All She Lost

The Explosion in Lebanon and the Story of a Nation's Collapse

Dalal Mawad

A story of survival, corruption and impunity - Dalal Mawad interviews the victims of the August 2020 explosion in Beirut.

Award-winning journalist Dalal Mawad was in Lebanon when the blast happened on 4th August 2020, and was one of the first journalists to report on the devastating explosion.

She set out to record the stories of those long discriminated against, mothers who lost their children, 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.

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.

Dalal Mawad is an award-winning Lebanese journalist. She is working as freelance producer for CNN in Paris and as a part-time journalism professor at Sciences Po. Mawad was a senior producer with the Associated Press based in Lebanon when twin blasts rocked Beirut on August 4th 2020. She extensively covered the explosion, its aftermath and Lebanon’s economic and financial crisis.