Blast Brings Out the Best in Battered American University of Beirut

By Marilyn Raschka

Whoever triggered the 3:40 am blast on the campus of the American University of Beirut set off something even more powerful than the 175 pounds of explosives that brought down College Hall and damaged virtually every building on the 70-acre campus. That blast also set off a spontaneous reaction that energized a tired faculty, inspired an often apathetic student body and motivated a battered administration.

Only hours after the Friday morning blast, the deans announced that classes would resume the following Monday morning. The students too had a message. By mid-morning they had posted computer-printed fliers that read: LONG LIVE AUB FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER . . . Every two hours a new version came out with more and more computer graphics—all featuring College Hall's clock and bell tower.

By mid-morning Friday, members of the AUB Red Cross Club had donned work gloves, gathered brooms and started cleaning up. The explosion had rendered much of Assembly Hall (the Chapel) roofless and windowless. Rubble and glass carpeted its interior. As they worked, Dean of Arts and Sciences Lutfi Diab waded through the mess to inspect the chapel's organ. It had survived. Caretakers covered it with heavy plastic to protect it from the dust.

Brooms were equally busy in the AUB Museum. Archaeology professors and students did a quick survey of damage. Windows were gone, but only one display case was broken. Its contents were safe. Similar activity was underway in the engineering and architecture departments, where the damage was more extensive.

Library staff members, struggling with their emotions, stood like sentries at the back entrance. Guarding the front of the building was unnecessary. The entrance was blocked by rubble. Lying next to the entrance were the bulky remains of College Hall's clock tower, which had been pitched to the ground from its lofty seat.

The construction company that is building a new faculty housing unit on campus rushed a crane, bulldozer and steam shovel to the scene of the blast. Chains attached to the shovel were wound around stone blocks, wood beams and other heavy debris. Gently, gently, bit by bit, rescuers searched through the huge pile of rubble in hopes of reaching Munir Salha, an AUB employee trapped underneath.

But Salha's pleas for help ceased in the early afternoon. Cries of grief rose from his family and friends who had waited since dawn, praying for his safety. His body was removed exactly 12 hours after the explosion. Another fatality was a Syrian soldier, shot dead by the car bombers when he sought to stop the car bomber from breaking through a campus gate.

The Ras Beirut community, which grew up alongside AUB and prospered because of it, filed onto campus to pay its last respects to College Hall—the oldest building on campus. Its cornerstone was laid 120 years ago on December 7, 1871. Private eulogies were delivered, mixed with tears. Like mourners, many stared silently at what had only yesterday been a graceful facade topped by the 117-year-old clock and bell tower.

Word was passed around by students that a candlelight vigil would be held Friday evening in front of College Hall. Some 400 students, faculty and friends of AUB attended. And they sang the alma mater.

Condemnation of the destruction was to be expected. But more often heard were calls for reconstructing College Hall's exterior—stone for stone. University engineers were forced to condemn the building. Even the sections of walls still standing were separated from the floors.

GENECO, the company building the new faculty apartments, has volunteered to raze the structure. Dar El-Handas, the largest engineering and architectural firm in Lebanon, is donating its staff and time to help with the studies for reconstruction.

Early estimates of the campus damage stand at $15 million. This amount, added to AUB's deficit of $8 million-plus, seemed at first an insurmountable burden for the university in its 125th anniversary year.

But as of Nov. 8,1991, fund-raising once in the hands of the pro's in New York suddenly took off in Beirut. Students are manning donation booths at the entrance to the campus, while the Alumni Association is canvassing Beirut for heftier donations. And donations of all sizes and kinds are pouring in. Lebanese President Elias Hrawi personally gave the university LL5 million (equivalent to $5,000). St. Nicolas Church, itself badly damaged during the civil war, is donating 5,000 red Marseilles roof tiles—the kind needed to repair the old-style buildings that give AUB its charm.

Student Nahla Mikaati persuaded members of her family working in private communications to loan the university four international telephone lines so students with families living abroad could call and assure them they were safe.

Saturday morning the cranes and heavy equipment had moved to the front of College Hall, which stands deceptively intact. The order of the day was to salvage whatever could be salvaged safely. Watching was a small group of professors and students from the history department. Its fourth floor offices were judged too unsafe to approach.

When the students saw the crews removing chairs from the president's office on the floor below, they protested that "books are more important than chairs. " The administration agreed, but added that "students are more important than books." After a long argument, the students and one of the professors went up in the crane's swinging carriage and rescued some 16,000 books. "What can a history student do without books?" asked history graduate assistant Malek Shareef.

Three administrative assistants, Mary, Najwa and Annie, were lifted by the crane to crawl through third floor office windows. There they rescued equipment, files and even the weekly US-bound mail pouch that normally would have gone out Friday morning.

Storm clouds formed Sunday morning and AUB engineers feared the heavy claps of thunder could bring down the rest of the most roofless structure. Plastic tarpaulins were spread across the pews. Fortunately, the roof over the organ was intact.

Classes did resume on Monday, as planned. That evening students organized work teams. Computer science majors volunteered their skills and the Red Cross Club took on the job of command center. High on the list of priorities is a major clean-up of the library. Thousands of books are covered with fine dust and dagger-like glass shards.

Although no newspaper reported it, there was another casualty in the explosion. In the library reading room stood a statue of Dr. Daniel Bliss, the American missionary who founded AUB in 1866. The crock sower hitting the library's facade toppled the 10-foot marble statue, decapitating it. The library staff respectfully replaced the head.

Much as Bliss would have appreciated this gesture, the sturdy educational pioneer might have given top marks to the student who had T-shirts printed with AUB's motto, THAT THEY MAY HAVE LIFE AND HAVE IT MORE ABUNDANTLY. As printed on the post-November 8 T-shirts, the word "THEY" is crossed out and replaced with an emphatic "WE."

Marilyn Raschika is a free-lance writer who lives in Beirut, where she is an editor of the Americans for Justice in the Middle East newsletter.