three years on, what is life like for the people who live and work here? i've come to downtown beirut to meet two women who are working tirelessly to rebuild their city. joelle azar is the owner of le panier du coin, food store selling natural products, in the centre of beirut. and nour tannir is an architect and stylist, who co—founded espacefann, a social enterprise, offering affordable workshops and professional courses in textile design and traditional crafts. welcome, joelle and nour. thank you. thank you, kim. it's great to be here. now, how would you describe your lives prior to the blast? i'll start with you, joelle. prior to the blast, it was an excellent life, so everything was booming, the businesses were booming, even the economy in lebanon was booming. and then, 2019 happened, so we had the financial crisis and then, in 2020, august 4, the big explosion. nour, how would you describe your life prior to that? i would say the same... the same thing. things were going smoothly up until 2019. before the blast, we had some... the banking crisis and the economic crisis here in lebanon, not to mention the covid crisis, but... and while these were happening, we were trying to adapt, but the blast was really a hit in the heart, unfortunately. we'll talk more about the explosion and its aftermath in a second, but first, i want to hear about your personal stories. now, joelle, you were in banking and then you left that and you opened a food store. so tell me, why did you choose to quit banking? ok, so, basically, when we opened the shop, i was still in the banking sector in lebanon and then, when the financial crisis hit and the banking sector saw the devaluation of our lebanese pound was really huge, so when you work in a bank, you earn in lebanese... in lebanese pound. and everything was dollarized and everything was... the prices were extremely changing, so i couldn't... i was like, "i need to do something," so i changed completely from the bank. i still have a job from eight to six, i work in a software company, and i take care of my shop because my dream was to actually leave everything and take care of this shop. but with covid and the financial crisis and the blast, it was too much, so we couldn't. and this was a family shop that you started, that you joined, with your sisters. yes, exactly, so we are a group of four. it was started at home because of my mum, so, since we are young, my mum used everything that's very natural. we had the idea, me and my sisters, to open the shop, in order to let people, medium range and high—end, if you want, customers, to enjoy eating healthy, without like paying too much money. we started with two or three brands and then we have like 60 or 70 brands, all done by women. nour, you also work with a family member, your sister—in—law. yes. tell me more about your business. sure. well, ijoined yasmine dabbous, my partner, in 2019. i started my career as an interior architect, working full time in a furniture gallery. but i always felt like i wanted to do more so, at 24 years old, fate had led me to yasmine, join forces with her to expand espacefann, so espacefann is an art and design school. we offer courses for younger talents and more mature talents. and you don't really have to have an art background in order to learn. you canjust come and test it out for yourself. fantastic. now, joelle, i understand you have a network of women artisans and farmers that you use. yes. tell me about that. so, basically, when you want to find natural products in lebanon, you have to go in the mountains, so, you know, when the crisis hit, and after covid, they were not working. the only stores that were working were actually the big supermarkets because they were delivering and the delivery was easy. so, they had specially no—one to come from... always from beirut to... ..from the mountain to beirut, in order to get us the products. so, we started gathering some women that would actually cook or do something like jams or peanut butter or carob molasses or whatever products that you can actually find in my shop. in orderfor them to have a little bit of income, so they can be a bit more independent, or even help in the household and in the charges of the family. so, yeah, this is how we started. nour, who are your students? tell me about the courses that they are doing. so, the majority of our students are women. they come from different age groups, different socioeconomic backgrounds and different educational backgrounds. and they come to our studio, either to learn a new skill, or tojust come de—stress and relax. but what's amazing is that many of those who initially come tojust relax actually end up pursuing and making a career out of what they learn. actually, 65 of 400 of our students have opened their small businesses in lebanon from a course that they've taken with us, and so, we really witnessed this impact, especially during the times of the covid crisis and the lebanese economic crisis. joelle, when you made that switch from working in banking to becoming a first—time entrepreneur, what hurdles did you encounter? actually, a lot. 0ne, because the economic situation was not helping. two, because, as i told you, i opened the store with my four sisters, and after the blast, all my sisters left beirut, so i had to stay alone and work, and do something with the shop. that must have been difficult. oh, yeah! trust me! because you know when you're four, it's easier, you know, but when you handle the responsibility on your own, it's much more difficult. but what's amazing about lebanon is that whenever you need help, you will find it, so it's... that's true. 0ur heart is... maybe we can hate each other, but when someone needs help, everybody will come and, like, help you. yes, totally. i think that