AU BORD D’UN TROU NOIR

I received a call from someone at the office who asked me if we were going back to the office. I was in front of the window and I heard a noise, a plane noise.

-

It's between silence,

and a noise that looks like nothing at all, despite everything I had experienced during the war. After 10 minutes, 15 minutes, I asked everyone to stop moving. We stayed there for 10 minutes, where we were thrown by the wind, in the staircase cage between the offices. And after 10 minutes, when we...

I realized that it wasn't a bombing, that we could circulate a little. I had taken the children in my arms, we got on the pallet too, and we started to hear the deafening noise of the explosion, with windows that kept breaking for whole minutes. There was a little in the house, but it was all around and everywhere.

It's impossible to understand. We try to convince ourselves that it was an earthquake, but it's not convincing because there was this explosion afterwards. We probably took 15 to 20 minutes to understand. It took a good hour to know what it really was. I have a very clear memory that I had this when I was a child. And what saved my life was to throw myself and put myself on the ground in a corner of the house.

So you see the port there, this is the new part of the port, but it extends to the old port with silos, it exploded there, but it's really in the face. Obviously if it had been here, it would have been even worse, but there it is 200 meters in front of the bird. So that hit. It hit all of this. And I think that if there was not this building in front, it would have been even worse. This one should have taken even more damage. Where were you when the explosion occurred?

So I was at home, I finished packing my emergency bag and I received a call from someone at the office who asked me if we were going to go back to the office. And I was in front of the window explaining to him that no, because we can't fix it today. And then I hear a noise, a plane noise. So I climb and I put myself in the armrest of this door.

And then there are the other two explosions, which are not explosions, which are something I've never heard in my life. It's between silence and a noise that looks absolutely nothing like anything I've experienced during the war. I'm caught in a fear that I've never had, to the point of crying. I really cried when I was on the ground, and I cried alone. I cried alone because I didn't know what was going on.

You are the director of the museum. Where were you on August 4th? I was here on August 4th. I was here with four members of the team and we were in the offices.

My sister was at the café outside. She told me I had left the building an hour later. I don't know what I did during that hour. But we discovered the state of the museum. The corridors on the first and second floors were covered in colour dust. All the stained glass was... I immediately thought: "Why is the Sursaug Museum being bombed?"

And I was furious. And when I went out on the esplanade, an hour later, I think for a quarter of an hour, I was crying and insulting. I was so angry. And at the same time, of course, I was upset. I didn't know who I was insulting, but I was furious. Furious.

There are two things I think are recurrent in all the testimonies of people who lived this moment and on which Zena came back. The first is that there were two explosions and a noise before the two explosions. This noise or the first explosion saved many lives. If there had not been these noises,

the first explosion would have taken a lot more people or hurt a lot more people. The second recurring thing is the fact that everyone, as Zeyn said earlier, had the impression that the museum was targeted, they didn't understand why, everyone had the impression that it was happening at home.

Naila, how did you experience the explosion? We still tell this story, and we don't have enough to tell it, as if we needed it to come out of us. So I was in the room, right there, and I was getting ready to write a new episode of my self-therapy. So I had prepared the computer when the earth started to shake, and with this deaf noise that Sherif just spoke of,

I immediately heard my son calling my name: "Nadim, Nadim, Nadim!" But this cry, like the cry of a sleeper, in a sleeper that doesn't come out, I didn't know if it was coming out or not. I was completely paralyzed because my son was in his room and a few days earlier we had changed the location of his bed that we had put under a library.

and we had asked ourselves if it was safe to put a bed under a library or not in case of earthquake. So I immediately imagined that the library collapsed on its head because it was in its room, in its bed. And the time to get up and find myself in the corridor, there was already my son, my daughter in that corridor, and when my son got out of his room, the vines exploded behind him. So he was barefoot, but the vines were in the room, he was not injured.

