Dolly Kassem Khoury

Dolly was born on August 5, 1936, and grew up with ten siblings. She married Engineer Joseph Wadih Khoury, and they had three children: Robert, Fadi, and Nada.

For decades, Dolly, who later became a widow, challenged life's hardships; she never gave up, and always faced tragedies with strength and determination; yet Beirut explosion was far from a mere tragedy.

At 6:07 PM on August 4, 2020, Dolly was peacefully sitting in her home in Rmeil, facing the Port of Beirut’s grain silos. The warm home that filled with memories of love and happiness, the home where she raised her children and grandchildren, where wishes came true, and where stories were written, turned, on that awful afternoon, into a war zone, a crime scene trapping an agonizing Dolly under shards of glass, shattered all over her thin body.

Nearby hospitals were completely destroyed, and Dolly was evacuated to Abou Jaoude Hospital in Jal el Dib. Her wounds were treated, and she was discharged. A few days later, her family noticed a swelling in her left hand. Her children took her immediately to Saint Charles Hospital, and they were told her hand was fractured, and required surgical intervention.

Dolly survived for eighteen days after the Beirut blast. On the evening of August 22, her heart stopped. Her family bid her farewell in a funeral in Saint Joseph church, in Achrafieh. Her body was laid to rest in her hometown Bkassine where she was buried in the family's cemetery.