On the roof of the Montana Hotel, an abandoned hotel in the Zahrani area converted into a reception center for displaced people from South Lebanon.(Credit: João Sousa/L'Orient-Le Jour)
Abou Ali scrolls through his smartphone, showing photos of the wooden furniture he started crafting to fill his long, empty days at Montana. “I make coffee tables, small shelves, benches too,” he says, proudly displaying his work.It was a member of an association who once taught him the basics of carpentry, back when displaced residents from border villages — now living in this abandoned hotel in Merouanieh, in Zahrani — still received visits from humanitarian organizations. But those visits have gradually stopped.This young grandfather still remembers those first few months when he barely had a moment to himself. “I’d get up at six and often finish close to midnight, exhausted from work,” he recalls. “I just don’t know how to sit idle,”says the former excavator operator from Odaisseh.So two years ago, when humanitarian teams arrived to...
Abou Ali scrolls through his smartphone, showing photos of the wooden furniture he started crafting to fill his long, empty days at Montana. “I make coffee tables, small shelves, benches too,” he says, proudly displaying his work.It was a member of an association who once taught him the basics of carpentry, back when displaced residents from border villages — now living in this abandoned hotel in Merouanieh, in Zahrani — still received visits from humanitarian organizations. But those visits have gradually stopped.This young grandfather still remembers those first few months when he barely had a moment to himself. “I’d get up at six and often finish close to midnight, exhausted from work,” he recalls. “I just don’t know how to sit idle,”says the former excavator operator from Odaisseh.So two years ago, when...
