Lebanon

A mushroom cloud enveloped the city of Beirut on Tuesday 4th August, 2020. Beneath it, was a world destroyed, 200 lives lost, 300,000 left homeless, and then, as the smoke began to clear, two teams of rugby players joined the effort to rebuild.

It started in the Port of Beirut. Around 6pm, as the city’s bars were starting ‘happy hour’ –  much-needed in an economy so bad that a G&T would cost £20 – a fire started in a warehouse storing ammonium nitrate which, after a series of smaller blasts, would unleash a supersonic blast wave. Thought by scientists to be one-twentieth of the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, it ripped through the city, injuring thousands, killing 200 and making 300,000 homeless. In the aftermath, a 460ft crater could be seen at its point of origin. Devastation. 

Mike Tawk lived less than one kilometre away when it happened and pretty much everything in his house was destroyed. The Lebanese international backrower even lost his rugby boots. Luckily, he wasn’t home at the time but instead starting his night shift as a volunteer paramedic for the Red Cross. Not that he escaped unscathed.  “I started my shift at 5.30 and was at our station in Gemmayze when the explosion happened,” he recalls. “At first, I heard a noise like an airplane flying overhead so I went out onto the balcony to see what it was, and that’s when the bigger explosion happened. You could see it through the buildings in the street. Then, I was blown against the wall by the force of the blast. Luckily for me, I was blown towards the building not off it.”

As a powerfully built, no-nonsense, back-row forward for Lebanon’s reigning club champions Jamhour Black Lions, Mike takes some shifting on the rugby pitch. But this was like no other body slam he’d ever experienced before. He was thrown ten metres back such was the force of the blast, yet remarkably, the 26-year-old only suffered minor abrasions and was able to complete a shift that was like unlike any other before or since. 

Mike picked himself up and set about helping others. He found the streets of Gemmayze echoing with the sound of fear rather than fun, with broken glass strewn everywhere and some of the oldest buildings in the city reduced to rubble. An estimated US$15 billion in property damage was caused by the blast. 

“It was like an apocalypse because everything was destroyed,” he says. “All the people were running towards the (Red Cross) station but we couldn’t do anything because all our equipment was destroyed, and all the ambulances were damaged, so there was no way to get to them to the hospitals other than run. Once we got to the first two hospitals, we found out they had been destroyed too.”

When he eventually returned to his home that night, he found a scene of devastation. “Everything was a total mess,” he says. “All the windows had been blown in, all the doors had been blown off, my bedroom was destroyed, and all the electrical stuff went down,” Mike explains, as he speaks to us from one of the recently renovated rooms. For someone who has had his life turned upside down, he is remarkably calm and level-headed.

“We’ve had to change everything but with the Lebanese Lira devalued by around 200 to 250 per cent, and most things paid for in US dollars, it has cost a lot of money, around five times more than it normally would. A lot of the old boys at the club have helped me out financially, anonymously.

“Thank God, no-one was at home. My mum was out, too. I guess if someone had been at home, it could have been worse,” he says.

“After the explosion, we understand we can’t be materialistic, everything can be replaced, it is our lives that count.”

As well as the tragic lives lost, history was lost too. Sursock Palace and Museum – once one of Beirut’s grandest houses – once home to priceless antiquities with the country’s finest contemporary and modern art displayed, now burnt to cinders. 

Even those who had lived through the damaging 15-year Civil War, from 1975 to 1990, which had stolen 120,000 lives were taken aback. “I didn’t live during the war, it ended in 1990 and I was born in 1994,” says Mike. “But my parents lived during the Civil War, and they never saw anything like this, where all the city had just been blown up.”

Beirut’s arts scene is as renowned as its nightlife and the Sursock Palace was not alone in being unable to withstand the effects of the blast. “My sister works at a Modern Art gallery at the port,” says Laurent Zalloum, Mike’s club captain and team-mate in the Lebanese national team.

“My first instinct was to try and figure out where the sound came from. Even though I was 40km away, I could feel it and hear it, like an earthquake. Luckily, on the day of the explosion, my sister and her bosses had taken the day off. It has been completely wiped out.” 

Around 70 buildings of historical interest are said to have either been razed to the ground or badly damaged. For a city already teetering on the brink due to Covid-19, hyper-inflation and political unrest, to have both its beating heart, and its art, taken out in one fell swoop was a cruel blow. “It is still super-fresh for us; we are still not over it. It is three months, but it only feels like yesterday, sadly,” says Melanie Haddad, who plays scrum-half for one of the Black Lions women’s sides.

