A man walks on April 2, 2025, in a Basta Fawqa neighborhood renovated by Offre-Joie. (Credit: Matthieu Karam)
Under scaffolding where workers were sanding and cementing, Salwa smoked a hookah on her house's doorstep. The 70-something-year-old is the only one who returned to her home in this block of Basta Fawqa, located just behind the eight-story building that was demolished during the war by an Israeli raid that killed 29 people and injured more than 50. She can no longer live with her sister because "one feels weighty staying with someone else. There's nothing like one's own home." Or what's left of it. But suppose that April morning her daughter Fatmeh returned. In that case, she is ready to flee at the first opportunity: "On Friday, March 28, when Israel announced it was going to strike, I left immediately," she said of the first bombing in Beirut's southern suburbs since the cease-fire between Israel...
Under scaffolding where workers were sanding and cementing, Salwa smoked a hookah on her house's doorstep. The 70-something-year-old is the only one who returned to her home in this block of Basta Fawqa, located just behind the eight-story building that was demolished during the war by an Israeli raid that killed 29 people and injured more than 50. She can no longer live with her sister because "one feels weighty staying with someone else. There's nothing like one's own home." Or what's left of it. But suppose that April morning her daughter Fatmeh returned. In that case, she is ready to flee at the first opportunity: "On Friday, March 28, when Israel announced it was going to strike, I left immediately," she said of the first bombing in Beirut's southern suburbs since the cease-fire between...