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Chapter 1: What is the current situation in Lebanon amidst the conflict?
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Welcome to the documentary.
This is Karin Torbay on Assignment in Lebanon.
Tir has very nice weather, you know. You see people like me swimming during the winter, diving, kite surfing. For me, Tir is like the best place in the world.
This is Rashana. She's 39. Tir is her home. It's on the coast in the south of Lebanon, 20 kilometers away from the border with Israel.
This is our daily life, like on the afternoon when people finish their work, the streets are full, you know. The restaurants are full, the coffee shops are full. I mean, we had a beautiful life.
At the end of February, Roshana was busy planning a party for her daughter Freya. Freya was about to turn four.
I was showing Freya's pictures to choose the cake, and then I told her to choose a dress. She chose the green dress and the snacks that we're going to have for her birthday. She was so much into her fourth birthday, and she was talking about it all the time.
Everything was ready, but it was a party that never happened. Once again, life in Lebanon was interrupted by war.
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Chapter 2: How do families prepare for sudden evacuations in Lebanon?
But Roshana was oblivious to what was going on.
On Sunday night, I went to bed early. I was very sick. I took very strong painkiller and I went to sleep around nine. Five o'clock in the morning, I wake up on the doorbell. I woke up and I was scared. I was like, why is someone ringing the bell at this time in the morning? A family friend was at the door to wake her up.
The first thing that crossed my mind, like someone in the family passed away. And he told me, no, don't worry, no one passed away, but you need to pack your stuff, take your daughters and leave. I asked him why, and I looked out of the window when he said, Hezbollah shot six rockets into Israel, and we need to leave. I was in a shock. I was like, I can't believe this is happening again.
We only had a few minutes to leave because I didn't know what was going on, what time the rockets were shot. Like, I'm leaving now. I didn't even have the time to water the plants or to empty the fridge. I didn't have time to do anything. I left everything behind me, all the memories, everything. I carried Freya from her bed and we just left with the pyjamas on.
Five million people live in Lebanon. One in five of them have had to move out of their homes because of the most recent conflict. But it's not the first time people in Lebanon have been displaced within their own country. Beirut is home for 25-year-old Yasmina.
Beirut is a very vibrant city, if you want. It's filled with such diversity. It's honestly like the heartbeat of Lebanon. Obviously, everyone knows about nightlife in Lebanon and in Beirut. And everything's close by and so familiar. To me, it's a safe space. It's my area and it's my home.
But in 2024, home certainly didn't feel safe for Yasmina.
Unfortunately, last tour, we had to move out of our house. We lived in Ras al-Naba. We lived with my grandmother in that building, and she had gone through a few health issues. So we were talking and discussing, like, what if we need to leave? Where would we go?
They had rented another apartment outside of Beirut to the north, somewhere thought to be safer. Yasmina remembers packing up to go.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do displaced families face in Lebanon?
It was an overwhelming experience. And I ran back into the building. So having them to deal with that entire situation, getting my grandmother down to the car, my grandfather had refused to leave the house. He's like, they already hit. We're safe now. We had to bargain with him till he agreed to go with us. The drive to the house was a 20-minute drive. However, it felt like hours.
I remember I argued with my dad because we couldn't find one of our cats. We're arguing over little stuff and ignoring the big picture.
The family moved back to Beirut after the war in 2024. But they're ready to leave again at a moment's notice if they have to.
Obviously, considering the current situation, everyone needs to think of a plan B, but I'm assuming every Lebanese person has an emergency bag by the door. It has all the essentials, a change of clothes, your legal documents. Somehow it became normal. In an unstable situation, you're going to have to figure out where to go and how to move.
You just need to go on autopilot and not think of it on the spot.
Plan B for Roshana, who'd left Tyre in a hurry with her children and little else, was to drive to her sister's house further up the coast. Daughter Freya was too young to understand why they were making the journey.
Freya was sitting in the car seat in her pajamas and she was happy because I told her we were going to Saida to her auntie's house. And her cousin was six years old and she loves playing with her. So she thought this is like a weekend trip.
But older daughter Jennifer remembered being displaced by war with Israel two years before.
Jennifer was crying. She was on the phone with her friends, checking where they are, and asking me all the time, are we going back? Do you think this will last long? I told her, unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you. They spent the night at her sister's house, sleeping on the floor. When I woke up in the morning and Freya was telling me, it's my birthday today.
