Beirut, Lebanon – Beirut is filling up, perhaps well beyond capacity, as thousands of people stream into its neighborhoods, seeking refuge from Israel’s unpredictable air raids.
The attacks began in the south and Bekaa, with Beirut’s southern suburbs also hit. But they then expanded, targeting areas of Chouf and Kesserwen, a predominantly Christian region with a small Shiite population.
The uncertainty is almost palpable as exhausted people stream into Beirut’s Hamra neighborhood on Tuesday, some having spent more than 12 hours on the road to cover a distance that normally takes two hours.
Finding a room in a hostel
At the Casa D’Or, a four-star hotel on Hamra Street, a couple stands at the check-in counter, trying to negotiate the price of the last room available that night – a suite.
A receptionist addresses them and introduces herself simply as Lama.
Lama has been working at Casa D’Or for four years, she said, and she has never seen a place as busy as it is right now.
“We’re full,” she said. “The day before yesterday, we were at 40 percent (occupancy).”
Prices have been lowered for Lebanese customers, she adds.
But it doesn’t seem that the couple are successful in their negotiations: they go out and remain on the sidewalk, looking slightly disconcerted.
Outside and around the corner, on an unusually busy Makdissi Street, Dr Abbas, a cardiologist, says he managed to find rooms for himself, his wife and son – after spending 16 hours in the huge traffic jam from the south.
At one point, while near Hamra, the family abandoned their vehicle and dragged their suitcases through the streets, weaving between cars they passed on foot.
Abbas is originally from al-Mansouri, near Tyre in southern Lebanon, but his eldest son is studying medicine at the American University of Beirut, so they decided to come here rather than head to the mountains as they did during the 2006 Israeli attack.
They are not afraid, he said, because they have already experienced a lot. “We are used to this, unfortunately,” he said.
His youngest son, a teenager, is experiencing his first war, Abbas says. “He’s in training,” the doctor jokes.
The family seems happy to be all in the same town, but they are not immune to the tension that is shaking the country, nor to the anger.
“The Israelis are liars,” his wife replies dismissively when asked about Israel’s allegations that Hezbollah was storing weapons in homes in the south.
“Is it safe here?”
There is a group of Syrian teenagers walking down the street.
They usually work in Hamra and live in Bir Hassan in the south, a neighborhood near Ghobeiry, where Israel bombed on Tuesday.
They do not want to go back tonight, they say, preferring to meet friends in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila.
“Is it safe here, in this neighborhood?” they ask, a question that is on everyone’s mind, whether they express it vocally or not.
The boys head off towards Shatila, where they hope to be safer for the night.
Two women appear, looking slightly disoriented.
They come from the south and came to Beirut from Tyre, where they have been staying for a year.
In Hamra they found rooms at the Mayflower Hotel, but discovered to their dismay that they could find no bread.
Their plight attracts the attention of kindly passers-by who join the two ladies in their hunt for bread.
A grocery store owner says they’re out of stock, so the search team heads to a falafel shop to ask if the women can buy plain bread.
The falafel vendor apologizes: he only has enough for the falafels he will make tonight.
More and more people join the search and finally two different people manage to find bags of bread. Victory.
They refuse to accept payment from the women for bread, and the group rejoices that someone has been helped.
Suddenly, someone gestures to the plastic chairs set up between large flower pots on the sidewalk and asks the ladies to sit down while someone else brings them coffee.
It took them 15 hours to reach Beirut, now they need a break and a chance to enjoy the care of other Lebanese. They never give their names.
“Creating a fitnah will not work”
“They (Israel) are trying to create a fitna, to set the Sunnis against the Shiites,” says Salim Rayess at the Makdissi bakery – which is not actually on Makdissi Street, although it is quite close to it.
“But it doesn’t work.”
“Fitna” means an internal conflict that could escalate to the point where a civil war could break out.
In his offhand observation, Rayess unwittingly says what several analysts have said about Israel’s attacks on Lebanon: Israel wants to exert pressure until the Lebanese turn on each other and try to distance themselves from Hezbollah and the Shiite sect it represents.
Rayess is participating in the efforts of Beirutis to help newcomers in any way possible.
He is at the Makdissi bakery to deliver bales of hundreds of manouches (a snack bread) to the Sagesse school in Clémenceau, which houses displaced people.
An ironic laugh can be heard in the conversations outside: a man talks about his apartment building, two shops and farmland that Israel has destroyed.
“It’s better this way,” he concluded. “Now I’m waiting for my last properties to be destroyed, too.”
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