Lebanon's Abandoned Lives

In Lebanon, war has become a recurring rupture in the lives of ordinary people, turning homes into rubble and routines into emergency evacuations. Karine Torbay’s reporting from the frontlines reveals how families like Roshana’s—displaced from their coastal home in Tyr after a sudden rocket attack—live in a state of perpetual uncertainty, forced to flee with only the clothes on their backs. Roshana’s desperate return to her destroyed neighborhood to retrieve her daughter Freya’s green birthday dress—left behind in the panic—becomes a haunting symbol of what war steals: not just property, but the right to normalcy. Across Beirut, schools have been converted into shelters housing hundreds, with families sleeping on floors under multiplication tables and textbooks. Even as the city carries on with its vibrant nightlife, the streets are lined with tents, and displaced people live in survival mode. For many, the trauma is compounded by the loss of identity—Roshana is rejected by Beirut neighbors who fear her southern roots, despite her Christian faith and peaceful intentions. The episode captures a nation trapped between memory and survival, where the dream of peace is not a political slogan but a personal plea: to live without packing bags again.