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Chapter 4: How does the conflict affect children's lives and celebrations?
Like, I was thinking, this is from my mom and dad, this is from my sister in the mountains. And because we were 13 people in the house at that time, the people who were staying at my sister's house, they had kids with them. So on the afternoon, we did a small birthday for her. I gave her all the gifts. I told her, this is from grandma and grandpa. This is from your friend at school.
She was holding her dress all day and walking around in the house, showing it to everyone and telling everyone that it's her birthday and she's going to be wearing this dress today. I was doing my best to make her feel normal, like to try and have her to have a normal birthday. Normalista löytyy lähes kaikkea ja kaikki myydään pois. Siksi saat nyt Pepsodent hammastahnan vain hintaan 2,50.
Normaalisti 2,50. Eikä siinä vielä kaikki. Voit myös ostaa viisi omapakkausta ja viedä kotiin viisi. Tai osta V7 puutari hintaan 4,70. Säästä jopa nolla euroa. Voimassa niin kauan kuin varastoa riittää. Ja sen jälkeen tilaamme lisää. Normal. Pysyvästi edulliset hinnat.
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Espoon Kolari Korjaamo.
You're listening to Assignment from the BBC World Service. I'm Karine Torbay, and in this episode, we're hearing about what life is like in Lebanon, a country repeatedly hit by war. While many people managed to stay with friends and family, not everyone had someone they could turn to for help.
When the most recent war started, state-run schools were turned into displacement centres to accommodate thousands of people with nowhere else to go. We meet Yasmina again. She's a social worker and is part of a team organised by the International Medical Corps. We drive out with her to a school where they provide help and support to people who are now living in them.
So Yasmina, can you please, you know, what do you do there? What do you actually do when you go to a displacement centre?
So usually when we go to the shelters, we focus on both medical and social services. So in terms of medical services, we have doctors and nurses and the pharmacy that go with us. First time I went to school, to the shelter, it was overwhelming. I was walking into the shelter with my colleagues and it was raining.
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Chapter 5: What role do social workers play in supporting displaced individuals?
More than you'd expect. Because, OK, we've been through a war before. We know what it's like to a certain extent. And it's recent. But things are different somehow. Very well.
The school, now a shelter that we arrive at with Yasmina, is close to the center of Beirut. People have been here for several weeks. With all the uncertainty, it's not safe for them to go home. So basically, they are setting up a tent in the middle of the main court of the school. This is a tent that will become the mobile clinic where people will come for medical consultation.
There is also the cubicle curtains, the hospital privacy curtains, the white partition. And this also will help provide more privacy for So this is how the IMC, the International Medical Corps, is setting up this clinic.
My name is Zaina. I'm a student at the Lebanese University. I study law. It's my second year. Because of the war, we stopped our studying. And we just immigrated to a school here in Jamir Awas.
At the shelter, we meet Zainab. She's 21 and from Dahyeh. Dahyeh is a large southern area of Beirut. Zainab had to come to this shelter when the Israeli military issued evacuation orders, warning it would strike buildings it said were Hezbollah targets.
It started when the Israelis threatened to bomb and issued a blanket warning for the whole of Dahi. Yes. Okay, on that day, where were you? We went home. It was Ramadan. We were having our suhoor. Which is the last meal of the day before the sun rises. Yes. I was like, I want to just go. I don't want my family to get hurt. I don't want to get hurt. We just pack our things quickly and get out.
Buildings in Dahi have been targeted by Israeli missile strikes. Have you gone back home since the ceasefire?
I have gone once. I just checked the house and then... It's still okay? It's still standing? It's standing, but when you see those buildings completely flattered, it's hard to you. You feel like I was born dead. It's like a piece of my heart. It's come to ashes. Yeah.
What is the first thing you checked on when you went back home?
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Chapter 6: How do people cope with the uncertainty of returning home?
I miss my room. I miss my clothes. Everything.
Tell us a little bit about your setting here at the school.
We're living here in a room, a classroom. Yeah. How many of you? We're a lot. My cousins, us, my sisters, my siblings. All in the same room. All of us in the same room. Sleeping on the floor. On a mattress. Yes.
It feels intrusive to ask Zeynep to show us where she sleeps. But as part of her work, Yasmina has seen inside several classrooms where families now live.