people's help to one another was really a major factor in being able to rise again after the explosion. nour, when you look back, what were some of the hurdles you faced at the beginning? well, i started my entrepreneurialjourney a couple of weeks before the revolution started. so, it has been a chain of challenges because after that, a few weeks later, we had the banking crisis, and the lira devaluation. later on, we had the covid crisis, up until later in the summer, the beirut blast. i was feeling very scared and i wanted to give up so many times because i didn't really know what was going on and things were going... were drifting from the way we had planned them. but with the determination and the experience of my partner and the fact that we encouraged each other, we were able to keep going. of course, financially speaking, this was through the help of grants and the... coming up with new projects that helped us sustain during the crisis. you've both painted a picture of how dire the situation has been, the severe financial crisis lebanon is facing, triple—digit inflation, a devaluating currency. how would you say that has shaped how you go about your everyday life, jere? so, basically, i think that i was very aggressive with myself and my entourage. i was always... i always wanted to be better and to try to do something, but the problem is that the problem was not coming from me, it was from the situation. but you were frustrated. you don't know what to do. and you start coming up with solutions and when you find a solution, it's always going to be close... ..at the end of the road. and it was very... i think that the biggest psychological challenge we had, more than my day—to—day life. it was the stress that we encountered, it was the scare, the uncertainty, the... you go out, you don't know what to do, so what am i supposed to do now? the dollar is at 30, tomorrow it's going to be at 35. what to do? how am i going to survive? so, basically, yeah. can you relate, nour? yes, definitely. it's really a challenge that you have to take day by day in lebanon and what these challenges have taught me is to be more lenient with uncertainty, to adapt to things that are going to change along the way. and i would say that these challenges have also pushed our business to go into certain directions that otherwise we wouldn't have ventured into. so, this is kind of a virtue. but on a personal level, it has taught me a lot. yeah. let's come back to 2020, the year of the pandemic. lebanon's facing this very severe financial crisis and then, of course, on august 4, the blast happens. joelle, where were you when the explosion occurred and were you injured? thank god, no. i was not injured. but i was so scared after the blast, so i couldn't really understand what happened, so i was in my car when it happened, ground zero, i did not actually hear anything, other than my car moving forward. and then, everything was yellowish. and there was glass everywhere. so, my car, i had a very big car, so i thought the explosion was next to my car and nothing around... and everything around me was ok, you know? but then, ijust realised that everything was broken and i looked up and my carwas... i have a panoramic view from my car and the glass was shattered and i had a balcony that fell on my car, but not on my head. so, i think it's by a miracle i was not injured. so, what did you do immediately after that? how did you get out of your car? so, my only... actually, my only thought at this second was to see if my sister is still alive, because she was here in the shop. so, i was only screaming the name of my sister and i was trying to call her, but i had no... my body was frozen. i have one of my neighbours that hugged me because i was screaming nonstop the name of my sister, so when he hugged me, he was like, "you're 0k, your sister is ok," and then, i saw everything around me. everything was yellowish, the glass was everywhere, flying. glass was flying everywhere because we have a lot of high buildings. and when i saw my sister, this was, i think, the best moment of my life. by the time i realised, it took me literally ten to 15 minutes to realise that the blast is not actually in this road, it was all beirut. mm. and i ran to my house. were your family all 0k? yes, everyone was ok, but, unfortunately, i can say to myself that i was lucky, my family was lucky, i guess you were lucky too... yes, yes, absolutely. ..but i lost five friends. the trauma that you have is not ok. the ptsd that you still have is not ok. and when you finally came back to the store, the space we're in now, what did it look like? i came back the second day because i had everything that... ..from the store that was shattered. i had no more...glass everywhere. all the products were on the floor. and i started cleaning and people came to help me clean. people i did not even know. people i did not ever see in my life... this is the community you mentioned. exactly. they were just passing by, seeing one woman cleaning all alone, removing the glass, "everything's 0k? can we help?" and they started helping me, so i cleaned all the shop and i removed everything from the shop and i closed for a month, because, psychologically, it was too much. so, i had to rebuild the shop, but, again, saying that, the community of lebanon helped me and there a lot of n60, and especially ngo that really helps women that are... i don't know if you're familiar with the madame caroline fattal, stand for women, they contacted me directly and it's like, "we are ready to help you. "what do you need?" so, basically, this is where you can see there's still lebanon somewhere, there are still people living in this country, it's not like broken souls. there's a lot of love. nour, you were at home with husband when