wheat ignited by the summer heat – collapsed, sending a dramatic cloud of dust into the air and retriggering trauma for many.
Despite the blast’s gravity – deemed one of the world’s largest non-nuclear explosions – survivors have been left pained and frustrated by an unfruitful and dogged investigation into the cause of the blast.
Lebanese authorities, in keeping with a culture of impunity, have repeatedly filed complaints against the lead judge, forcing the probe’s suspension, while some of the senior politicians indicted were re-elected during May’s parliamentary elections.
As a result of these acts of interference, various international rights groups on Wednesday urgently called on the UN Human Rights Council to create an independent fact-finding mission into the explosion.
Fifty-eight-year-old Mr Ghafary is stoical as he sits at his neighbourhood café. Only the observant would notice his disability; his right leg outstretched with his shoe propped at a stiff angle, to ease the prosthetic he has worn for the past two years.
A heavy silver crucifix is chained around his neck, and a white shirt collar pokes out from under a tired black jacket. The jewellery is a reminder of the country’s strict sectarian make-up of Muslims, Christians and Druze; a diversity at times the cause of tensions, climaxing with the 1975-90 civil war.
Yet it is during peacetime that Mr Ghafary feels he has been tested the most, abandoned to pick up the pieces of his injury against a backdrop of a biting economic depression.
Sunday’s collapsing silos – which experts had warned about for months – was a bitter reminder for a tired populace of the state’s systemic inability to act.
Many blame the government for the blast; reckoning it a by-product of a factional power base who for decades wrung the state out to dry, divvying up resources among cronies.
It built an economy on foundations destined to collapse. A fall which came at the end of 2019, and has since pushed three-quarters of the once middle-income country into multidimensional poverty. Even with the pressing need for relief, leaders have squabbled over economic reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund on the condition of financial aid.
The inaction has exacerbated the crisis. The local currency has lost nearly all its value, while widespread electricity and food shortages have upturned livelihoods, together adding salt to the wounds of the thousands recovering from the diaster on August 4 2020.
“I am handicapped from an accident I am not responsible for, but I have to pay for my own medicine,” Mr Ghafary says, revealing he has spent $46,000 (£37,700) of savings on bills.
He was hit as a wall and balcony collapsed from shockwaves that levelled buildings. One brick smashed into his leg and another into his shoulder. He needed four operations, which the Ministry of Public Health compensated. However, his eight daily doses of medication alongside physiotherapy sessions, have come out of his own pocket.
But Mr Ghafary’s pocket has shrunk. As a manager at the state-controlled telecommunications company, his family were comfortable off the $2,000 salary he earned each month. Today, the Lebanese pound’s collapse against the US dollar renders his wage worth around $86 at recent parallel market rates, depleting his spending power as prices abound.
Last week, Lebanon topped the list of countries hardest hit by food inflation, a World Bank report said. Once daily goods, like meat, cheese or yoghurt, have become luxury.
“Lamb, fish, chicken; the doctors tell me to eat protein, but as a family we can’t,” Ghafary says. “I was taking Omega-3 tablets, but stopped because they became too expensive.”
Against everything, Mr Ghafary is optimistic and refuses to be pitied; a disposition born out of a nation moulded by conflicts and instability.
As Lebanon comes together to mark the sombre day, gentle puffs of smoke can still be seen rising from the remaining smouldering silos at Beirut’s port. The government has all but in name given up attempts to extinguish the fire, with the last parts expected to fall imminently.
The crumbling grain silos; embodying an exhausted people puffing out the last tokes of hope.