And that's when we saw the sheriff coming from the balcony to the rooms. And in the meantime, you took the children in your arms. I took the children in my arms. We got on the floor too. And we didn't know what it was because we started to hear the deafening noise of the explosion with windows that kept breaking for whole minutes, long after, windows everywhere that kept falling and breaking. We didn't know where it was.

So there was a bit in the house, but it was all around and everywhere. The sheriff observes you the previous days and sees you writing something, an auto... An auto therapy. An auto therapy. Yes. That is to say that the state of the country being what it is now, what it was before the explosion,

We were all tired, emotionally, psychologically, and also in the ER. So I find that in my practice there are a lot more patients, a lot more requests, so everyone is tired, but I was tired too. And I started to feel anxieties that I was not used to feeling. And I work with anxiety, it is my essential specialization.

It was difficult to find a therapist for myself. I decided to be this therapist myself. I started to deliver myself to these self-therapy sessions. I became a therapist and I discovered new things while doing them.

I think everyone is aware that this is only one of the inevitable and unfortunately catastrophic results of 30 years of bad governance, corruption, irresponsibility, incompetence, impunity. And that, inevitably, at some point, something will happen. And it happened. No one in Beirut is surprised. We are simply shocked by the possibility that it happens because it is unthinkable. But at the same time, as soon as we think about it, we say to ourselves, they are capable of everything, including that.

There was a very important moral shock, at everyone's place. There was an extraordinary surge of solidarity. The day it broke out, at my house,

The next day, we had 10 guys from Tripoli who came to ring the bell, who came to help us. The children went down the street to help. The children went down the street, it was the big street, with a very strong sense of solidarity. Immediately after, there was a strong mobilization of architects,

where all the architects of the Order are offered to come and assess the structural state of each of these buildings. Indeed, there were many who threatened to fall elsewhere.

After that, all the students from Tripoli's school of restoration, which is the only school of restoration in Lebanon, came. They did all the tests, went through each one, did a diagnosis, cleared the things that threatened the ruins, covered the roof with tarps so that the water wouldn't go in because it was just before the rain.

and they did an admirable job. All this in the total absence of the state? All this in the total absence of the state. Well, it must be said that the army played its role in this. The rest, the municipality, all that, it didn't change much. Finally, we, our generation, we lived very well in this country.

Our parents lived better, but I think we can live well. We have closed our eyes to a lot of things, to corruption, to the state's deletion, to the state's confiscation by a caste of cowards, finally. And those who will pay the price are our children. It's the principle of this second republic and the mutation of warlords into politicians that had inscribed the genes of the second collapse.

From the very first moments, and in the gray of the return of peace and the fabulous hope awaited, the tentacular and gigantic system of detournment of the sums allocated to the re-establishment of the country was effectively put in place. Very quickly, the mechanism of dubious adjudications, institutional racket, initiating crimes, false invoices, corruption, complicities at all levels of a state that was now put on the ground for the enrichment of those who colonized it and those who were foreign tutors, was very quickly ruined.

The useless construction sites were multiplying, giving the impression of a work rush. Black boxes became a routine, as well as the services rendered and the return of elevators, the sharecroppers, the sharing of projects, the clientelization of communities, fictitious jobs. Here we have an urban breakpoint on Rue Gouraud. On this side, we have a stratified, historical street and on this side, we have an urban desert.

It's the city centre that the reconstruction transformed into a peripheral centre. It was transformed into a peripheral by the reconstruction. Because during the war, in 1975-1990, the city centre was destroyed, but not razed. It was razed only by its reconstruction company in 1990. And today, is this city centre frequented? It is empty. It was frequented, it was very frequented during the first months of the revolution in October 2019.