the blast occurred. what do you remember of that day? i remember it being a very regular day, except that it was... we had been in contact with someone who had covid at the time and so, my family and i, everyone, was on lockdown to make sure that we don't infect anybody. and we were supposed to have a class at the studio around 6pm, so right around the time of the explosion. but we decided to close and to postpone because it was the ethical thing to do. and we were really saved by a miracle back then. i'm really glad. but how i felt in my body, actually, just like joelle said, everyone felt like it was happening on their street and in the building where they were. i said my prayers, i thought i was going to die. and that was it, i wasjust glad that my husband and i were in front of each other and still alive. ijust wanted to check if my family was alive too. and i wanted to understand where it was coming from, that was it. i feel really blessed. among all of the disaster that happened, i feel really blessed that there were still parts of the silos that were destroyed, they were still standing and they protected a very large part of the city because otherwise, all of it would have been gone. i'm blessed and i'm grateful that half of the blast went into the sea. i feel grateful that we were not... i mean, like, it was godly timing that we were not right there at the time. yeah. joelle, how did you spend the weeks... the days and weeks, following the blast? you know, i think everybody was on survival mode, so, basically, for my part, the day after i came to clean the shop and then i had to fix also my house, because my house was also destroyed and even if everything was destroyed around you, we had to be supportive towards each other, so, as i told you, i lost five people i know, so i had to go and see if their friends are ok. nour, those days that came right after the blast, what were you doing? we were also helping on the ground and we were really trying to make sense of things in our heads, but physically, we were working. we had some energy to put somewhere. we had to help each other. of course, it took us time to be back on our feet, slowly, after that. and you can see it also with the students who were coming and they wanted to express all the feelings that they were feeling because at the end of the day, it's a traumatic experience. and how long do you think, nour, it took you until you felt that you were back firmly on your feet? i would say at least several months. this was happening gradually. and, like, this is the natural occurrence of things. but there's really always a small part of us that is sad because of this, but despite it, we came back stronger and this has taught us a lot. i mean, on a personal level and our business. yeah. joelle, how long would you say it took you to feel that you could... things were back to... well, i hesitate to say normal, but back on your feet? physically, the second day. but mentally, it took me a while, so i kept the shop closed for more than a month because whenever i used to come here, or near the shop, i was feeling anxious. and i think that it took me maybe time to get over what we lived, but without forgetting what we lived. but, you know, whenever you live that traumatic experience, whatever you do is to fight, so we had to, wake up, work, come back, sleep. you both spoke about how the community came together in the immediate aftermath of the blast. is that sense of solidarity still there, joelle? 0h, definitely. this is what you'll definitely find in beirut — and in lebanon, actually, not only beirut. but when you see the love that the people gave us and the support actually and the presence. just the fact to see people that you don't know coming in to help, or calling, "are you 0k? "is everything 0k? do you need anything?" it was, i think, the best thing that ever happened to each other. nour, do you still feel that sense of solidarity? to be honest, in my day to day life, outside, when i'm on the street, i don't feel it as much as i felt it when the blast had happened, because we generally tend to focus on our disagreements, whether they're political, or religious, or... this is like the general way of being on the street in lebanon, but in our studio, i definitely feel that love and this bonding that people might have for one another in our country. and i feel like everyone wanted to help each other and our way of helping was that even though we were in pain, even though we did not feel like we were ready to open up again with our business, we felt like we had a duty to because people wanted to come and de—stress and be away from all these stresses, so this extra help that each one can offer to one another is really felt and it's really made a difference in people's lives. running a business is challenging, but especially so in a place like lebanon, where there's a lot of uncertainty. what advice would you have for people about dealing with uncertainty, joelle? to be courageous. to be courageous, 0k. courage. courage, and be positive, because no matter what happens, if you're going to be negative, it will never be ok, so just be positive. and at the end, everything will be ok. this is the thing that everybody says. so, everything will be ok. do you believe that? yeah. honestly, i lived it, so, yeah. nour, what advice would you have for people? i'd also say the same thing, but i would also tell people that it's great to plan, it's great to think about the future, but it's also important to be able to adapt to things that might come our way. and that no problem is big enough, because there will always be a solution. in my time in lebanon, i've spoken to a number of women and there's one word that keeps coming up, which is resilience. oh, yeah! nour, do you consider yourself