The view from Ali's apartment in Roueiss, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, destroyed by Israeli raids. (Credit: Emmanuel Haddad/L'Orient-Le Jour)
Sitting on her doorstep in a sloping alley of Nabatieh's Rahbat neighborhood, Asra al-Traboulsi waits for the arrival of the bus that brings her daughter home from school. With her kohl-drawn eyebrows and a cage containing her canary, which "offers a little happiness," she seems determined to let in some light where there are cracks in the desolation.After two months of relentless Israeli bombardment, the neighborhood she returned to when the truce began on Nov. 27 was unrecognizable. Facing her, a pile of ruins, the ghost of the neighboring building. The bomb that demolished it also severely damaged her own. "Our apartment is half-destroyed," she says. "We've just arranged a room to sleep in and stretched tarps while waiting to repair the broken windows." The sturdy and steadfast mother deals with the most urgent matters in succession,...
Sitting on her doorstep in a sloping alley of Nabatieh's Rahbat neighborhood, Asra al-Traboulsi waits for the arrival of the bus that brings her daughter home from school. With her kohl-drawn eyebrows and a cage containing her canary, which "offers a little happiness," she seems determined to let in some light where there are cracks in the desolation.After two months of relentless Israeli bombardment, the neighborhood she returned to when the truce began on Nov. 27 was unrecognizable. Facing her, a pile of ruins, the ghost of the neighboring building. The bomb that demolished it also severely damaged her own. "Our apartment is half-destroyed," she says. "We've just arranged a room to sleep in and stretched tarps while waiting to repair the broken windows." The sturdy and steadfast mother deals with the most urgent matters in...