The banks are finding new ways to make it more difficult to withdraw our money. Bliss street, across from the building that used to house the Australian embassy.
Archives for category: Lebanon
An expanding white cloud that strikes with the sudden force of stampeding elephants, followed by tremors, shrieks, and smoke, and leaving you with rubble, a hangover, vague foreign associations, and broken glass.
in a fragile highball glass filled with ice:
one shot Laphroaig or similarly very smoky Scotch
Two or the remaining volume with Amarula cream liqueur for the slight bitterness (or Bailey’s for the associations of confessional conflicts)
I recently acquired a very interesting whisky, Laphroaig Quarter Cask. It is now available locally at a profoundly low price, if one indulges oneself to think in dollars: 180,000 LL, so less than $25. Much could be, and certainly has been, written about it, its relatives, and many other spiritual endeavors. What struck me was the parade of flavors, and how each time I try it, it is a different parade. From this, I finally begin to appreciate the vast (vaster than empires, and more slow), and sometimes peculiar, lexicon employed to describe whiskies. Wine’s vocabulary pales, and beer’s passes unnoticed. Being unable to compete with the masters on the subject of whisky, instead, I am inspired to describe Lebanon as if it were a whisky, with the progression over the last 25 years or so.
NOSE: Luxury, ostentation, over-confidence, greed, conspicuous consumption, living beyond one’s means, expensive SUV, trophy wife, private school, high-interest rate, boom economy, construction cranes, Cuban cigar and shish kebab grilling over oak-charcoal (initial smoke), wedding fireworks, bribed bureaucrat, domestic servants, import-export, notes of mountain cedar, foreign travel, expensive Swiss watch, traffic jams, wild herbs, and beach club, seafood, and bikini (initial maritime associations).
TASTE: Political unrest, car-bombs, riots and assassinations, conspiracy theories, house fires and burning tires (continued smokiness), roadblocks, flares, honk parades, skirmishes, RPGs, ammonium nitrate, uncollected garbage, corrupt politicians, dirty money, graft, nepotism, spoiled children, counterfeit goods, Ponzi schemes, unpaid workers, screeching scooter brake pads, and debt
FINISH: Smoking rubble and cigarette butts (smoky finish), broken glass, abandoned property, beggars, sunken ships and life-vests and rotting fish (again maritime associations), capital controls, riots, economic collapse, devastation, police brutality, empty streets, wrack and ruin, refugees, global warming, deforestation, bankruptcy, abject poverty, car accidents and train wrecks, bitter hunger, emigration, boot-heels, untreated sewage, and diesel fuel.
The latest addition to my formerly Covid-diary-now-book-of-hours, 1 Corinthians 13:11 being the source of this blog’s theme. I am treating this book as an opportunity to learn more about bookbinding and calligraphy. I am learning by mistakes. The obvious lessons have been about following directions and focus, focus, focus. A somewhat more subtle lesson, of which there are many, and subtle in that though I was knowlegeble, I was so only in part and dimly, even if aware of its ultimate truth, is “one thing at a time,” meaning not word-by-word, not even letter-by-letter, but stroke-by-stroke. I was told Torah scribes recite each letter just before writing to reduce transcription errors. Here, I had copied the text as a guide beforehand in this same script because I was prone to using a letter form of related scripts. I should have recited the name of each stroke as well. Many times I almost dotted an “i.” ToonCamera hides the scraped erasures well. Another lesson I knew but failed to practice was to wear my old black shirt while using ink (everything you need to know was taught in kindergarten) and to keep a neat work space. Luckily, the red ink was not permanent on cotton.
