BEIRUT, Lebanon – The scooter engines sniffed out, and Sara el-Sayed swung herself to the pavement outside the third damaged building she had visited that afternoon, two carpenters in tow.
Above had to repair a woman’s blown out doors. Cigarettes and a mobile phone in one hand, pen and paper in the other, Mrs el-Sayed wrote down dimensions when the carpenters measured empty door frames and broken windows.
She has now incorporated this as her job: volunteering to hammer as much of the shattered city together as she can before leaving it – hopefully for good.
Six days after the explosion that devastated much of Beirut, a Spanish master’s student in interior design informed Ms. El-Sayed that she was accepted, a long-standing dream.
If she leaves, she will be ready with all this, she hopes: a government whose inability seems to have led to the explosion; a corrupt political system blames young Lebanese for breaking down their future; a country where the middle class falls into poverty as political economic reforms slowly progress, and where the only way to survive is a second passport, a job, or a graduation program elsewhere.
Many Lebanese were already looking for such escape hatches before the August 4 explosion. An exodus now seems inevitable.
But Mrs el-Sayed can not yet think about leaving.
“I’m not running away,” said Ms el-Sayed, 30, a Palestinian-Lebanese architect with a small custom furniture company who once lived in Gemmayzeh, one of the most affected neighborhoods. “I want to at least have Beirut on my feet before I go.”
As Beirut reckons with the devastation, thousands of Lebanese in their teens, 20s and 30s – instead of government staff – showed up to put the most damaged neighborhoods back in order, shake, sweep, feed, repair.
Many of the volunteers have been protesting since last fall against the political system; if anyone believes that Lebanon can change, it is them. However, a few say they want to stay to see if it will. Since the explosion, countries like Canada have been hit by a wave of applications from young Lebanese who want to emigrate, officials say.
“I called people sissies for leaving the country because you are afraid to do the change and all,” said Mohammed Serhan, 30, a political organizer and cleaning volunteer who has been protesting for months.
But the explosion had changed his calculus. “Yesterday I woke up and thought, ‘I can go straight to the airport, tell them I’m not coming to work. Go to the airport, fly to Turkey, see what happens.'”
He searched. ‘It’s a little emotional. I still want to win this battle. ”
Mrs. el-Sayed, who just repaired the damaged doors and windows of Mr. Serhan had observed, jumped in. “Really, we’re fighting,” she said.
They would both continue to protest, they agreed. “But I have no hope,” Ms el-Sayed said. “I always just wanted to leave.”
Like young people in the Arab world, their generation is well educated, yet submissive. While some of her friends and cousins left for masters and jobs in Dubai and the West, volunteers like Mrs el-Sayed and Mr Serhan stayed because they wanted or had to, hoping to change their country, even if it shaken to economic ruin.
“People who are outside love the country but do not want to come back, and people who are inside hate the country but they do not want to leave,” said Zein Freiha, 21, a college student who dares to door went to the explosion with a plastic broom. “We hope we have a country to return to. But the more we discuss it, we all just look at each other, ‘OK, there really is no hope anymore.’ “
For them, the cleanup is personal. Many of the volunteers once lived, worked or socialized in the semi-demolished neighborhoods of Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhael, attracted to their cocktails, clubs, cafes, galleries and studios.
Their Beirut is now in ruins.
Mrs el-Sayed’s former apartment was destroyed in the blast, along with friends’ houses, workplaces and cars. Doors to the east of Beirut were torn from their frames. As looters slipped nearby, they began sealing apartments. Nearly three weeks after the explosion, she had raised enough money through GoFundMe to replace about 90 doors.
One elderly couple had slept in their foyer with a heavy sewing machine against their shattered front door, in fear of thieves. Others who called them were quoted hundreds of dollars to replace their doors at a time when banks have rational access to dollars and the Lebanese currency has lost 80 percent of its value.
In addition to repairing apartments and cleaning up broken glass and debris, volunteers assessed damaged buildings, searched for missing pets, provided hot food and diapers and even compiled what is the only central database of missing people. (The government has not released official data on the missing.)
While civilian volunteers go to work, soldiers sit on street corners, guns hanging from their shoulders and cigarettes from their lips. Only about two weeks after the explosion, government personnel began distributing food boxes and assessing damage, residents said.
A day after the explosion, Hussein Kazoun (28), an organic farmer, took over an abandoned gas station in Geitawi and began distributing vegetables. One week later, the station, which he named Nation Station, burst into flames with about 200 young volunteers.
“It’s not my job to do this,” said Josephine Abou Abdo, 29, an architect and designer-turned-volunteer who donates food coordinates. “But if I do not get up, people will not be fed.”
With the data volunteers collected from residents, Mr. Kazoun’s younger sister mapped the most underserved areas. Nearby were 20 donated rolls of plastic, used to seal broken windows that a comedian had shown a few days earlier.
As he and the volunteers expanded the scope of Nation Station, Mr. Kazoun also tried to persuade people to stay.
“‘We need you in this country,’ ‘he said as he told friends. “If it is left to the older generation, things will remain the same.”
Mrs. Abou Abdo listened with contradictory impulses. “Sometimes I think, ‘Enough,'” she said, “I just want to live in a Scandinavian country and pay taxes and live my life, you know?”
Asked if reform itself was possible, she, like other volunteers, was caught between idealism and despair. Neither the months of mass anti-government protests nor the explosion seemed to seriously weaken the ruling class, to which many Lebanese still turn for protection and patronage, despite growing consensus that they are responsible for the country’s problems.
At one apartment where volunteers were staying, Hala Youssef, 49, who lived there, said she had waited 11 days after the explosion for government assistance before giving up and accepting volunteer help.
“No one even came to say ‘Thank God for your safety’,” she said of the government, with the expression Beirutis greeting each other in the days after the explosion.
At Nation Station, Joe Youssef, 39, recently made his daily donation, a truckload of vegetables and fruits that several young women were looking for in plastic bags. Mr Youssef said he would rather donate to Nation Station over a relief group, he said, because like many Lebanese he was suspicious of anything that could be tarnished by the country’s favorite class of sectarian political leaders.
“We do not trust anyone in this country,” he said. “They could be tied to some gang.”
Annoyed by the corruption of Lebanon and he saw no future at home, he moved to Dubai years ago, where he worked in sales before returning on holiday last month.
But, he said, “When I saw the people, the crowd – not the government, not the police or whatever – I was proud to be Lebanese now, to be honest.”
New improvements were materialized at the gas station throughout the day. One had a metal rack welded together to release the plastic rolls. Two tons of fresh vegetables were distributed.
Sarah Barakat, 21, an architecture student who oversees the vegetables, said she also planned to leave Lebanon for graduate studies.
“But I’ll be back when I finish my master,” she said. “Who else will rebuild this city?”
