Ali Baghdadi at his home in Ansar, June 10. (Credit: Emmanuel Haddad/L’Orient-Le Jour)
With eyes shining with intelligence and hands blackened by stripping sunflower seeds placed on his accounts book, Hassan Malak welcomed customers to the small shop where he sells charcoal and hookahs with the false air of a mokhtar (an elected administrative village official). Despite being only 18 years old, the youngest of a family from Beit Lif, a village near the border with Israel, largely demolished by war, already had many years of professional experience. Such was the fate of a youth growing up in a historically marginalized region, in the shadow of a conflict that taught them early about grief, forced displacement but also adaptability."I had been working since the age of 15 in a blacksmith's workshop, which damaged my back so much that a doctor told me to stop. When we were displaced to Beirut by the war, I found work...
With eyes shining with intelligence and hands blackened by stripping sunflower seeds placed on his accounts book, Hassan Malak welcomed customers to the small shop where he sells charcoal and hookahs with the false air of a mokhtar (an elected administrative village official). Despite being only 18 years old, the youngest of a family from Beit Lif, a village near the border with Israel, largely demolished by war, already had many years of professional experience. Such was the fate of a youth growing up in a historically marginalized region, in the shadow of a conflict that taught them early about grief, forced displacement but also adaptability."I had been working since the age of 15 in a blacksmith's workshop, which damaged my back so much that a doctor told me to stop. When we were displaced to Beirut by the war, I found...