This is a half-uncial script from Jacqueline Svaren’s book (my favorite), “Written Letters,” which I recommend highly. I wanted to develop new skill with an old script that was pleasing and balanced and legible. The candidates were Carolingian, Rotunda (not in Svaren’s book), and a variant of half uncial. This version of half uncial is not so different from Carolingian, and I am not ready for Rotunda (I will have to learn it because it is such a common hand historically). Because this version is long and has much white space, it needed to be a very short passage and a small nib. My fountain pens with less than 2 mm nibs do not create sufficiently fine lines, so I used a 1 mm dip nib (Tape), which also helps me develop, if only by slowing me. The only good inks I have for dip nibs are India inks and this home-made walnut husk ink I made a few years ago. I like the color (which changes over the few minutes from deposition to setting), it is a good thickness and clinginess, does not feather, shades nicely, and is really cheap to make, if messy (many recipes online). The choice of the nib mollified a frustration: this script has clubbed ascenders that were probably the result of the split quills used back then. Svaren uses an extra stroke to achieve them. It strikes me a wrong to do it differently just to look like the real thing: those ninth century scribes would not have bothered had they modern nibs. I had decided to create my own authenticity by rejecting pseudo-clubbiness, mock clubbery, and fake wannabees, simply having the unclubbed ascenders naturally resulting from one stroke of the metal nib. Much to my surprise, the metal nib flexed, and with just a bit more pressure than natural, clubs occurred. There was some compromise in the degree of pressure required, thus the slippery slope.
The second image includes my newly carved inkwell made of a chunk from the ancient cedar abandoned below the bookstore. It used to reside intact under a devoted shelter outside my office, but “they” took it away, cut out its heart to be burnished and proudly displayed in the foyer of the administrative building, and the two remaining halves were left to rot outside in the rain and cigarette butts. Lebanese cedar does not rot at an appreciable rate, so it might be there for a few more thousand years. In any case, I am very happy with it: I carved a receptacle for a glass crucible and carved the texture. My office smells of cedar oil. Even after anointing it with olive oil and rubbing it with melting beeswax, the cedar scent is clear.
There is much more to be written about the passage. Hence the blog.
My broken laboratory window rendered beautifully by ToonCamera, the view (south), my fourth and hopefully final attempt at “temporary” repair, worse and much more expensive glass former windows at the hospital (one fell just after we passed), and frangipani blossoms on the lawn outside the laboratory (the fallen can be beautiful). They have a very nice scent.
After removing all the glass from the frame and inside, I thought to leave it “as is” because the ledge above prevents rain from entering, the bats rarely visited when I left the windows open, and flies and mosquitoes (I am very aware that mosquitoes are also true flies, but) are sufficiently few (that sounds like a natural oxymoron of the same class as “almost enough”). I had neglected to realize the window also prevented hot, humid air entering from outside, and some experiments require “room” temperature and the absence of perspiration contamination. Thus, I recalled the sheet polyethylene from the dust rain project, recalled to whom I gave it, recovered a few meters, and taped it to the empty frame. The next morning it was lying rumpled. Repeat with more tape. Again, the morning collapse. Again, with intent. It held.
About this time, about a week after the explosion (I often thoughtlessly refer to it as a bomb {and Wikipedia has finally settled on “2020 Beirut explosion” after provisionally titling with “explosions” [hopefully they will not have to change the title again due to additional explosions], though with some Czech ancestry, I prefer “The Great Defenestration of Beirut” in hope it will be extended to the political system), our residence had all 17 broken windows repaired, and the university announced someone (actually the fifth: me, the building manager, dean’s office person, a facilities person, and a physical plant rep), would be visiting each room in the next week to asses damage in order to prepare a report to present to her boss, who would collate all such reports to provide to the administration, who would…. From this timeliness and that the beginning of the semester is being delayed by one week, I inferred my plastic cover-up may have to endure more than a few days, and reinforced it with battens collected some years ago in thought that they may be useful. The window certainly should not be a priority. Rumors include that France is sending 300,000 square meters, that Syria (probably closest factory) has increased production four-fold, and that the university decided to replace broken glass with far-more-expensive safety glass. So, months, and if someone monitoring the finances notices, better never. The official visitor asked an important question, “Is that crack above your desk new?” Indeed, it is one of several, so I will hope I am not banned from my office for my own safety. One should always have an exit strategy.
