Lebanese ask 'Should I stay or should I go' under pressures to rebuild
The pressures to rebuild Lebanon, to endure harsh working and living conditions and the fear of another tragedy add an inconceivable burden to people trying to make it in industries fraught with their own challenges.
The huge explosion in the port of Beirut, which destroyed most of the city, took place a month ago, but the blast has had such a severe impact on the Lebanese that it feels to many it only happened just yesterday.
In the early evening of Aug. 4, Hatem Imam, co-founder of Studio Safar, one of Beirut’s iconic design studios and a mainstay in the cultural scene, left his office in Gemmayzeh neighborhood of Beirut for his home in the adjacent neighborhood of Geitawi, just a few blocks away.
“My girlfriend and I were about to meet a friend in Mar Mikhael [Beirut neighborhood],” Imam told Al-Monitor. A work call delayed them. What happened next is nothing short of a catastrophe. “My first thoughts were that an Israeli strike hit my building. The idea of entering a new phase of war was pure terror.”
In retelling how he experienced the Aug. 4 blast, Imam echoes the uncertainty of the earliest moments that so many Beirut residents felt that evening.
