'Poignant and compelling. will resonate with anyone who cares about justice and the abuse of
power' - Lindsey Hilsum Channel 4 News International Editor and author of Sandstorm 'Essential
and urgent' - Kim Ghattas journalist and author of Black Wave 'Courageous and essential' -
Sally Hayden journalist and author of My Fourth Time We Drowned On August 4 2020 a huge
explosion in the heart of Beirut killed hundreds of people - it is the apocalypse of a sequence
of events that have led to Lebanon's unprecedented collapse. Journalist Dalal Mawad has
interviewed tens of Lebanese and foreign women - victims of the explosion and those stuck in
Lebanon - and weaves an extraordinary story of survival corruption and impunity. Award-winning
journalist Dalal Mawad was in Lebanon when the blast happened and was one of the first
journalists to report on the mysterious and devastating explosion. During her reporting she
discovered something else - that it is the women who stay behind and it is through their
stories that the history of the Middle East must be re-constructed. She set out to record the
stories of those she met the women long discriminated against and those whose stories are
untold. She spoke to mothers who lost their children on August 4 spouses who lost their
partners refugee women who have fled from the war in Syria - and who now find themselves in
another failing state. We hear from the Lebanese grandmother bankrupted by the small nation's
collapse who remembers Beirut's glory days of the 1960s - when the likes of Brigitte Bardot
and Miles Davis came to Beirut. And then the women like Dalal herself who have left their home
behind. The women in this book all experienced the explosion and suffered unimaginable loss and
tragedy but it is not just this one event that brings them together. Their personal stories
converged to tell the story of a nation whose glory days are long gone now riven by protracted
violence lurching from crisis to crisis and fighting to survive. It tells not only of what
these women have lost but also what Lebanon has lost and a part of the Middle East that is no
more.