Yes, precisely, this huge square that was the place of martyrs. This huge square that looks like a parking lot, which is a parking lot. And it was dense neighborhoods like all those we crossed and that we will cross again later. And so during these moments, this revolutionary moment of October 2019 and the three or four months that followed, this space

the Lebanese population has been reappropriated and transformed into an urban space, a public space. Sharif, you remember, we spent whole days here, walking around, showing our anger, expressing ourselves, but also spending time, meeting up, buying corn, we arrived with children. So it was really a revolution that was a reappropriation of space. There was anger,

but there was also a whole process of reappropriation of public space. There was an Agora that was created on one of the parking lots. Tents were

were established in which knowledge circulated. There were people who came, experts, especially in all areas, who came to talk about the financial crisis, who came to talk about the banking system, who came to talk about the separation of powers, to people who were there to listen, to hear, to understand. And the knowledge circulated at that time. It was really an exceptional moment. What is the gap between these two, between this center?

which is a bit deserted, and it's gone. It's this street. This street, if we can call it a street, is an avenue, an urban highway. Historically, it wasn't an urban highway. It was a street, like all the streets we cross on the Bourreau Street. It was expanded to separate the centre of the city, which is supposed to attract foreign investors,

of the city centre. I made a slip of the centre. - An interesting slip. - Yes. What's interesting in Camille's thought is that he transforms the city centre into a periphery and the rest into a real centre. And all that is separated by this... And so the real centre is here. It's not here. Here, it's a suburbs, it's a periphery, it was supposed to be a business centre. And it's proof of failure.

of financial urbanism. Financial urbanism places financial imperatives beyond urban, social, cultural imperatives. What allows someone with millions to break something low and pretty, like these old palaces, to build a monstrosity like that? What legally allows him?

The law says nothing about that. We inherited the laws of urbanism in Beirut, and they are inherited by the French. So the laws are quite close.

But every time the law was revised in Lebanon, it was revised in a way of greater liberalisation. I mean, you really have to look at the Lebanese, or at least the caste of the Lebanese who were in power, I think it was the generation of my parents and all that, who were really, well, who had a merchant mentality, saying the more we can build, the better it is, and the more it is worth it.

And that was the main principle, to let it go. The less the state intervenes in public affairs, the better it is worth. And it worked like that because there were revolutions in Egypt, in Syria, in Iraq, and all those people who had money all came to Lebanon with their money. So the Lebanese economy worked in an insolent way in this context.

and so this money is trying to get into construction and real estate speculation. Knowing that this is a country where

where there is no industry, no production sector. So it goes into the foundation. But I interrupt you. The foundation, until the early years of the war, 6-8 floors, I remember, 6-8 floors were buildings for us when we were young. Yes, exactly. During the war, it was the disorder, the chaos. But after the war, it became 20-30 floors. What happened? What happened is that there are...

There are colossal fortunes that have been built. How can they legally build so high? Because there are colossal fortunes in countries where you can't... It's simply because the law of urbanism authorizes it. They authorize the fact of climbing up to there. To give you an idea, in this neighborhood where we are,

The authorized density of construction, what we call the COS in French, is equivalent to the defense district in Paris. I don't know if you can see the defense district. It's a district of two or three states. It's totally incompatible with the urban fabric that is there. What could you do to prevent this example from being reproduced? Can we do something?

Until now, we put all the pressure possible to try to change the plan of urbanism in Beirut, which they call the zoning plan, which allows to build towers like this in neighborhoods where there are two or three building or three building floors that have a historical value, etc.

The mistake was made the day we put a density equivalent to the defense on the old neighborhoods of Beirut. So you still have work to do? We have work to do, or at least we should have new governments come with a completely different outlook. In your work on this street,

You were telling us about places of corruption. Yes, I've been climbing this street. It's a street that's 4.5 or 5 kilometres long. I've been climbing it starting from the city's outskirts. The roundabout of Daura, where there's a bit of a discharge.

a big discharge that transformed the coastline of Beirut and which is the result of the 2015 waste crisis. And I realized that this street was punctuated by fifteen steps

that describe the brilliant system that led Lebanon to its loss. The brilliant system of corruption. So, the discharge, the river, the pollution, the quarries, the railway station that is there but... That works without trains. That doesn't work but that receives funding. It's the hollow administration, without any content. The seat of the Liban's electricity company.

which is the symbol of the failure of the political class to manage the country.

