Exodus

The shore at Sur, ancient Tyre, Lebanon. Coloured lithograph by Louis Haghe after David Roberts, 1843. Credit: Wellcome Collection.

As the Lady Maria drifted along the Mediterranean Sea in the direction of Italy and Bassem watched Lebanon shrink away, he felt a combination of slighting contempt and triumph. The docked ships at the Port of Tripoli were the first bits of his homeland to vanish, and the bullet-holed high-rise buildings were the last. If the glistening waters were able, they would have whispered to Bassem that September afternoon that he should reconsider.

Bassem was a fisherman, but he had never embarked on such a journey. Still, he bet, as he often did, that the sea would abide by his wishes—after all, those same waters had been there for him in the past when the government hadn’t. So he let a gust of cool breeze flow over him. He smiled, squinting beneath a raging sun. The boat, which once ferried tourists, was moving steadily. All was well.

“I felt pure joy,” Bassem told me later. “I was afraid of nothing.”

Just before the Lady Maria exited the port, the small ship and its 32 hidden passengers reached a security checkpoint. The Lebanese army raided the boat and discovered dozens of water bottles, tuna cans, packs of bread, boxes of Picon cheese, and life jackets. “If you don’t let us leave,” Bassem threatened, “I’ll hang myself.” He tied a length of rope into a noose as he spoke, an implicit threat. “I had nothing left to lose,” he remembered. “Only my spirit.” The soldiers made some calls and then relented.

Freely sailing in international waters at last, Bassem took off his red t-shirt, emblazoned with the Arabic words “SOVEREIGN LEBANON,” and threw it into the sea, even though he’d only brought one other substitute. He tossed another traveler’s Lebanese flag overboard. Bassem guffawed as he watched the items float away. This was what it felt like to rid one’s self of one’s baggage. This was what it meant to have nothing left tying you to Lebanon.

A month earlier, Bassem and twelve other middle-aged Tripolitan men met at a café to strategize, between sips of Turkish coffee and drags of shisha, about getting out. They were plumbers, builders, and bakers, none of this by choice. The latest economic crisis had ravaged them. Bassem, a forty-eight-year-old divorcée, earned, at most, the equivalent of $60 monthly—barely enough to cover his rent. Deep in debt, he was broke and broken. So were his friends.

The same day, 2,750 tons of improperly stored ammonium nitrate exploded at the Beirut Port, ripping apart a city that