Since the disturbing quote by Johnathan Oppenheim (see post “Under a Red Cloud”) about the thickness of the present, I find myself dwelling on strange ideas whenever the subject of time arises. Here, while installing the plastic sheet, I looked to the ledge below, thinking if it would provide convenient purchase. Surprisingly unexpected, my window had littered it with shards as well. I thought it would be ill-advised to clamber down and collect it for disposal. Then I thought of how many years the shards could stay there as vestiges of the Great Defenestration of Beirut. Probably until the building is demolished, which, in consideration of the financial situation, could be beyond my passing.
Someone suggested to me that as a chemist, the Beirut port explosion was a once-in-a-lifetime event of professional interest. That provoked new thoughts, as confusion, shock, horror, dismay, and grim acceptance had dominated my thinking. And conspiracy theories, but those are taken for granted these parts. It is not my area of chemistry, but I do present the concept of triage to my genetics students, mostly pre-med, to explain how to approach the ethical distribution of limited resources with the Guthrie test as an example. And I will check that my laboratory chemicals are properly stored.
The obvious fear of recurrence may not be suppressed much by the realization that experiencing another detonation of historical size in my lifetime is blessedly unlikely. There is no shortage of bad events that, even rarely experienced, could (and do) recur: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, war, car bombs, lightning strikes, crime, fire, economic collapse. Best to stop there.
Unsurprisingly, as a result of being very close to a injurious explosion (gram scale) some decades ago, I have a still-fading aversion to sudden, loud noises (not that I ever liked them), especially fireworks. The Lebanese fondness for fireworks confuses me, especially at weddings (a conflation of martial and marital?). A few weeks after the July war ended, a war with relentless bombing, we nearly scrambled for cover when someone celebrated some holiday by launching wedding-calibre flash-bangs nearby on the corniche. Pretty fireworks I can understand, but setting off plain louds? And spending money on them? If it is the thrill of danger, curse the boss or walk around the apartment with closed eyes.
Now a week after the detonation, after hearing all the stories of survival and miraculous near-escapes (having just stepped away from the window is particularly common), we are hearing the bad stories. Alike to 14 February 2005, but much more so. The colleague who had to try many different hospitals to find a surgeon for his daughter. Our staff member’s husband who was driving on the port road, lifted into the air, and now safe at home (and carless) but a widely viewed television story (I had seen him in the photos but not recognized him covered in blood). The friend whose sister and husband were the only survivors in the building. They lost teeth. The staff member whose wife was at St. George’s and is now in a coma. The couple up the street whose son died of a heart attack the next day. Those “there but for the grace of God” thoughts elicit fear of a different and oddly penetrating sort. Instead of an aspect of dread, there is a flush of what-could-have-been-had-I-…, somehow reinforcing my contradictory belief in free will and resigned fatalism simultaneously. Constantly diverging parallel multiverse ideas also emerge, eliciting secondary and tertiary fears.
Nonetheless, it is very comfortable and pleasant living here, and I feel safer than any place I have lived in the US. As I was explaining to someone the other day, other than the abysmal economy, the port explosion, the unpayable national debt, the worry of a war, the banking crisis, the power cuts, the price increases, the numbers of poor refugees, the rampant corruption, the lack of water, the political crisis, the collapse of the local currency, the absence of a government, the capital controls, the riots, Covid-19, the maniacal drivers, and perhaps a few other things, Lebanon is quite a pleasant place to live.
Credit to the Talking Heads for a musical title. The images of our front courtyard (I wanted to write “yard,” but it seemed to imply grass in a way “courtyard” did not) reflecting bits of the dispersing red cloud, and an excerpt from the most excellent and strangely captivating “Murderbot” series by Martha Wells (5: Network Effect). The excerpt is apt for the accounts here of the port explosion, the financial situation, et cetera.