We can go into the details of the problems of electricity, but we will talk about it if you want. And then the George Haddad street. And there, when we cross the street, we arrive in this peripheral center, but which is also a hypercenter of power. There are the five heads of the corrupt power that led Lebanon to its loss. On this side? On this side. Symbolized first by the real estate power.

by the financial power with the association of banks and the street of banks where there are several social seats of banks and financial institutions with the church and the mosque which are on this same street and which symbolize the collision between religious power and political power

the Parliament, the legislative power, and at the end, at the top of a hill, the Grand Serail, which is the seat of the government, the executive power, and which stops the street. And so the revolution, the revolutionary march of this street is a goal for the government that it cannot take.

We don't want to give this image because it is false. No one in Lebanon suffers from hunger. No one has ever suffered from hunger in Lebanon. We are a people that has the notion of family, of the tribe, if I may say. But then why do you prepare meals?

because there are people who are in a lack of economic situation, but it is not famine and I would not say that my country is a country that is in famine because it is not the truth. We are going through a bad period, we are a people that has been

for 30 years, stolen, raped by corrupt politicians, that we will lower our arms. When you say that the HFI is trying to limit you... Of course, yes. Since two thirds

of our activity is concentrated in Ashrafieh. There is a third that goes outside of Ashrafieh. Except that all our work is positive for the entire Lebanese territory. In the sense that we will buy our products, we encourage all the inhabitants of Lebanon, especially the territory. We buy them, for example, farmers, those who make crafts. We

We are trying to make it interactive, to make Ashrafieh a platform for the whole of the Lebanese territory.

How do you get the food to the consumers? How does it go from here to the people who eat and consume the food? We work with several associations that make land. They identify the beneficiaries and tell us: "Yes, we have an association with you."

200 elderly people need this kind of food. So it is them, the partner associations, who identify the beneficiaries and they come every day around noon to get the food from here and distribute it themselves. They do it. Where does this idea come from?

this desire for humanistic commitment? We have to change the world, that's why we're here. Why are you making this film now? Simply to have images or to have words and images that will perhaps touch the mind and heart of some who will do better or become better. If we don't do it, why does Sharif write? If he writes simply to have words, we don't need them. There is an alphabet of 26 letters, I think, and we can do

a number of infinite words and put them next to each other. If we don't write to change the world,

You shouldn't do it, I think. But personally, do you have something to do with the cuisine, the taste, the questions? No, I have nothing to do with the cuisine. It's an instrument like any other, but I think it's the most sincere, the most authentic expression of an identity. Who are the people we see working behind us, these men and women who cook meals, right?

It's the team of Mahd Bakhelkel, the community kitchen that we created after the explosion of the port of Beirut on August 4th. The situation in Lebanon has been going very badly for a long time, of course, but especially since the revolution of October 17, 2019. It was at this time that we started, we never did charity before. We are against charity itself, because charity means making people independent, and when someone is independent, it means that it is someone who loses his means and who loses his dignity.

Akram, would you accept donations with conditions? Donators who say: "I give you, but I put conditions on my donation." We are an organization that is duly registered in the Lebanese government. We work in the greatest transparency. We are audited, or I will do it to you in caricature, or you trust us.

and you offer us your donation or if you are going to put conditions on us, we do not accept donations because our priority is to safeguard human dignity. And that is my fight since I was born.

It's such a small country, such a small economy, that I can assure you that if the confidence comes back, in 24 hours, in 24 hours, Lebanon will become the Switzerland of the Middle East, as they said. So here is the famous portrait of Nicolas Sursa, who was in the donor's office and who was very...

in Moshé, unfortunately. It's one of the most emblematic works of the museum, of course, because it's the portrait of the owner of the house and the one who had this vision of the Sourçoc museum. And as we can see here, we have a little, let's say, just temporarily connected, but it has a tear of more than 55 cm. So it's not difficult to restore, but it's just very laborious because they have to sew again, thread by thread.