As you would expect, the schools are filled to the brim. We're talking some schools have over 500, 600 displaced people and four to five families inside one small room. So we're talking around 12-ish people per room. Obviously, there are still teaching materials on the wall. It's very weird to look at it. So there's like the multiplication table, for example.
And then you look right under that, you'd see a person's entire living space. So they would divide the entire room into smaller sections using tables and chairs. And they would put a blanket that would separate each section. I mean, it's so resourceful the way they hang things in order to, let's say, dry their clothes or just manage their space.
Despite everything, Zeynep says she's doing her best to carry on with her life and her studies.
Have you gone back to university? No, not yet. Are you going to... They're teaching us online. How is it going? It's hard. It's hard to us, like, because of the internet, because of... Not every time we have electricity here, our phones die.
She tells me her family has been through some really tough times recently.
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Chapter 7: What are the living conditions like for displaced families in shelters?
In one street, we get to see the impact of a missile strike. The only thing I'm seeing in front of me is a very large mound of rubble where everything is just sheer destruction in front of me. You can see lots of concrete, but also metal, cardboard. It must have been a series of buildings that were brought to the floor. Like in close-ups, we can see
You know, details of what was live here, like a shirt or the bag of some spices. This must have been from some kitchen. A handful of workers are here clearing away the debris, but this once busy district is otherwise empty. Dahye has been an area completely deserted because of the blanket evacuation warning by the Israelis for weeks. Actually, people have not returned to this area.
It can't be inhabitable at the moment because it lacks lots of services. All the buildings around us are empty. There are lots of shops. They're all closed. And some of the doors are completely broken. That's from the effect of the blasts. This one is like a little grocery shop. There is a petrol station next to us. Everything completely, at the moment, shut.
In lots of ways, life for many residents in Beirut goes on as normal. They go to work, walk along the seafront, meet up in cafes and bars. People here have got used to the sounds of Israeli drones flying overhead, monitoring daily life. But for Yasmina, some things are hard to ignore.
So we're talking about Beirut already being so densely populated. You're adding like half a million to a million people. Having so many more people and just the amount of cars, that's the first thing you see. Then when you're going into the open spaces, like you mentioned, the waterfront area, you start seeing the tents.
There isn't enough room for everyone to shelter in schools, so many displaced people have had to camp out on the streets.
When the war started, they were placing their tents in Seht al-Shahadaq.
Martyr Square.
It's a main landmark in the city. So you'd just be driving by and you'd see hundreds of tents just lined up on the side of the road. Obviously, these are not ideal living conditions. They're trying to survive. It's not living, it's survival at this point.
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Chapter 8: What are the hopes and fears of Lebanese people regarding their future?
She rented a flat from a landlady in Beirut at a reasonable price. But before she could move in, there were problems.
So everything was going smooth and easy until she sent the message on the neighbor's WhatsApp group. And she told them, you have new neighbors coming in, just so you know. And they went furious.
Rashana says people in neighbouring flats were worried. As she was from the south of Lebanon, they feared, wrongly, that she might be connected to Hezbollah, and that could make their building a target for an Israeli strike.
They were telling her, we don't want anyone here, it's scary. We don't want to be killed. We don't want to risk our lives. And she was trying to explain for them that this is a Christian family. And her husband is free. She sent them the passports, the ID cards, everything, and they still refused. Here, people believe everyone from the south has something to do with Hasbun.
After some negotiation, Roshana moved in. The flat is fully furnished, but it's still costing Roshana $1,000 a month when she already has a house in Tyre.
You work hard, you save money, thinking this is the money for the university for the girls when they start university, or this summer we're going to travel to Sweden, let's say. So you start saving money and making plans and And suddenly the war starts, and so you go and spend all your money on the war, because you have to rent a house, you have to buy clothes.
So everything you pay double and twice and three times, so you end up with no money at the end. Where I'm living right now is exactly where I lived in 2024. So it's the same nightmare happening again.
A few days ago, Roshana drove back to Tyre to check on their house. It's still there, still standing. But hundreds of buildings and homes across the south of Lebanon have been destroyed by Israeli missile strikes and demolitions. The town of Dabin is a couple of miles north of the Israeli border. I'm standing on the site of a massive strike. We just understood this was a fruit factory.
Here they used to prepare pickles, olive oil and other food. But it is now turned into complete rubble. And I can see a big crater that seems to be the exact location where a rocket must have hit. And there is lots of destruction here. This is just a sample of what we have been seeing around as we traveled in the south, as we moved from one town to another.
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