There is a set of bins up the street where we deposit our daily waste. There is another set a hundred meters or so up the street, and then another, and some on parallel streets. Beirutis produce much solid waste. At our local collection and recycling venue (the bins get picked through multiple times by various rubbish gleaners), there are eight or so bins, and most are green with a “Ramco” stencil. The Ramco guys come with their truck three or four times a day, including a late night collection that lasts fifteen to twenty minutes and, in the pre-thawra, pre-Covid-19, pre-port explosion era, engendered a long line of impatient night-lifers who honked and honked. The strangest aspect is the honking does not bother us. A few years ago, Ramco won the contract over Sukleen, which had had the contract for many (ten, fifteen, twenty?) years. I recall reading an interview with the director of Sukleen, who said that half of his business expenses were bribes. One begins to realize the corruption in Lebanon. I also recall the arrival of Ramco with a convoy of newly painted, white trucks in on the corniche. Presumably, most of the equipment and employees were transferred from Sukleen. Recently, the frontline Ramco workers, largely Bangladeshi, went on strike over wages. Their contract (unlike mine) is in US dollars, because they are working here to send money home. When the city started paying Ramco in local currency (because that is what they have, being part of the government), they went on strike for a few days. The government exchange rate was far worse than the market, and their remittances were reduced to nearly nothing. It was like the garbage crisis of a few years ago. I read a story with interviews with workers. It mentioned their meals at the work camp lately included meat or fish only once a week. Vegetables and rice. Carrots figured prominently. It sounded like prison. The workcamp (I have stop myself from assuming it is a euphemism) was named (what I cannot recall), but I could not find it on a map and no one had heard of it. I assume it is in Karantina because that is where I would always see Sukleen trucks. Karantina is a few hundred meters east of the explosion and not shielded (perhaps augmented) by the silos. There is some sort of military hospital there, but the neighborhood, largely non-residential, must have (and did) suffered badly.
Tuesday, there having been a the port explosion, Ramco did not come to collect the garbage in the evening. Wednesday was filled with the sound of glass being knocked out and swept up, a horrible grating sound always and now again associated with disaster. The area of windows broken must be multiple square kilometers, if our neighborhood, four kilometers from the blast, is littered with piles of glass. Thursday they did not come, and I did not know whether to assume they were busy elsewhere or whether they suffered many casualties. Friday they did not come, and the garbage began to encroach on the road. Saturday afternoon, bobcats (those little bulldozers) were dropped off at the neighborhood collection sites (suggesting a fleet on call?), and garbage men finally came, but not the Bangladeshis, Lebanese. It took them more than three hours just for our site.
Sunday, eerily quiet, but blessedly without the sound of glass. By the way, floor-to-ceiling glass is elegant, but think of the cleaning before choosing it.
Acknowledgements to William Carlos Williams for his poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
Some are convinced that the 4 August 2020 explosion involved an aerial attack, that there was a missile, despite none being apparent in the many video recordings. One might reasonably suspect an agenda, or several, motivating the creation and propagation of such conspiracy theories.
The port example confused me, as I heard very clearly what sounded as if a supersonic jet or missile passed directly over our apartment toward the port, first jolting the building with its sonic boom and ending in the very loud blast that hurt my ears and broke windows. Soon after, when someone said it was an Israeli missile, it seemed not only plausible, it seemed the only plausible explanation. Yet it is now clear that if a missile was involved, it did not streak at supersonic speed just above our apartment, and what I heard was not it.
This was a puzzle, and lying in bed thinking about the events of the day (auspiciously starting with a long wait at the bank [while the friendly staff spent the 30 minutes between the posted opening and “new” opening hours chatting over coffee and ignoring the line at the door — and when finally letting us first two customers in, they still needed ten more minutes, despite having at least 15 employees] successful in reducing our holdings to the cost of bottle of Scotch and collecting the new card so necessary in the relentless battle to extract my salary from their cold vaults), I reviewed what I could recall from the beginning: standing in the middle of the apartment with all windows open, a strong jolt, the sound of something large rushing at high speed east toward the port, my spouse dragging me to the interior, the very loud sound of the explosion, and a few minutes later standing on glass shards downstairs, the sight of the red cloud rising and roiling as it drifted south.
The videos show the flash of the explosion, the transient condensation of a sphere of fog, and the blast front radiating and shattering windows, and close to the origin, shedding facades.
