Lebanon’s Other Explosion
When Disasters Become the Norm, People Stop Paying Attention—But I'm Still Telling This Country's Stories
It was the explosion that drove home to me how irrevocably Lebanon was broken.
Not the horrific August 4, 2020 Beirut port explosion, when a warehouse full of ammonium nitrate exploded, killing more than 200 and generating shock and sympathy around the world. Recently, that explosion made it back into the headlines when a protest over the investigation into its causes provoked deadly street clashes.
I’m talking about a different explosion, which took place on August 15, 2021 and killed more than 30 men and injured dozens more in a village in …
