Whether we like it or not, we are plants that bloom from the soil in which they root, emerging to flourish in the ether and bearing fruit.
Johann Peter Hebel
Whenever the South of Lebanon is mentioned, I remember my grandmother. Just like the fig trees and olive trees with which the south is rich, she was rooted in its soil and flourished in its open spaces, just like the pomegranate tree and the fruit she used to pick and eat when ripe. And just like any tree that is uprooted and dies, so my grandmother died, after the mass evacuation of villagers in the war in South Lebanon of 2024.
My grandmother’s last wish was to spend her final days in the village in South Lebanon. She was deprived of that for in that war the region was mass evacuated by Israel and turned into a battlefield, where everything was burned, including the olive trees and fig trees. My grandma died without seeing the village for the last time, without watering the flowers in front of her modest old house, without blessing the olives with her wrinkled hands before they were turned into oil during harvest season. The thing that made me most heartbroken wasn’t her death, but the fact that she wasn’t able to be buried in the village at first, under the same soil she loved and was rooted in, for war meant we had to temporarily bury her in Beirut. After the war, we took her back to the village and buried her there, just as she wished to be, next to my cousin, who was killed by an airstrike during the same war.
The one thing about my grandmother’s death I was grateful for was that it led me to visit the village again after two years of disconnection, since I live in Beirut. After the funeral and after the sadness passed, I went and picked some oranges from the tree in the backyard, climbed an olive tree just as I used to do when I was a kid, and started to get nostalgic about my childhood in the village—where I used to play in front of the house right under the grapevine arbor while my mom would drink her tea listening to the famous song by Fairuz called ‘Eswaret al Arous’ (The bride bracelet), which speaks of south: ‘The bride bracelet made of gold, while you are made by hearts, Ohh soil of the south’. While I was in the tree, reliving all these memories, the sound of a missile interrupted my thoughts. Israel had bombed a motorcycle in the village, killing a young man and injuring a whole family in a car.
The war ended, but its repercussions did not really end that year. The dwellers of South Lebanon came back to their villages, but the shadow of death didn’t leave that soil. Although a ceasefire took effect in late November 2024, Israel did not really commit to it and continued its murderous work in South Lebanon. It was a ceasefire on one side only. On a daily basis, a car or a motorcycle was bombed, and weekly evacuation alerts were issued to buildings and villages, while Israel conquered Lebanese land and positioned itself militarily at five points. I can’t forget the time it bombed a man’s car, killing the man while his kids were still outside in front of the house, saying goodbye to him. And I can’t forget the day a man was sitting with his family and Israel called him on his phone and made him choose between killing him alone or being killed with his family. These scenes were happening on a daily basis for a year and half in Lebanon, and anyone could see that it would lead eventually to an escalation, and so it did, in March 2026, and once again heaven was turned to hell!
On 2 March 2026, just after midnight, Israeli warplanes rained rockets all over the southern suburbs of Beirut, where I live, without any warning. Ironically, I was on a phone call with a friend of mine outside of Lebanon, talking about how the situation was getting more intense. We were joking about how this would be our last phone call when suddenly the sound of the rockets and bombs penetrated my ears. My mom, dad and sister woke up hysterically, trying to figure out what was happening. The streets were suddenly full of people trying to flee, and the roads were blocked by lines of cars. It was obvious then that we were in a new war. We decided at first to stay since it seemed more dangerous to leave, with all the roads blocked with traffic. So we waited till early morning but still decided to stay at home since the burden of displacement is heavy, for no one likes to leave their home, and in the first days the evacuation orders were targeting certain buildings.
For four days, we stayed in our home despite the danger and the horrific sounds of bombs dropping. It was Ramadan, one of my favourite times of the year, a month when people fast, visit each other, and gather at the dining table. What gave me the patience to handle those long days filled with anxiety and fear was the Fatoush dish that my mom made. It’s a famous Lebanese dish, basically a vegetable salad, made by all Lebanese during Ramadan.
But this enjoyment was quickly interrupted on 5 March, when the Israeli army issued a mass evacuation alert to the whole of the southern suburbs of Beirut. To make the picture clearer, the area covered by the evacuation order was around 15 square kilometres, which is roughly five times the area of New York’s Central Park, or more than 2000 football fields, with a population estimated at one million! That day, I was out of the home, and I immediately called my parents to tell them to get out. It was a day of mass horror seeing thousands of people carrying their bags and largely fleeing on foot in the face of the same strategy as used in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
For the second time in less than a year and a half, my family and I were displaced from our home. We spent the first night in the car beside the road in Beirut, as many did, until they found a place to stay. We moved up to my uncle’s house in Kayfoun, Mount Lebanon. In times like this, it’s such a blessing to have a roof over your head with the basic human needs of water and electricity provided. A nice place it was, with a wonderful view, for Kayfoun is located just above Beirut, and from there you can see the whole city. Once, my friend and I used to go there every week and get coffee and sweets and sit down to watch the city as the sun set in the sea. But with the war, this beautiful view had become a horror scene, as I watched my hometown and Beirut city being bombed daily. It’s like the price of being safe and not being bombed is to watch your hometown being bombed.