This is one of the three works that will go to the Pompidou Center, which will probably leave next month, to be restored in their workshops. This is a painting by Paul Giragossian,

...which is also from this family series, but here it's a couple with a child. And in fact... - That's a big damage. - It's a very big damage... ...because the explosion's breath, and that's probably the damage caused by the withdrawal of the breath... - Yes, that's right. - ...because the breath has torn a large part of the pictorial layer.

Can it become a symbolic work of the explosion? Yes, it can become a symbolic work, especially since Giragosian is also a bit of a painful story, especially for his people, the Armenian people. It's a terrible little anecdote, but it's the legs that are mostly the ones that suffered. Yes, absolutely. Giragosian is someone who lost his leg in an absolutely terrible story. He was in an elevator.

and the elevator stopped because of a power failure, as usual. He couldn't take it anymore, he broke the window with his leg, and the leg remained outside when the elevator started to work again. So the idea of the leg is also... - Yes, the link is quite strong. - Yes, the link is quite strong. "Back home, the bars were open. Some laughs, again. Some voice bursts, some flashlights.

The lights are soft. The music, which takes the body, brings back the years after the war. The 90s, the 2006, the 2007, today. The 20 years spent here are all years after the war. Music, it triggers a desire to dance, to kiss, to make love. Not the music itself, but the one that comes out of the gutter of Beirut, that takes me by the feet and goes back into sex and the head. This city is intimate.

I thought for a long time that survival was a leap forward, a refusal to look at one another. But yesterday I understood, I knew, I checked that survival is to push back death, to prevent it from ruining the life that remains. And that the ravaged body of the city should be loved like the body of a man in struggle with himself and the world. So yesterday, I renewed my pact of love and tenderness with Beirut.

Sharif and I really liked the text you wrote. You said: "I've been through Beirut. I needed to know, to check if I still liked it." You don't like it anymore. Why? Because it's a city that's hurting. It's a country that's hurting. I've been here for 20 years and I think it's a series of violence, these last 20 years. And the 4-way explosion was a very brutal moment.

in the background, of course, but also in its form. That is to say, it was something totally unexpected. And I think it created a rupture between me and this country, between me and this city, that I had never felt before. And so I needed, after a while, I needed to ask myself, theoretically, to know if I was able to continue to live in this country.

And I needed to check it, to go to the city, to see if we could continue to have an organic, carnal relationship, while the break-up had been so hard. And that's something we all said. We saw it in the various meetings we had. Most people say at some point, immediately afterwards and then for a few weeks,

"Can we still continue living in this country?" And many said no, with the thought of wanting to leave. And then many stopped this desire to leave, an action to leave, but during the first few years it was really, it was not possible, we could not continue, we tried too much, we started too much, we rebuilt too much, and that's enough, it's over, it becomes impossible to live. There is a moment when you are faced with a choice: to leave, not to leave, which one will be yours?

I think after six months, I decided in December to enroll my children abroad in a school in France. And I did everything to make them accepted.

And the day they were accepted, we had to make a final decision. And then I was taken back from the same doubt. From the same doubt, actually. Do I feel good to leave? Is this the right solution for them and for me? Because I can't just think about them, I have to think about us too, about everyone. So then I had...

A very difficult month. I felt that my work made no sense if I continued abroad. I didn't understand why my children had to go to a school elsewhere than here, because of questions... I feel that their history is linked to this country and that they must live it as long as we can still live it, because at the moment we are in a calmer moment.

We know that the calms in Lebanon are never for long. But when it calms down, we tend to adapt very quickly. - So, a recent decision, you told your children? - Yes, I told my children yesterday. - Yesterday? That they are going? - No, that we have decided not to leave and to stay in Lebanon.

They weren't surprised or angry, they were normal. They said "Oh, ok, we stay." In his text, we feel this tearing, it's not just about leaving a city, leaving a universe where we lived for a few years, it's a real tearing in your mind.