to be resilient? and is it something you always had, or is it something that's built up over time? i mean, if you are looking from the outside, you would see that, yes, this is a very resilient character. but i think that me and a lot of women who are like me don't really identify as resilient because we are just really caught up in our day to day life, trying to figure out a solution and so we are really focused on this problem solving, that we don't think of this bigger picture of how we are as a general character. but if i look back, and i see... and i feel like, yes, we learned to be a little bit more patient, yeah. so, you're busy, getting on with things... yes! no time to put a name on them. and, joelle, do you consider yourself to be a resilient person? i would actually would have answered the same way as nour because you know when you're inside, you will never see how you're acting, but if people will look at us, like all the foreigners that were coming to help, even after the blast, were like, "wow! "how can you do that? how can you live that? "how can you be ok with that? how can you be smiling?" and then, they would always tell us, "you are resilient people," so, in a way, it's very good because it shows a lot of character and a lot of courage, but in order to be resilient, also, we had to face a lot of trauma, so... yeah, it comes at a cost. comes at a cost. but, as she said, you know, you have something wrong, just face it and move on. do you have any questions or advice for each other? i think we're going to become friends. yeah! no, i think that i will learn a lot from her point of how... actually, what happened after, how did you come back on yourfeet? really it was not... it was not a given. it took a lot of crying and it took a lot of processing, but ijust think time heals, you know? what about you ? i think i had to seek help from my entourage and i had to talk about it, but there is still a scar, but i try to, like, temper it, maybe. yeah. and... yeah. and you have to fight. yeah. joelle and nour, thank you so much. it's been such a pleasure speaking to you both. thank you. thank you for having us. thank you. thank you so much. hello. saturday was certainly a lively day of weather with lots of showers around, some thunderstorms, and... ..a water spout! well, this was spotted just off the coast of sandown in the isle of wight. looks kind of terrifying, doesn't it? now, the day's showers were particularly widespread across all of the uk. the wettest spot was crosby, merseyside — picking up 20 millimetres of rain — but many of us did see downpours through the day, and right now those showers are continuing to fade away — just one or two continuing across parts of wales and western areas of england, as well. but otherwise, most of us have got clear skies at the moment, with temperatures hovering around about ten to 12 degrees celsius as we head into the first part of sunday. now, there will be a change to the weather for northern ireland on sunday — we've got a little bit of rain coming through here — but for scotland, england, wales, it is another day of sunshine and showers. so a bright start for northern ireland before that band of rain arrives. showers from the word go across wales and western england. but for most of scotland and eastern areas of england, should be a dry start, and heading into the afternoon, the showers will tend to focus along this convergence line across eastern england and maybe eastern scotland, too. now, if you're underneath that, yes, you could see some heavy downpours and some thunderstorms, but away from that, should be dry through the afternoon for a good part of west scotland, wales and western areas of england. and where the sunshine comes out, although temperatures for many will be just below average, it will feel warm in the sunshine. reading/leeds festival continues. now, there is a risk of seeing a shower, i think, as we go through sunday. and for notting hill carnival — yes, here, too, we could see an odd passing shower — although for large parts of the day it should be dry. now, heading into what will be bank holiday monday for a number of you, we've got a weak ridge of high pressure moving in, and what that will do is it will tend to kill the showers off. could still be one or two, but not as widespread as we've seen over the course of the weekend. so a bit more in the way of dry weather, a bit more in the way of sunshine, and temperatures an odd degree higher — about 19 to 2! or 22 in the warmest spots. beyond that — tuesday, wednesday, thursday — low pressure dominates, really, the weather picture. well, we've been used to that for a good stretch of august, haven't we? and that means showers return from tuesday onwards — some of them turning heavy and thundery with some warm august spells of sunshine in between. heading into september, little change. live from london, this is bbc news. three people shot dead in florida in what authorities are calling a racially motivated attack. spanish women's head coach jorge vilda criticises suspended football federation president luis rubiales but does notjoin his colleagues in resigning in protest. and uk mp and former minister nadine dorries has resigned, weeks after promising to do so, with a blistering attack on rishi sunak. hello. i'm samantha simmonds. three people are dead in the us state of florida in what authorities are calling a racially motivated mass shooting. the attack took place in the city of jacksonville at a dollar general store. the city's sheriff says the suspected shooter was a white male in his 20s who turned the gun on himself. he killed two women and one man — all black — with no other injuries reported. the gunman was carrying a handgun, and an ar—is style rifle, while wearing a mask and tactical vest.