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.
Of le panier du coin, a 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,
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?
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