I have an explanation reconciling my experience with the documentation (see figures). At time zero, a large explosion occurs. The ground shock radiates very fast, something on the order of 3500 meters per second, depending on the bedrock, here, karst. Meanwhile, the sound of the blast travels through the air about one-tenth the speed, something close to 350 meters per second (we could find an accurate number for 80% humidity, sea level, 30 Celsius). Thus, for me, about 4000 meters west of the site, the jolt comes just after one second from time zero. Indeed, there was no sound before the jolt that I can recall. There could have been distant Israeli military jets, but those have been so common recently that I hardly notice unless they are near Beirut. Immediately after the jolt (as if a truck hit the building, but I cannot recall a directionality), there was the rushing, whistling sound of something moving very fast due east toward the port. Then, about ten seconds after the jolt (the rushing sound having receded and faded), the air pressure wave arrived with its concomitant very loud boom and broke windows. In our building, some were sucked out and some were blown in. So, between the jolt and the boom, what could have so rapidly moved from here toward the port causing the rushing whistling noise? Imagine the jolt, the rapidly radiating ground shockwave, emitting noise by shaking buildings as it travels. Immediately after the jolt, one hears the sound the jolted buildings emitted just upstream, then earlier and further away (reversed in both time and space), all the way back to the origin, which is the arrival of the boom. To understand this, imagine the speed of sound is precisely 350 m/s, the speed of the jolt through the ground is precisely 3500 m/s, and you the observer are 3500 meters from the origin. At time=1 second, the explosion occurs at the origin, and if in line of sight, you might see it, but no jolt or sound will have arrived. At time=2 second, the jolt arrives silently (no sound has arrived yet). At time=3 second, you hear sound of the jolt rattling buildings 350 m closer to the origin. At time=4 second, you hear the jolt rattling buildings 700 m closer to the origin, but the sound is fainter as it is more distant. At time=5, 6, 7, 8, 9 seconds, the sound emitted by the propagating jolt has receded almost to the origin. At time=10 second, the very loud boom of the explosion arrives and breaks windows. Thus, between the jolt and boom (would have been a good title reminiscent of Aravind Adiga’s excellent “Between the Assassinations”), you would hear the jolt moving faster than the speed of sound toward the port ending with the boom, reasonably interpreted as a supersonic air attack by jet or missile.
There are other origins of conspiracy theories to consider. Logic, especially in the service of pre-formed conclusions. Imagine this: Who has the most to gain from the destruction of the port of Beirut? China! Why China? Because China will be willing to rebuild the port in return for recouping costs, just like its deal with Sri Lanka. We all heard Hassan Nasrallah advocating seeking investment from the East, even specifically mentioning China. Thus, concluding a motive, we only need evidence (or to substitute a plausible concoction) and mechanism. China, wanting the port contract, discovers there is a very large store of ammonium nitrate stored in warehouse 12, leaks to Israel that Hezbollah has a cache of super-advanced missiles. Israel sneaks its agents into the port to plant a bomb to detonate the ammonium nitrate and obliterate the port. Some elaborations of this can involve the Russians abandoning the cargo, or Hezbollah preventing the removal of the ammonium nitrate in order to create an anti-Israeli Maginot in the south, or anti-Hezbollah parties causing the explosion to blame it on Hezbollah, to disrupt income to Amal, or to profit from the rebuilding. Or agents of the port in Tripoli. Or the Egyptian rice lobby, as there is no place to store wheat.
And how are these theories propagated? They are circulated innocently, with malice, for fun, or as exploration of possibilities, by all means, and as in the game of “broken telephone,” mutate, diverge, and become extinct, and the relationship to the truth is irrelevant.
Someone asserted that we have reached rock bottom and things cannot get worse. It can always get worse. We are hundreds of years overdue for an earthquake, and the big one would level the city. More likely (and for the record of predictions), imagine all those tons of grain (looks like popcorn, but is probably for feed or milling to stretch wheat flour: hey! maybe it was not ammonium nitrate, maybe it was the largest popcorn explosion in history!) spilled out to feed an explosion of rats, rats that would infest all of Beirut and spread the bubonic plague. And then we would have hire the Pied Piper and would not be able to pay him because of the national debt and he would have all the children emigrate. That is not so different from what is already happening. (If the mouse population explodes, the cats would have enough to eat and the lady with the trunk full of chicken heads would stop throwing them everywhere.)
