Voices from Lebanon: “Whatever we lose, we will come back”

Hassan

“There’s nothing like living in your own home,” reflects Hassan Zeineddine, an internally displaced Lebanese man with hypertension. He and his wife fled Kfar Melki, in the south of Lebanon, due to Israeli bombardments nearby, leaving with only the clothes on their backs. “My sons are also displaced, scattered across the country. That alone is a struggle, but what we are going through is similar to what everyone else is.”

Having been uprooted three times during the recent escalations, Hassan, a retired employee who lost his pension and savings in the 2020 economic crisis, reminisces about the olive harvest and his deep connection to the land he was forced to leave behind: “There is nothing quite like the south. Wherever we go, whatever we lose, and whatever we are offered, we will always come back. I lived through the 1982 Israeli invasion and remember the airstrikes on southern villages then. As we returned to our homes then, we will now.”

Khadija

Khadija, a Syrian refugee and mother of five, was displaced from Nabatieh with her family. Her family is living in a parking lot by the Saida coastline after fleeing for refuge. "We never feel clean,” she explains of the poor conditions they live under. “People are competing over food here, and we don’t have enough clean water for washing. We go to the sea to relieve ourselves, but there are often men around."

Khadija’s children are battling various health issues. Her 13-year-old, Sidra, has asthma, and her 7-year-old Hiba suffers from stunted growth. "She weights barely 10 kg [20 lbs.],” Khadija says. “She’s fading right before my eyes.” Khadija also has an 8-month-old, Malak, with a fever and diarrhea. “I breastfeed her whenever I can, but it’s not always enough, and I can’t properly clean her bottles."

"Sometimes I wish we had stayed and died in an airstrike instead of living like this," she confesses.

Shams, Marimar, and Kazem

Despite the hardships she’s faced, Shams, a Syrian refugee, remains as bright and warm as her name, which means ‘sun’ in Arabic. She and her children were displaced from Kfar Roumane and now live in a parking lot in Saida after fleeing the town they called home for over a decade. It took 12 hours traveling by foot to finally find relative safety. A few days later, her son Kazem and one of his sisters made a dangerous trip back home on a borrowed motorcycle so they could rescue their two kittens, Simba and Mimi. “We thought of them as we were leaving,” says Marimar. “But the airstrikes were too close. I’m so relieved we could go back for them.”

Um Mohammad

Um Mohammad, a Syrian refugee displaced from Qsaibeh in south Lebanon, has three daughters. She used to maintain her employer’s garden, landscaping and building fences around his land. The night she fled Qsaibeh, an airstrike landed dangerously close by. She recalls joining the community with buckets of water to put out the fire, and then her employer told her it was time to leave. She packed a change of clothes for each of her daughters, aged 18, 6, and 4, and grabbed only a blanket, leaving behind the groceries she had just bought that day on her kitchen floor.

Hala

"We left with nothing,” says Hala, a Syrian refugee and mother of three. She and her family fled the coastal town of Adloun in southern Lebanon amid airstrikes and the sirens of ambulances. “We escaped on a motorcycle, but it broke down here in Saida,” Hala explains. “My husband went back to retrieve our belongings, but everything was stolen."

Now, the family relies on aid for food. "All my children are sick with vomiting and diarrhea,” she says. “Rawan, who has Down syndrome, used to receive physical therapy to walk and move. We had high hopes that she would begin verbal communication through speech therapy soon, and she had made so much progress. But now, all of that is gone. She requires lots of medications and is often bullied by other children for not being able to express herself."

Ghazi

Ghazi Abu Zeid was displaced from Kfar Roumane in the Nabatieh governorate of Beirut. When the area where he first sought refuge came under threat, he was compelled to leave once more.

In Ghazi's previous job, he helped remove landmines and cluster bombs in southern Lebanon left from the 2006 war, and he volunteered with the Lebanese civil defense’s search and rescue teams. Ghazi feels the weight of not being able to support his colleagues while his family relies on him. He faced a challenging journey in search of safety, spending 14 hours on the road with his 90-year-old mother, on a route that normally takes two hours, and struggling with the uncertainty of whether they will have a home to return to.

Myassar

Myassar, a mother and caregiver from the southern border town of Marwaheen, was injured in airstrikes in Toura that left her with multiple fractures in her face and hand. A doctor on MSF’s mobile medical team tended to her injuries, cleaning and changing her bandages and checking her stitches. While she has received vital medication for her hypertension from MSF’s mobile clinic, she is still awaiting the urgent surgery she requires. The health needs in Lebanon, with over 11,300 people injured and 1.2 million displaced, are rapidly exceeding the health system’s capacity to respond.

Najah

Najah Ashour, a Syrian refugee, was displaced once again along with her three daughters after airstrikes struck the southern town of Baisariyeh. She is among the 1.2 million people displaced by the ongoing Israeli bombardments. While the war affects everyone, minority groups like Syrian refugees, migrant workers, the elderly, and people with disabilities face even greater risks of discrimination and exclusion, further limiting their access to health care and humanitarian aid.