As a powerful barrage of Israeli airstrikes pummelled Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight, cousins Nader Ismail and Lyne Nassar sat on a balcony in a nearby Baabda overwhelmed with shock. Ismail said the terror made him freeze where he sat, while Nassar said she stood up suddenly before sitting down and attempting to calm herself about what is now a near nightly occurrence.
“It felt like we could feel the pressure waves from the bombings washing over us,” said Nassar. “The windows shook, the whole building shook. It was traumatising.”
The 21-year-old medical student and her family first fled Beirut’s southern suburbs for the town of Aley in the mountains around the capital in late August, initially as a precaution. Ismail, 20, and his family joined them for the second time 10 days ago, fleeing the bombardments striking the Hezbollah stronghold of Dahiyeh and driving out residents to other parts of the city and surrounding areas.
The cousins said the family home in the mountains is now so full with people that they had decided to take a break at the apartment in Baabda, even though it is closer to the airstrikes, but the intense wave of attacks that sent columns of smoke and fire into the night sky overnight has forced them to relocate back to Aley.
The two students and their families are struggling to adapt quickly to the new reality of wartime, where the strikes have upended the lives of people across Beirut. In some parts of the city north of Dahiyeh, shops, bars and restaurants remain open but sometimes with limited hours, as people attempt to maintain a sense of normalcy and hope for a swift end to the conflict.
Elsewhere, roads that are normally clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic are conspicuously empty, with many that once filled the streets departing for the mountains around Beirut. One gym manager in the Achrafiyeh neighbourhood complained he had lost more than 100 members of his client base, as most have departed for other areas as a precaution, while those who are able have fled the country entirely.
“The neighbourhood now is emptying out; a lot of middle- and upper-class people have gone to the north of Lebanon or the mountains,” said Mansour Aziz, the owner of Mezyan restaurant and bar in the heart of west Beirut’s Hamra district, a place long known for its bustling nightlife.
Business had dipped by almost 80% over the last year as people stayed home to fearfully watch news of Israel’s war in Gaza, fearing what could happen in Lebanon, he said.
“But now with this recent onslaught, the situation is very tense,” he said. “Things have changed – and obviously people are not in the mood to go out. The irony is that if you go north to Batroun or to the mountains, people are out and about.”
He added: “I’m bracing for the worst to come – there’s talk of food supplies being affected. A lot of the big meat and vegetable suppliers are farmers in the south and the Bekaa, so if these lines are cut and farmers are fleeing, how is food going to reach us?”
The sense of a new reality was compounded on Sunday when Lebanon’s education minister, Abbas Halabi, further delayed the new start date for the public school year to 4 November, citing the “security risks” from the Israeli airstrikes. Public school buildings across the country have now been converted into makeshift shelters housing more than 1 million displaced from across southern Lebanon and Beirut, and UN officials said late last week that almost 900 of these shelters are now full.
Private schools and universities are trying to figure out whether they can move to online classes or shutter on a rolling basis. Nassar, who is in her third year as a medical student at the Lebanese University, pointed to the nightly bombardments that have struck close to its Laylaki campus in southern Beirut, and the uncertainty about when classes might resume.
The semester was due to start on the day in late September that a wave of Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon killed 492 people and injured 1,645, she said, but it was delayed by a week. With the decision from the education minister to delay until early November, Nassar is uncertain when classes might resume given the damage to their campus.
“If the strikes continue like this, there’s no way we can attend university as it’s so close by,” she said. Her parents are using their experience of the last time they fled southern Beirut, during Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, to keep them calm, she added.
The mall near the university campus where until recently Nassar used to meet her four closest friends to shop and spend hours chatting in the food court cafes has shuttered apart from a large supermarket inside, she said. Their group chat is now focused on ensuring the one friend who stayed behind survives the nightly airstrikes, doling out advice to make sure she opens the windows to avoid broken glass during the bombings.
Ismail said the Antonine University where he studies computer science said late last week it would switch to online classes, which he dislikes.
“It’s hard to study, the house is crowded and there’s stress from hearing the bombings,” he said.
Nassar said that Aley is noticeably busier due to the influx of people. “The shops are open, the supermarkets are open but there’s a lot more traffic than usual, due to all the people coming. We’re starting to see a shortage of goods in the supermarket,” she added. “Basic things, like you might not always find toilet paper.”