The lives lost – including many of those who came to help – were considerable, but memories were also along with the places. “It is really sad to lose this part of the city but hopefully we will be able to rebuild it,” says Melanie.

“I try and focus on the positive things we have here, like the spirit of the Lebanese people. No matter all the downs we have in Lebanon, one of the things that keeps me is the unity we have as a country. That is what I like about Lebanese people and rugby players. It was hard to see our capital in this way, with glass everywhere and awesome buildings destroyed.” she adds. 

Laurent, who is also Melanie’s coach with the Black Lions, admits the blast was also psychologically damaging. “The whole country is based around Beirut … the schools, hospitals, universities and pubs, they’re all in Beirut,” he points out. “In the blink of an eye, all that was destroyed so there was nothing left for us. My mother is a prominent journalist in Lebanon, and she goes to a lot of meetings in Beirut, but it was three months before she could set foot in the city again.”

Like with players at most rugby clubs around the world, Mike, Melanie and Laurent’s backgrounds are all different. But they are united by their love of rugby and of their country, and all three rallied around to help those more adversely affected in any way they could. Once they had computed what had actually happened, it was all hands to the pump. 

WhatsApp messages, a means of communicating that the unpopular Lebanese government had tried to tax, prompting a people’s revolution in 2019, pinged back and forth as Black Lions players set about organising a relief effort for those in need. 

Mike was busy performing his Red Cross duties, Melanie and her sister and friends collected food and clothes and delivered them in boxes to families in need, while Laurent helped organise working groups from the rugby club to carry out house-to-house clearances.

“A couple of team-mates and friends of team-mates lived less than 500 metres from the docks, Mike was one of them, and nothing was left of their houses,” says Laurent. “So what we did as a rugby team, the morning after the blast, was message each other, to say that we would go down to Mar Mikhael, the decimated nightclub district, to help out. We had almost all the 1st and 2nd XVs show up.

“People started to call us in the coming days to help with heavy lifting and cleaning. We did at least six to seven houses a day, it was exhausting but the least we could do. It was a proper team effort.”

For Mike, one thing he had to replace quickly, were his rugby boots, even if the replacement pair was blue not black, like any self-respecting forward would demand. 

Returning to training at the Black Lions, albeit limited under Covid-19 guidelines, has been a form of salvation for all three of our interviewees.

“For me, going to rugby training changes my whole mindset,” says Laurent, a senior growth marketing manager for Anghami, who, in his words, are ‘the Spotify of the Middle East’.

“Before we could go back and play rugby, we didn’t have a favourite pub to go to anymore, we didn’t have a favourite restaurant to go to anymore, and our economy is fucked, it was just work and go home.

“We’ve not had a single guy missing from training, even this young guy, who is 17 or 18, he doesn’t miss a single practice and his hand is still completely cut up and has glass in it still.”

Although just 17-years-old, the Black Lions are one of the top clubs in Lebanon, a rugby scene that has just four active clubs in Lebanon along with The Beirut ‘Froggies’, Beirut Phoenicians and Jounieh Dragons. 

The Black Lions 2nds make up the five teams in the Lebanese National Championship, although all of the clubs are located in and around Beirut. A club was once launched in the northern city of Tripoli, but it quickly fell by the wayside due to the travelling distances involved.

On a global scale, Lebanon are an Associate Member (since 2018), but if they can grow and develop a viable domestic national competition, they can apply to upgrade their membership of World Rugby to Full Member status. Before the rule was amended by the World Rugby Council in October 2019, the criteria for full membership application was based on the number of operational clubs registered with the Union.

Until full membership is achieved, there is a glass ceiling to Lebanon’s ambitions – one, in this instance, they would love to see smashed. Lebanon, whose nickname ‘The Phoenix’ has never been more appropriate, currently play in Division 3 West of the Asia Rugby Championship.  “We can be promoted but in a World Cup year we would be demoted back again so that all the full member countries could play against each other (in a bid to try and qualify for the tournament),” explains Laurent.

A dashing centre, Laurent’s passion for rugby stems from a switch of sports in his mid-teens. In his case, Judo. Mike and Melanie are the same. Both crossed codes from rugby league, a sport where Lebanon have more of a tradition having twice competed at a World Cup, albeit with a team mainly made up of Australian diaspora.