It just requires a little imagination to be optimistic by recognizing that yes, it can always be worse, and we should be thankful it is not. Count your blessings! Let us hope it is cleaned up and disposed of properly and and does not reenter the human food chain (that term sounds cannibalistic) or at worst, is used to feed the starving or chickens. Please do not treat it with warfarin and mill it for bread flour. Or let it rot with ergot and make us crazy. Or start an infestation of weevils.
Apologies to Onan, who is often accused of the wrong crime. There is some metaphor to be found there.
Back in April, I made a little leather-bound book (tight-back with tapes). After finishing the Ottoman (leatherwork and craft projects are subjects for which I should start a separate blog, with real photos without rotoscoping), I needed a project using my hands, and it complements my interest in calligraphy and leather, even though I did not have an intended use for it. A practice for making proper laboratory notebooks, a good hobby for retirement (our lockdown is functioning as practice), a first step toward my novel, or evidence qualifying me for an apprenticeship in bookbinding and repair. Especially now that our salaries here are in local currency and so devalued that an apprenticeship in Europe would represent a significant increase.
I have a bookbinding book, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Bookbinding, referred to as “Arthur Johnson” by bookbinders (DAS Bookbinding being my guru), and acid-free paper, linen thread, leather, etc, but not a proper press. Beeswax was difficult to source. My colleague in agriculture explained that despite local honey production, I would not find wax, because (I always want to place a comma before “because” because I think incorrectly that it is a coordinating conjunction, yet here before a negative clause it correctly takes a comma) locals like to eat it as honeycomb, larvae included. I have tried, and I do not understand why it sells for so much. Beeswax was obtained (Bourj Hammoud), the book finished (flawed, but very instructional mistakes), and a purpose found: a Covid-19 quarantine journal. Our rulers refer to “general mobilization” or lockdown, the first a confusingly contradictory construction, the second sounding oppressive but ridiculous with carloads of unmasked authorities megaphoning the blithely non-observant. Hence, the embossed symbolic virion on the beautiful, red, sheepskin, glove-leather cover (available in many colors and other varieties at Mardini Leather). I embarked upon my journal journey with home-made walnut ink and dip nibs. After a month, the tedium of writing (to whom?) about the nothing happening overcame my enthusiasm and I stopped. It was some ancient form of blogging to future historians. I suppose I could photograph the entries and post them.
I decided to switch it to a different project for which I have a peculiar, nearly embarassingly earnest inclination, transcribing poetry, preferably in calligraphy, with the ultimate goal of an illuminated, and largely secular, book of hours on vellum. Thus, on 2 August, I turned the page, wrote (in uncials, 6 mm nib, in Apache Sunset) “BOOK OF HOURS” and in smaller Italics, “having abandoned the quarantine journal because nothing happens.” I then transcribed the first poem (first transcribed: I am planning chronologically, and an excerpt from Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon will be earliest if something In Latin does not precede it. Biblical passages will be KJV. I do not plan to attempt Greek, Phoenician, or cuneiform), Edna St. Vincent’s “If I Should Learn in Some Quite Casual Way.” Apparently, it might not be so casual, and so yesterday, I had to add “sometimes things happen.”