It's a disappointment because I made the choice to come back to Beirut. I could not have made that choice. Originally, when you... Originally, when I came back in 2003. That's the problem with the return. People left, they came back to live here. So that's the case, among others. So I made the choice to come back to this country. And indeed, the question of departure is asked systematically and repeatedly.

Am I leaving? Am I staying? And in the end, that's why we have to renew this relationship with this city. We can't stay by carrying in ourselves the feeling of hatred and injustice that it makes us suffer. In the text, you talk about survival. What does survival represent in your text? In fact, what I say in this text is that I finally understand that survival

It's not like I thought it was in the last 20 or 30 years. Survival is not about trying to live above yourself. It's not about devouring life like all the Lebanese have done during the post-war years, during the 2000s and 2010s.

Suddenly I understood that survival is the only way to push back death that is gnawing at us, that is devouring us, that is tearing the city's body apart, but also tearing our bodies apart. So survival is really putting all your energy, all your effort, to put death aside, to challenge it, to say "I don't want you to come near me, I want to keep living." And that for me was a shift,

in my relationship with this very notion of survival, which I have long addressed myself almost in an exotic way, if you will, by telling me: "Well, survival is beautiful, it's safe."

I agree, I really liked it. You said it, I thought about it. For us, it was to live a lot, to live very hard, to live more than we live elsewhere.

And indeed, that's not what survival is. But at the same time, is it that for a long time, this frenzy of life, this joyous and deluded way of life, it was not also, in this way of living a lot, of living a hyper life, it was not also a way of saying to oneself: death is far away, death is far away, death is far away, and then it catches up with us. And there we enter into survival in the etymological sense, we start to push it back again.

We spend time to unravel, not only the houses, but also the death that is approaching, the injury, the violence, the ruin. You say at one point: "I renewed my pact of love and tenderness with Beru." How? How? Precisely by touching it with the finger or the foot rather, that is to say by accepting to feel its side,

her materiality, her vulnerability, by accepting that she is invading me in her fragility, in reality. Not to expect from her that she imposes herself as this hard, solid, reassuring thing. No, Beirut is not that. In Beirut, we know very well that when we go there, it is probably to get lost. So we have to accept that. After all this, do we not feel a huge anger? Of course there is anger.

I couldn't have stayed without anger. I think anger is what keeps me going. Now that I think about it, anger is what keeps me going. That's it. That's it because I'm angry and I want to keep fighting. If I leave, I'll stop fighting. I'll stop believing in it. They took away all my dreams and they won. I feel that if I leave,

I don't want to be in my place. I feel that I can't tell the story I'm telling you today. I won't tell it. It won't make sense. Because how can you explain to someone who lives with you elsewhere a present here that doesn't explain itself? We ask you what is the future for Beirut? What will happen in the next six or eight months? How do you see it? I don't know.

I don't know. Today the situation is so blocked, so difficult. There is such a deep collective despair and an inability to stand up again collectively, that I have trouble imagining the years that will come or the months that will come. All I can do is hope. And in the end, this pact of love and tenderness is a pact of hope. That doesn't mean that

will be followed by tangible effects or a reality. So it will probably have to be renewed at some point. Tonight, there is neither war nor destruction, but the absence of electricity gives the same impression of darkness. Yet an inexplicably lit reverb in the unusual street makes the purple, pink, red and mauve colors of a large bullfighting bulls shine in the heart of the darkness. The generators rattle in the background of the night, covered by the flashbacks of our conversations.

A gust of wind blows and the voluptuous smell of the gardenias is raised. This is the building of the seat of the Lebanese electricity company. It is the symbol of the failure of the Lebanese political class to manage the country. We have had electricity rationing for 40 years, if not more. A private sector has developed in parallel to help this lack.

of public services. And these private sectors, the private generators, which are in several neighborhoods, which can be neighborhoods or buildings, have positioned themselves as alternatives to public services and have come into collusion with the political class. It has become a lobby. It's a lobby. Today, the generators are an industry

which is about 2 billion dollars between the import of parts, the assembly of generators locally, because they are mounted on assembly lines here, the import of diesel, the maintenance of these generators. So it's an industry today in Lebanon that is difficult to ignore and to cancel with a feather in producing electricity. And so it's this collusion between this mafia private sector

and the mafia in power, which means that collectively this political class has no interest in producing 24/7 electricity for the Lebanese. We're talking about a possible shortage in a few weeks. Is it really possible?