Mike very nearly went to the RL World Cup in 2017. “We beat Italy in the qualifier, but I broke my arm in the match. It was only a month before the World Cup started so I couldn’t make it.” 

After that disappointment, Mike switched back to his preferred code in 2018. “I always preferred union but there were some problems with my old club and the Federation, and they decided to boycott them. I came back in 2018 with the Jamhour Black Lions.”

Basketball is the number one sport in Lebanon, followed by football. Like many international outposts, rugby has a constant battle on its hands to attract new players and gain wider exposure.  “The biggest problem is that the people who don’t play the game don’t understand how it works. For them, it is just men beating each other up. It is not that at all,” says Laurent, almost despondent to the fact people don’t share his unbridled love of all things rugby.

“This is why a lot of parents, especially those with girls, are reluctant to let their children play rugby. In some cases, we’ve had really good players turn up but then they get a dislocated finger, or a sore shoulder and they’re not allowed to come back to what is seen as a thuggish sport.”

Alumni of Beirut’s French-speaking public schools make up the vast majority of the rugby-playing community in Lebanon, and Laurent is one of them. Mike is not. But they are team-mates first and foremost who have each other’s backs.

But no cultural, religious or class-based problems exist in rugby in Lebanon, despite the troubled past of the country whose population is almost evenly split between Muslims and Christians.

“Everything in Lebanon is related to politics. But the Lebanese Rugby Federation has tried not to be political,” Mike informs us. “We have Christians, Muslims and Jews in the team – there are eighteen sub-religions in Lebanon – but we never speak about religion and politics.

“If you support a political party, you get money. So that is one of the things that is holding us back. 

“But, for me, it is the right decision not to involve politics. The Basketball Championship is run by politics and they’re having a lot of problems.

“And in football, if you’re judged by who you support – a Muslim team or a Christian team.”

A legacy of the French mandate is Beirut’s architecture, which once earned the city the label of ‘the Paris of the East’.

But that influence can also be found in the Phoenix’s playing approach.  “My first rugby jersey was a French national team jersey but I’m only just starting to like them again,” says Laurent, still feeling aggrieved at the treatment meted out to Guys Noves, France’s former coach and instigator of Toulouse’s entertaining brand of rugby.

“For me, the French team of Philippe Saint-Andre completely destroyed French rugby, they became a laughing stock.

“Before, I’d use fake ID to sneak into a bar to watch France play England, but under him, no-one was watching because you knew they were going to get pumped.

“That’s the reason why I went and supported Scotland instead. I absolutely love the way Stuart Hogg, Finn Russell and Hamish Watson play rugby.

“Thankfully, France are getting back to the French team everyone likes to see playing.”

Jamhour Black Lions, Laurent explains, underwent a similar transformation as a rugby team.

“A lot of players in our team tried to play that (French) way but without much success because of the skill levels, so we went to a more static game plan.

“But a couple of years ago, a volunteer from the French embassy, Nicolas Guibs, came to coach us and he told us to throw that (conservative) system out of the window. ‘we are playing with French flair’, he said.

“If you did some really cool stuff on the pitch, you hear him shout, ‘French flair, French flair!’ He has made a big difference.”

It is a form of rugby that has brought joy to the faces of those involved, and in times like these, that is precious.

At Test level, Lebanon are more regimented as you might expect from a side coached by ex-British Navy man, Steve Wigglesworth.

They have beaten every nation they have played since their introduction to the Test arena in 2010 except Qatar, winning fifteen and drawing one of their nineteen games.

But if they didn’t think it before the 4th of August, everyone involved in Lebanese rugby now understands that the result is not the be-all and end-all.

While Qatar have always managed to get the better of them, Lebanon came the closest they have ever come to beating their nemesis in their last fixture before lockdown: a Division 3 West promotion decider in Doha.

“We were leading for most of the game, but they scored a late try and we missed a penalty,” says Laurent, as he recalls the 13-10 loss.

“Our team was so good that year and when we lost, everyone was crying. Grown men from 21 to 35 were crying.

“After what has happened to our country, it made me think, ‘woah, I was crying over the result of a game and now my teammate doesn’t have a home and my home needs thousands of dollars of repairs and so on and so on.’

“It kind of puts it all into perspective.”

Story by Jon Newcombe

Pictures by Enzo Baudino

This extract was taken from issue 12 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.