First Hand Account: Beirut Bombing

My friend M. lives and teaches in Beirut, Lebanon. I'm passing on his email message, which is a first-hand account of his experience with the recent bombing in Beirut.

"Monday morning at 4:00 am.  I went to school, the principal was at the recruiting fair, and I was in charge of the middle school so a lot of people expected a whacky day. 

12:45 the bomb goes off and it was huge.  We were located 3 KM from the bomb site and could hear it, feel it etc. Got the kids into homerooms.  Parents came to pick up the kids and at the end of the day there were 30% of the students left at school.   

We were told to get food and go home; school would be shut down til this coming Monday.

I followed these directions for 5 minutes.  Walked home, picked up oranges, bananas and soy milk along the way.  Decided an adrenaline junkie with bad knees couldn't just sit at home.  Headed out to the bomb site, it was strange, few people on the street (Beirutalways has a buzz to it).  5 blocks from the scene there was glass all over the road.  All the windows of the Intercontinental were blown out.  My bank and favorite restaurant were heavily damaged.  There was a huge crater on the road where the bomb went off, about 10 ft. deep, burned out cars and rubble everywhere.  Few people around, the most notable were Sri Lankan laborers cleaning up the streets.   

Went to Hariri's funeral yesterday. Interesting to see all the religions who were fighting each other represented together. (DRuze, Armenians, Sunni, Shiite, Palestinians, Christians)  Hariri is a bit controversial and an interesting figure; you ought to read about him in Time or Newsweek.  But you can say he loved Lebanon and had a vision of a modern, educated, independent and united Lebanon even during the war and worked to try and accomplish this.  His organization contained members of all religions and his charities gave to all groups of people.  There are some negative things abut him as well.

Elections are scheduled for May.  Should be an interesting time period in Beirut.”

-From an email from M. dated 17 February, 2005

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We miss you here in Asia, M., and we're glad that you're safe.

Comments

[zach]

hey shamash,
haven't talked to you in a while. hope all is going well. i had a link to your original xanga site but i think you abandoned that a long time ago. glad to find this. my site is www.xanga.com/evansz if your ever interested.
aight,
lata homes

zach

[shamash]

Hey, Zack. Yeah, the whole xanga "threaded discussion" thing sort of lost momentum after the first month, so I eventually deleted it. Glad you found this blog site. Nice to see the new dumpshots and the updates on your website. Especially like "My Vision" for tech in ed. Happy New Year!