That's possible, but it's because we have a currency problem today. With the official control of capital imposed by the banking system, with the devaluation of the Lebanese book, it's difficult to find the currency to import

fuel, petrol, diesel. It's also the symbol of the state's general bankruptcy. Exactly. And what is very symbolic, in fact, this is really an extraordinarily symbolic place because it is the state's bankruptcy, the state's management for 30 years. This building, which is in ruins and which was exactly opposite the site of the explosion, as if all the 30 years of corruption, of banditry, of mafia government, were concentrated, condensed there and then there and it exploded. Can we heal a trauma like this one?

Of course we can treat trauma in therapy, on an individual level, we can treat trauma. But can we treat collective trauma in the same way? No. We need many other things, many other elements for collective trauma to be treated. We need recognition, there is no such thing.

We are in impunity, in non-recognition. There are so many elements of injustice. We need justice, we need reparation so that a collective trauma can be healed. And we are not at all far from the point. Did you discover that you were maybe doing the mourning, to try to do the mourning of a country, of dreams, of hope?

Yes, that's what I discovered, that what I was living was a mourning. It was the mourning of the country, it was the mourning of denial, I will say, too, because if we had to be realistic, there was no more hope a long time ago. And to say it, to see it, it's huge. And today, do you continue to write this text? No, because why do I do it?

What's good about it? The mourning I was doing before the 4th of August was the mourning of institutions, of... What is it? What kind of mourning am I going to do? I don't know what kind of mourning to do. The people who come to my home don't know what kind of mourning to do. And then, are we talking about mourning or mourning in the plural? There are so many strata that I can't write anymore. So here we see the silos of Beirut.

It's really the ground zero, it's where the explosion took place. And which represents, really by itself, the incuriness, the incompetence and the corruption of the Lebanese political class.

And it's a point on which you both agree, because you wrote the same thing in your book. Because the feeling we have is that finally 30 years of corruption is really an explosive matter. One day or the other, something was going to happen. We thought that the economic collapse was finally what was going to happen and it happened in a much more condensed, concentrated way with the explosion. But in the face of that, resilience still makes sense?

When we see that, resilience, urban resilience is the ability of a city to ensure its urban continuity. When we look at the silo, when we look at the seat of the Liban's electricity, when we went earlier, when we were in the center of Beirut, there is an interruption of urban continuity. There is no urban resilience in Beirut. Beirut is not a resilient city from the point of view of urban resilience. Now, if we take the point of view of psychology,

Resilience is also the ability of an individual to rebuild himself after a trauma. But today, we are still in the midst of trauma. As long as the aggressors are there, as long as they continue to steal and rob the Lebanese, the aggression will continue and the moment of resilience has not yet come. We may be able to talk about resilience when the aggression will be stopped and the aggressors will leave.

I like the idea that Camille made about resistance and resilience. Because indeed, the walk we did earlier, we saw the bars open, people who are starting to live again, especially at night, now that the restrictions due to Covid have been lifted. We wonder what it is. And Camille didn't stop saying, ah, it's beautiful, ah, it's beautiful, it's starting again, it's starting again. And when it starts again,

Maybe not resilience, but something that is in the order of resilience, as we generally define it, the fact of overcoming trauma and starting to live again. Except that we did not really overcome it. Is it a resilience made in Lebanon or is it something else, resistance? Resistance to collapse, we do not want to let ourselves go to collapse, we resist, we hold out while waiting to chase the aggressors.

So it's not resilience, it's resistance. And in no case is it resignation. The important thing is that it's not resignation, because that's where we enter a negative spiral that can take us for another 40 years before we find ourselves back on this place. Especially not resignation. No resilience, resistance, no resignation.