After decades of war, corruption and a deadly chemical explosion – can Lebanon ever recover?

For a country already on its knees economically, the blast that ripped apart Beirut was the final straw. In a nation with no justice and barely any aid for victims, Bel Trew talks to residents trying to rebuild their lives

Makrouhi Arkanian just wants to return to her home by the sea (Bel Trew)

From the window of her living room, that now lies a few hundred metres from Beirut’s ravaged grain silo, Makrouhi Arkanian remembers watching the sniper fire trip across the port. The 74-year-old Lebanese-Armenian is no stranger to death and destruction. She lived in that same block of flats for nearly three-quarters of a century, over which time several bitter conflicts have been and gone.

During Lebanon’s 15-year civil war between 1975-1990 the port was swallowed by different frontlines. And for years snipers, stationed at the infamous tower block Burj el Murr, would shoot down at those who dared to approach it, she says.

But all the decades spent watching from her window did not prepare Makrouhi for a few minutes past six on the first Tuesday of August. “The last thing I said to my friend on the phone as I watched the smoke rise, was that I could hear the fire engine sirens,” she says, clad frailly in black.