We had eaten and as far as I could remember, I was standing in the living room about to go into the Wintergarten, when there was a large jolt (“all the sugar and twice the caffeine”) as if a truck crashed into the building or a snippet of a large earthquake. The was a strange sound as if something were moving rapidly east (and west?). I thought it could be a supersonic F-15 or missile traveling due east right above our heads. I have weird thoughts about this, that the shockwave is supersonic; it travels though the ground much faster than the air, and between the two, the supersonic front emits its own noise. The sound of the front traveling through the limestone and rattling the buildings as is heard from near to far (right after the shockwave passes, the sound of it rattling the buildings 100 meters before is heard, and after it, the sound of it 200 meters before, et cetera), from late in time to early, and is thus backward, a time-reversed signal of its supersonic approach until the sound of the blast arriving through the air reaches the ears. I think to ask one of the physicists, as they have to do this stuff with light cones, but asking physicists about time is dangerous. There is a Nature QUOTE OF THE DAY (April 2020?) by Johnathan Oppenheim, “[I have] a good feeling about this notion that the present is thick. I’m not sure why we have that feeling.” One would think any of them looking to think strange thoughts would be quite satisfied by quantum or quarks or knot theory (strings?) or aperiodic tilings projected from higher dimensions and need not start off on time. What kind of agency funds physicists to think about time and for what sort of technologies are they hoping?
By this time, my wife, who has reactions developed through many years of civil war here, dragged me away from the windows to the only place in the apartment without an exterior wall. Yes, the guest bath. Then there was a very loud blast. Hurt my ears. Scary. We were not using the air conditioning, so all the windows were open and did not break (17 windows in the eight-and-a-half-level building known to have been broken). By this time, the most obvious explanation, and even if being incorrect was worth heeding, was an Israeli air strike, the opening salvo, and we rushed to go downstairs. Having had a housemate who habitually left the house with the tea kettle on to heat until dry and black (fortunately with soft Portland water), I ran back and turned the stove off. Our downstairs neighbors were running ahead of us carrying their kids. It seems their windows were shut for air conditioning and broke. Instead of going all the way to the bomb shelter in the basement, we came out at ground level to join the crowd amidst the window shards and tried to understand where and what was the cause of the blast with the strange, red-fading-to-pink cloud. No one had ever seen anything like it.
When it became clear that it was not the first in a series, we returned upstairs and followed the emerging news. As a chemist, I can assert that explosives can be stored safely, and I subscribe to the explanation that disputes as how to divide the spoils of the seized ammonium nitrate stash are even more likely than mere careless incompetence to be the cause.
A visit to work today found some broken windows, including one in my personal laboratory (not pictured). Then to the hospital to donate (attractively type O, even if nearly elderly). Much broken glass throughout Hamra, including large panels from the new hospital building. A sheet fell just after we passed. rather startling and not something to be near. I had not been to the bloodbank since July 2006, but the guards told me where it was. A small perquisite of being a faculty member is they recognize me and made a way through the mass at the entrance, even though my status has no significance at the hospital. There were quite a few volunteering to donate, and the bottleneck was entering our information. One might naively think with being an employee with an ID and with EPIC that our names, addresses, birthdates, etc, would not have to be entered yet again. The usual questions as to sex, drugs, and having lived in Britain. While lying there with my lifeblood draining from my veins, I stared at the blank television, glad it was not showing the carnage. I recalled that while donating in 2006, the television looped a video of a burning truck that had been hit by an Israeli missile. How things have changed. Now we have this devastation on top of a collapse of the country’s banking system and economy concurrent to the global Covid-19 crisis. Fire, famine, plague. Which of the four horsemen of the apocalypse are not yet arrived? War? Someone said that it cannot get worse, but it can always get worse. How about an earthquake, volcano, aliens?
Blood given (somewhat disgusting, but far better than donating platelets), I was free to go. Thinking of a nice image for this blog, I asked the kind phlebotomist whether she had any “I gave” stickers. She called over to the front-desk woman, the one managing the bottleneck, who replied with a tone mixing incedulity with exasperation verging on anger. As it was Arabic, I did not catch the curses and insults, but as I passed her on my way out, she realized that I was the one who had asked and apologized profusely and perhaps with some fear, which confused me until I realized how many employees were dismissed recently. She might worry that I am upset, vindictive, and connected. That would also explain the bottleneck, as there were machines to collect from more than three times as many at a time. A bad time to be understaffed.
Walking back on Sidani, there were very many broken windows and piles of glass. Some cars had been severely damaged by falling debris. There must have been huge numbers of injuries from glass throughout a large zone of dense city, many square kilometers.
through a tooner, darkly 