Mariam Ibrahim's mother sits with family members in her home in Tripoli's Jabal Mohsen neighborhood as they mourn her death via a stray bullet. Sept. 21, 2023 (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
More than two dozen people have been struck by stray bullets so far in Lebanon this year, according to a count by L’Orient Today. The below testimony is part of a project by L’Orient Today and L’Orient-Le Jour to document the problem.
Click here to see our stray bullet tracker and read other testimonies.
JABAL MOHSEN, Tripoli — Mariam Ibrahim loved dancing, filming makeup TikToks with her 16-year-old daughter and cooking food for family picnic trips. She loved singing old Arabic songs about dark-eyed beauties, odes to her daughter’s own black-brown eyes.
“She always wore a smile,” her niece, Rula, remembers.
Four months ago, a stray bullet pierced Mariam’s stomach after she stepped on the roof of her apartment building in Tripoli to check her water tank.
She made it to the hospital alive, where she sent video messages to her three children from the ICU, a spiderweb of plastic tubes covering her face.
Mariam died several weeks later. She was 41.
Portraits of deceased family members in Mariam Ibrahim's mother's home, in the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood of Tripoli. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Two of Mariam Ibrahim's children and a cousin sit beneath portraits of deceased family members at the family home in Jabal Mohsen, Tripoli. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
One September morning in her elderly mother’s salon in Tripoli’s Jabal Mohsen neighborhood, pictures of Alawite sheikhs and deceased loved ones adorn the otherwise plain white walls. Huddled in the sofas below them are 20 or so family members all dressed in black.
The family recently added Mariam’s picture to the room too, where it now sits propped atop the TV.
According to family members, she had lived just meters from what was once a frontline between rival militant groups. Her 20-year-old son, Muhammad, and nephew, Ali, take L’Orient Today to her home, where Muhammad still lives. They point across the lane from Mariam’s roof, where they say snipers used to position themselves to shoot toward the neighborhood. Surrounding them are concrete apartment blocks chiseled at random by years of gun-fuelled killing.
Apartment buildings in Tripoli's Jabal Mohsen neighborhood. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
A balcony near Mariam Ibrahim's home in Jabal Mohsen, Tripoli. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Not too far away is the site of the deadliest street clashes that took place during the height of the 2013 conflict between fighters in majority-Alawite Jabal Mohsen and the adjacent, majority-Sunni neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh. Tensions remain high even though the fighting has cooled; one family member even refused to walk too close to the street that separates the two neighborhoods.
Muhammad points to the spot where Mariam was shot over the summer, a whitewashed patch of roof next to some plastic water cisterns. It’s since been cleaned by workers, the men say, the blood mopped away.
Downstairs in the alleyway, Mariam’s death notices are still pasted on the walls, not far from some calligraphy street art: “Tripoli: City of Peace.”
The roof above Mariam Ibrahim's home in Jabal, Mohsen Tripoli, where she was struck by a bullet as she checked her water tank. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Mariam Ibrahim's nephew, Ali, shows the spot on the roof in Jabal Mohsen, Tripoli where she was hit by a fatal stray bullet last month. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Street art near Mariam Ibrahim's home in Jabal Mohsen reads: "Tripoli: City of Peace." Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
“Do you think Tripoli is a city of peace?” Muhammad asks.
The family says they are convinced the shooting was deliberate due to the apparently horizontal angle of the bullet that cut through Mariam’s body, and because of her home’s location along a former deadly frontline. A security source told L’Orient Today the shooting was the result of a personal fight between several local residents, and that two people had been arrested in the case. The source requested anonymity as they were not permitted to speak by name to the press.
Either way, Mariam’s death rattled her loved ones. Grace Issa, Mariam’s close friend and next-door neighbor, says her daughter is now scared to sleep in her own bedroom because its window faces the direction they believe the deadly bullet came from.
“And I don’t go on the roof anymore,” Issa says. “I’m too scared.”
An ‘increase’ in stray bullets
A few blocks away is Kahwetna, an unassuming cafe filled with cheery wood-pallet furniture. Jammed right next to an imposing army checkpoint, the cafe is located along Syria Street, which divides Mariam Ibrahim’s Jabal Mohsen neighborhood from Bab al-Tabbaneh.
Apartment buildings in Tripoli's Jabal Mohsen neighborhood. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
A cell phone photo of Mariam Ibrahim and her teenage daughter. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
Kahwetna is run by MARCH, an NGO that aims to bring youth from Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh together against sectarian violence. But violence wrought by stray bullets, too, has increased in recent years, according to MARCH founder Lea Baroudi.
The problem was “getting under control” in the first few years since MARCH was founded in 2016, Baroudi says. But since Lebanon began its economic downturn in 2019, Baroudi says she feels gun-fuelled personal and family disputes in the area have caused an “increase” in stray bullets hitting local people and property.
Baroudi says many of the weapons are those left over from the deadly 2013 clashes.
Samir, a youth coordinator at MARCH who comes from Bab al-Tabbaneh, says he personally knows of people who fire in the air at celebrations and other occasions, regardless of the risks. He requested L’Orient Today not publish his family name, to protect his identity. Shooting “is wrong,” he adds. “Very wrong. People are getting injured by this, killed by this.”
“Once I was smoking a cigarette and a bullet hit it, knocking it to the ground,” Samir claims. “What am I supposed to do?”
Street art in Jabal Mohsen, Tripoli. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
A family member shares an old photo of Mariam Ibrahim. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)
In Jabal Mohsen, residents insist that they themselves do not shoot into the air, as a community zaim ordered those with firearms not to do so. It’s unclear to what degree the order has been enforced and residents say many people in the neighborhood still own guns, even if they don’t shoot.
Either way, “we are against guns, against criminal gangs, everything,” says Muhamamd Khodr, a lifelong resident of Jabal Mohsen and assistant to the mukhtar.
Each stray bullet that happens to kill someone leaves behind unanswered questions — lives frozen in time and then suddenly gone.
“Every time I step on my balcony, I expect to see Mariam,” her neighbor, Grace Issa, says.
“But she’s not there.”
Family members gather to mourn the death of Mariam Ibrahim, who was killed by a stray bullet. Sept. 21, 2023. (Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient Today)