Yasmina

Khiam is a really beautiful village; it used to be quite upscale, and the streets were just lovely. They used to call the main street “the second Paris”. All the girls used to stroll down it. It was always packed, full of honking and noise, so full of life.

The house has a large garden, with stone walls. During the season, we used to pick olives and sumac. I have so many memories in that house. 

I remember one Christmas, we wanted to celebrate. My sisters and I had our hair done, and we made pizza. We sat at the dinner table with my mom and dad, laughing and joking together. My dad wasn’t the kind of person to do that. But that night, he looked at us and just started laughing.

My roots are in Khiam, and that means so much to me. Neighbours, my parents, friends I grew up with: It all makes up a lifetime. I have a lot of casual friends, but I can count the real friends – the ones who truly matter – on one hand.

I stayed in Khiam for nine months: nine months under bombardment. At first, the bombing didn’t start until 1:30 or 2:30 in the afternoon, and it was far away… then it got closer. I could feel the whole house shaking.

I took advantage of the quiet mornings to go out and get groceries. The shops were still open back then – not many people had left the village yet. We still had electricity, water, and everything was working. With my children in Beirut, I used to cook, freeze the food, and bring it to them.

I found ways to distract myself. At night, I’d watch the Syrian TV drama Bab al-Hara, or YouTube. I also started experimenting with different hair dyes. I also got into face masks. I just wanted to pass the time and distract myself.

Everyone told me to leave Khiam, but I was displaced during the 2006 war, and I learned from that experience. During that war, we fled north, and the apartment where we stayed was crowded. I was breastfeeding at the time. It was really tough. I don’t want anyone to have control over me just because I’m staying with them.

The sounds of the war were terrifying. Once, I sat outside in the garden until 3am. I kept saying to myself: “God, if anything happens, I don’t want them to find me in pieces, under the rubble of the house. I want them to find me outside, in one piece.” It felt like the end of the world.

In the last two weeks before I left Khiam, hundreds of birds stormed the back garden. They sat on the clothesline and whistled at me. I didn’t pay attention at first, but they kept coming back. One day, my daughter said to me, “Mom, watch them more closely. What if they are there to sing for you?”

I always kept the windows open so the bomb blasts wouldn’t shatter the glass. And on my last day in Khiam, a bird came and perched on the balcony swing. It stood in front of me, sang for me, then it began fluttering its wings… then it left. A second came and did the same thing. The third didn’t get so close. Then they all disappeared.

After about nine months, my children said, “Enough. You have to leave.”

I stayed for a month with a family friend in Blat, a village in the Marjayoun district of south Lebanon. But I just didn’t feel comfortable there. Then I stayed for about 20 days in a house I found in Dibbine, another nearby village. 

I regularly visited my kids in Beirut to bring them food, and I was there when everything escalated in September 2024. At first, I stayed with my eldest daughter at her dorm in Laylaki, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. But we only stayed there for about a week because Israel warned they were going to bomb. As soon as we got out, there were rockets over our heads. They hit my daughter’s dorm and the top two floors burned.

We went to an apartment in Burj al-Barajneh – another part of Beirut’s southern suburbs – but there were missiles above us again. So we headed to Ain al-Mreisseh, near downtown Beirut, and stayed in an apartment with other displaced families for a while. Then we went to another apartment in the Beirut neighbourhood of Hamra, and spent a night there in a house packed with people.

After all that, we went back to the Lebanese University in Hadath, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. My daughter and I reunited with my other two children, and we remained there – in university dorms – for almost the rest of the war.

I couldn’t leave the building, because I technically wasn’t allowed to stay there. Some young men from the university security and administration helped us though, may God bless them. My son and one daughter, who were students, were allowed to come and go. 

I would wake up in the morning, prepare food, and then just sit around. We stared at our tablets, phones, and the news. There was nothing to do. People were stressed. We could see the smoke rising from bombings. We were watching it live. When there were warnings about bombings, we went into the basement.

There were other families there, young children, elderly people, and some students too. But I stayed away from others as much as I could. I didn’t mingle.

The one positive aspect of it all was that we were together as a family. I could cook hot, fresh food for my kids, not just frozen meals. I made trays of pizza, but I didn’t have a tray, or an oven. So I improvised.

We returned to Khiam on the day of the ceasefire. On the way back, people were happy and honking their horns. When we arrived, everything was destroyed. The mothers of martyrs were standing around, holding up pictures of their dead sons. We were torn between crying, feeling joy, and everything in between.

I had already seen from satellite images that even though lots of Khiam was reduced to rubble, our house was still standing. But seeing what had been done to it was a shock. They stole the fridge. They smashed the doors of the closets. They tore the doors off the hinges. There were bullet holes in the TVs. There was a note that said, “F**k Lebanon”, on the wall, held up by a knife.

I wasn’t sad about the furniture, or about any of the things. But the house itself carries memories of my father, my mother, my brother and sisters… our family gatherings. That means something to me. 

We couldn’t fully absorb what had happened. But it was reality, and we had to face it. We left for Beirut again when it got dark, and the drones started buzzing.

My daughter and I went back to her dorm in Laylaki. We had to clean it up first; it was covered in ash and gunpowder. After a week, I got called to a job in the south Lebanon city of Nabatieh, so I’m staying in a rented house there now.

Life is different now. Before, I lived in a house with a garden and freedom. I could go outside and nobody would see me. Here, I am confined to four walls, and I feel trapped. 

I go to work and I come home. I don’t have a social life, but everyone here is from the south, so we are all in the same boat. The question on everyone’s lips is: “Where are we headed?” Our lives are not the same. Will we ever go back to our villages? Will we ever go back to our homes? Will we always be displaced? Nobody knows.

I look at my friends... One has a son who was killed in the war, and another’s son is missing. She’s having a breakdown. My daughter’s partner was killed. Everyone is lost. They don’t know where to go, what to do. Joy has disappeared from our faces.  There is a sense of bitterness now. But despite the war and the pain, our community’s faith, determination, and sacrifice mean we will eventually go back.

I have no husband to rely on, so I have to be strong. I have to stand up for myself.  I have to keep fighting because I have three children to support. They have nobody else in this world. But I have to work hard to keep it together, or I might collapse. When I’m alone, I cry.