Meet Hagop and Anaheed, from Beirut
My name is Hagop. I am 90 years old. I am Lebanese and Armenian and I used to be a professional director. I live with my 80-year-old sister Anaheed, who used to design clothes, in this apartment near the port that we have been renting for the past years.
The day of the explosion, we were at home and suddenly we heard sounds from the port that sounded like machine guns. My sister and I went to our bedroom overlooking the port to see what was happening. The sounds were very loud and we felt there were sounds of airplanes too. There was also this huge fire! We got very scared and we quickly went back inside. By the time we arrived at the end of the main corridor, near our entrance, and as soon as I entered our bathroom, suddenly the huge explosion happened and shook everything in the apartment.
The blast was so powerful that it completely destroyed all our windows and doors, and threw my sister in the air, as well as many of our furnishings. Some of it fell back on my sister afterward and injured her in the back, the legs, and the head.
She was not able to move until people came to help and removed the pieces of furniture that were on top of her. To this day she can barely walk and her back still hurts, despite the medication. Our ears were also damaged because of the explosion.
Overall, it is still a miracle that we were not more seriously injured and that we made it without a single broken bone. Had we been anywhere else in the apartment at the time of the explosion, we would surely have died because there are windows everywhere but here.
The doors and windows were thrown in the air and destroyed by the blast, including our main entrance door. We slept in front of it for three days until it was fixed, because we were scared we would get robbed. It happened to our neighbors upstairs. Some thieves came at night and stole everything that was left inside their apartment and had any value. Now, our windows and doors have been fixed, but there is still work to do.
The church has given us vouchers, that we used to buy food from the supermarket. They were also so kind as to give us a new refrigerator and a new oven, since ours were not working anymore since the explosion. Some people from the church are also cooking for us every day and bringing hot meals for us to eat. I am not able to cook anything right now so the ready food is great – we just need to heat it and then we can eat it.
I don’t know how long this situation is going to last and how much we can take, especially at our age. The little savings we had is stuck in the bank and is not worth much anymore anyway. Still, we are thankful, because God protected us!
The help that Hagop and Anaheed received was made possible by the generous donations of Canadians and the match from the Canadian government through the Humanitarian Coalition Lebanon Crisis appeal.
Story (adapted) from: Canadian Foodgrains Bank partners World Renew and MERATH. Photo credit: MERATH