BEIRUT, Lebanon (RNS) – On Aug. 4, 2020, Melvine Khoury and her brother watched curiously from the window of their home in Achrafieh as smoke and fire rose from the port of Beirut. Just as they started to evacuate, Khoury saw her brother being thrown to the other side of the house and crashing through a glass door while she was blasted to the opposite wall and covered in furniture and debris.
“I still cannot remember the sound of the explosion or how exactly I was injured, but I remember that after my brother pulled me out from under all the debris, everything was dark, filled with dust and rubble. I remember being in severe pain all over my body,” Khoury said.
The door of her house had been destroyed, and she could hear her neighbor screaming as panic rose everywhere. She said that in the hospital, where she underwent eight surgeries, the walls and floor were covered in blood. “Those were terrifying moments that cannot be forgotten,” she told RNS this week in Beirut.
The two explosions that devastated the city five years ago, killed more than 200 people, wounded more than 7,000 individuals and left 300,000 displaced without a home. The second explosion is cons …