But what does safety really mean when you’re at war with a genocidal entity? It means the displacement of over one million people and the killing of over 2000, as the Ministry of Health reports, the majority women and children, that’s not to mention the direct killing of health workers, fifty at the latest estimate.
Safety really means nothing in such a war. That the red zones are marked and issued to us on X platform doesn’t mean that what is outside these zones is safe, for many strikes during the war have hit places that were supposed to be safe and were filled with displaced people. Once, an Israeli drone targeted tents on the beach where many displaced people were staying, resulting in a massacre of twelve people. Through my work as a journalist documenting the war, I met one of the victims of this massacre, in which he and eight members of his family, including his wife and two of his sons, were severely injured. The place that my family and I were in was targeted in the 2024 war twice, and we were all terrified of being targeted again. It was a feeling that never left us.
And that is what happened on the bloody day of April 8th, just weeks ago. The sound of the warplane was so close and so loud as it was above our heads; a second after, we heard a huge explosion, the windows shook, and we felt the blast wave. Seconds after this, we saw a huge cloud of smoke, and we knew at the moment that it was an airstrike that had targeted the town we were in, only 350‒400 meters away from our house. Minutes later, we knew from the news that this strike was one of a hundred!
Operation Eternal Darkness’—this was the name given to the operation by the Israeli army, with the official announcement stating that it carried out over 100 airstrikes in roughly 10 minutes. And darkness it was indeed, that day. Around half of these airstrikes targeted Beirut and Mount Lebanon, the smoke clouds covered the sky, and the hospitals were flooded with dead and injured people. On that day alone, 254 civilian deaths were recorded, with more than a thousand wounded.
The following day, the sun rose, yet darkness still lingered over Beirut. Beneath the rubble and the shattered buildings were the remains of people. Family members were searching among the rubble for loved ones, or what remained of them.
And that is what remained of me, too, after that horrific day. I woke up after a few hours’ sleep, grabbed my camera and went to document the aftermath of what had happened. I went first to the strike site next to us in ‘Kayfoun’ on Mount Lebanon, where twenty-two people had been killed. It was a shock to know that 400 metres away from you, twenty-two souls were extinguished. I then got on my motorbike and went to Beirut, about twenty-five minutes away. When I arrived, I had an awful feeling inside. Sadness and grief were filling the place. The city that I was used to being full of life and joy was now empty, sad and frightened.
Arriving at the first site at Cornich el Mazraa, I was amazed at the huge level of destruction. Firefighters were still working on the site, putting out fires. Some people were trying to get to their destroyed homes to see what was left, and others were cleaning their shops around the site, determined to continue on with their lives. The second site, at Talet el Khayat, was a demolished building—completely destroyed, and with it half of a neighbouring building. The civil defence was still there trying to search for people under the rubble, as some people, the previous night, had been rescued, including a little girl who was miraculously alive.
We found a piece of meat, human flesh…put it in a bag and sent it to make a DNA test so they may know for whom it belongs: these were the words of a civil defence worker at the third site, Ain el Mraiseh, after the search team found the remains of a human body under the rubble. That was two days after the attack. It shows how long and hard search operations were. That was a moment I will never forget. When the man held the ‘piece of meat’, all covered with debris, in his hand, I hesitated and asked myself whether I should take a picture of it or not, but I did it.
At that moment, my heart was with one man there, the father of a daughter still missing under the rubble. For the whole hour I spent there, he never stopped searching, removing the rocks helplessly in the hope of finding anything related to her, searching for glimpses of light beneath the ruins. I was hoping that the DNA test would show this ‘piece of meat’ was hers, just so he could take a rest. In a normal situation, when someone dies or you lose a loved one, you get to see that person for a final farewell glance. But in this situation, nothing is left to see, nothing to farewell.
I didn’t know if the DNA test result on that flesh that day was for his daughter, but I know that he kept searching for days after, and that after nine days, on 17 April, a glimpse of light from underneath the ruins was revealed; the hand of his daughter was found. When the civil defence worker found it, the father told him, ‘This is her hand…it’s my daughter!’
This hope that the father carried is the same hope shared by thousands who have lost their loved ones and their homes. The attachment that the Lebanese have to their land resembles roots embedded deep in the soil. A striking example of this was seen on the night of 17 April, when a temporary ceasefire was announced at midnight. Despite repeated warnings from officials and the Lebanese army urging people not to head south due to ongoing danger and continuous violations by the Israeli army, many southerners began their journey at first light the next day, determined to return to their villages and check on their homes and land. Geographically, Southern Lebanon is separated from the rest of Lebanon by the Litani River. During the war, Israel targeted and destroyed roads and bridges in an attempt to cut off access to the south. Yet people crossed over rubble, dug with their bare hands before bulldozers arrived, and some even drove their cars through the river itself just to reach their villages. That day stands as a powerful testament to how deeply rooted in their land the people of Southern Lebanon are.
In its soil we root, we emerge and flourish. No war can eradicate our roots by displacing us or conquering the soil that we belong to, and it is inevitable that we will return to where we belong. Under the olive tree that my grandmother loved, to the melody of Eswaret el Arous we remember: ‘And wars ignite…and wars fade away, Yet you remain, my beloved—O soil of the South’.
