Elie Al-Shayeb did not know that the tiredness of the age that he had put in place to repair and renew his house would fall on his head and the head of his family days before they moved to settle there. He was injured and he was on the top floor and his wife and daughter were on the ground floor, and they literally no longer had a roof to house them, and today they live with the family until further notice.
Stories of the number of victims of the disaster of the Beirut Port explosion, with their deaths, injuries, missing persons, their families and their companions, as many as they were stunned, stories told from the corners of the stricken city, its streets and its suburbs.
Elie tells Al-Jazeera Net about the "Al-Mudawwar" area where his childhood was, "Here I was born, and here my father passed away when I was two years old, and I was raised here. I grew up with my grandfather's house here." Ely began renovating and refurbishing the house for two years, which cost him about $ 40,000.
The house and two cars were destroyed, and the house was stolen twice after the explosion, according to Eli, and he could not even find his daughter's gold, as he searched under the destruction every day.
"They put us back below zero," he says, sadly. "This week he offered me to sell twice and I refused. This is our house, the home of my childhood, and I want my daughter to live in it. This house is my whole life."
Eli has 100 stitches to his head, putting his hand in danger, and he says it is a blessing from God that they are all still alive.
I'm looking up in the trash for a memory
The house of Johnny Khond, 600 meters from the port, collapsed walls, glass and furniture. He says that many stories live in the corners of this house in which he was born and raised 40 years ago, where he lives with the family.
He adds to Al-Jazeera Net, "Today I was looking between the rubble and the rubbish until I found something, a picture or a paper to remain a memory for me, and my dream is to restore the house and return to live in it." The place of his childhood and his life in all its details.
From one blast to another
Sawsan Shorba Kdouh woke up from her bloodied nap, and her son was screaming from the next room "war" (meaning: war). The large window covered with three layers of thick curtains in her room in the Saifi area, which is 500 meters from the port, was torn by the glass, and she says that if he had not She was wearing the sleeping sheets because the glass would have torn her body further.
In the first moments, Sawsan thought it was a nightmare, then she expected it to be an Israeli bombing. She started walking barefoot over the glass in astonishment, not believing the extent of the destruction in the house, so her son carried her to the entrance.
Sawsan was unable to contact her daughter and her husband, so she used the live broadcast feature on Facebook, and was screaming and pleading with people to tell her what was happening, before announcing that it was an explosion in the port.
Sawsan said, "Moments later, my brother-in-law, who lives in Limassol, Cyprus, called me to check on us, after knowing by all means what had happened, and said that he felt two tremors in his home in the heart of Limassol!"
Then, she learned that her daughter, who was walking near the house with her dog, was fine, and that her husband had a minor injury while he was going to the hospital.
She says that the building was destroyed. “We went down the stairs in light of the phone and the smell of blood in heavy steps with the destruction and the sounds of ambulances and alarms.”
Sawsan adds that the damage is worthless in the face of what happened to her husband, who was discharged from the hospital with hundreds of stitches along his body and face. “The doctor was able to correct the shape of his right eye, but he lost sight of it, and this is what breaks my heart, but I remind myself every moment that he is miraculously alive. So do I and my two sons. "
Sawsan and her family spent two nights with a family friend, then moved to a hotel until their apartment - which was also damaged by the Iranian embassy explosion years ago - is ready to live again.
How do we repair ourselves?
Diana Salha thanked her Lord that the huge facade glass that destroyed the living room - where her husband and two children were - was damaging only to wounds. She says that she heard the sound of flying, but her husband Mazen thought it was an earthquake, so he rushed to his two children and pushed them away from the glass seconds before it shattered, wounding his shoulder and back, as well as wounding the two boys' feet.
Then they opened the entrance door to the apartment in the Sin El Fil area, and if the second huge explosion took off the salon and glass doors. "We did not ask anything, the important thing is that our two children survived. May God help the burned hearts of mothers with their children," Diana told Al-Jazeera Net.
What also annoys her is that her 10-year-old son has been speaking very little since the explosion, and the 5-year-old has been wetting in bed because of fear. She says they started repairing the house after sending the boys to the mountain, "But the psychological repair is the most difficult. I cannot sleep. I am horrified, and I always keep the children away from any window or glass."
She and her husband wanted to fix the house quickly before the glass was cut off from the market, even though she felt no desire to move a resident.
Diana says that her young son, Joe, told her that it was the first time that he saw a house being destroyed in reality, and he asked her who wanted to break our house, and why did that happen ?!
Houses demolished in a song
The nurse Alaa Masri - who was going to start his work in Beirut in a medical company, and that was scheduled after the day of the bombing - was greatly affected by this destruction he witnessed, and he says that he is from Tripoli, and he loves Beirut, and he always went to the revolution yards in it, and he is going down now to help clean Affected roads, homes and people.
Alaa read a speech written by one of his friends - his name is Ziad Majnani - and he composed it and sang it two days after the explosion, while he was talking about the destroyed houses and the memories under their rubble.