All She Lost
The Explosion in Lebanon, the Collapse of a Nation and the Women who Survive
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- € 17,99
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- € 17,99
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'Poignant and compelling… will resonate with anyone who cares about justice and the abuse of power' - Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 News International Editor and author of Sandstorm
'Essential and urgent' - Kim Ghattas, journalist and author of Black Wave
Lebanon and the wider Middle East is in crisis. For this extraordinary book, journalist Dalal Mawad conducted a series of searing interviews with women in Lebanon - weaving an extraordinary story of survival, corruption and impunity.
On August 4 2020, a huge explosion in the heart of Beirut killed hundreds of people – it was the apocalypse of a sequence of events that have led to Lebanon's unprecedented collapse. Award-winning journalist Dalal Mawad was in Lebanon when the blast happened, and was one of the first journalists to report on the mysterious and devastating explosion.
During her reporting, she discovered something else – that it is the women who stay behind, and it is through their stories that the history of the Middle East must be re-constructed. She set out to record the stories of those she met, the women long discriminated against, and those whose stories are untold.
She spoke to mothers who lost their children, spouses who lost their partners, refugee women who have fled from the war in Syria – and who now find themselves in another failing state. We hear from the Lebanese grandmother, bankrupted by the small nation's collapse, who remembers Beirut's glory days of the 1960s – when the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Miles Davis came to Beirut. And then the women like Dalal herself, who have left their home behind.
The women in this book all experienced the explosion and suffered unimaginable loss and tragedy, but it is not just this one event that brings them together. Their personal stories converged to tell the story of a nation whose glory days are long gone, now riven by protracted violence, lurching from crisis to crisis, and fighting to survive. It tells not only of what these women have lost, but also what Lebanon has lost, and a part of the Middle East that is no more.
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Journalist Mawad debuts with a nuanced and compassionate account of the deadly explosion on Aug. 4, 2020, in her native Beirut as recalled through the eyes of local women. During the Covid-19 pandemic, as Lebanon faced "a collapsed currency, soaring inflation and growing economic uncertainty," a cache of ammonium nitrate (an explosive fertilizer) stored in the Port of Beirut ignited for unknown reasons, killing 221 and injuring thousands. Delving into Lebanon's past, Mawad describes a country in turmoil that was under Ottoman rule for centuries, then given as "a gift to France" following WWI, before it achieved statehood in 1949. Now serving as the base for the militant Hezbollah Shia party, Lebanon, in Mawad's telling, is a place where women are treated as "second class citizens" due to the "patriarchy and discriminatory religious laws," a government-sanctioned slave labor scheme, and widely prevalent domestic abuse. As recent conditions deteriorated, "from corruption to human rights abuses and political paralysis, from war to sectarian violence," Mawad and many of the women she profiles immigrated to France. She recreates a vivid scene of horror—with many unanswered questions about the explosion—that serves as a window onto the country's past and future. The result is a heart-wrenching portrait of endurance and perseverance.