“I feel we are at a tipping point. We are either going sink into gloom and despair at the scale of the damage and violence done to us, or we fight back and reclaim our country,” says Beirut-born Sarah Beydoun of Sarah’s Bag. After her atelier and boutique was severely damaged in the Beirut explosion, Beydoun's business — and the artisans she works with — are faced with a difficult and uncertain future. But Beydoun doesn't want to simply rebuild, she wants to rise up and remember. “We need to be angry at the system we live under and we need to change it.” Here, Beydoun talks about her experience.
The time it took me to reach all my family and friends and make sure they’re all safe felt like a lifetime. One of my team members was injured in the explosion as she was at our atelier during the blast. In short, it was like living a nightmare. Over the past few weeks, the full horror of what we lived through has been dawning on me. This was one of the biggest explosions in history. The scale of the violence and destruction it unleashed on us has been hard for me to process. We grew up in the war and I vowed never to live through that again. However, in a single moment we relived all that trauma. To see friends injured and hear what they endured in the overcrowded, chaotic hospitals that were themselves hit and were treating blast victims in parking lots and on the pavement – it was all too much to bear.
Trained by the Sarah’s Bag team, they are skilled artisans in their own right and some have been with the company since it first launched in May of 2000. Some of the prisoners used the income they earned to overturn wrongful convictions; others to support their families while they are incarcerated. Once out of prison, Sarah’s Bag encourages its artisans to train other women in their towns and villages, thus creating much-needed jobs in some of the poorer communities in Lebanon.
As a result, these women are soon regarded as valuable members of their communities and their new status helps them to reintegrate into society and ease the stigma of being ex-prisoners.
I feel we are at a tipping point. We are either going sink into gloom and despair at the scale of the damage and violence done to us, or we rise up from it, fight back and reclaim our country. This depends on the help of our friends from all over the world. It’s time for them to show love for Lebanon and what we stand for, and to support its people and its talents.
