In a neighborhood grocery store, the owner tells a customer that the price of bread has risen once again, in Gemmayzeh, on March 28, 2026. (Credit: Ségolène Ragu/L’Orient Today/Editing by Celine Bejjani)
In line at the local grocery store, the cashier and a customer debate whether the “new” name of “Tarboush” is better than the original. An age-old question.
A man and his wife wait for their turn to check out. He looks at his phone, taps on one of his notifications, a tweet from Avichay, the Israeli army’s spokesperson, and shows it to her: “Over 250 Hezbollah Elements and Commanders Eliminated in Largest Strike in Lebanon, Including Dozens in Beirut.”
She pauses for a moment, conjuring her deepest fury, then replies "byestehalo [well- deserved]." She almost chokes on the word before it comes out.
The husband, stunned, looks at her with confusion and disappointment. Her anger quickly turns to sadness, like she is about to crumble and cry right then and there.
The energy shifts at the store, although I don’t think everyone had heard the interaction. At their dismay, a sheikh skips past their turn in line. “I have one item, I hope you don’t mind,” he says as he was already placing this item on the cashier's counter.
This interference prolongs their discomfort. The air gets heavier as they avoid each others’ glances.
Are they going to argue about this on the drive home? Is this waiting making their frustration grow stronger? Or will they be able to leave it at the steps of the store, where everything is on display?
In my mind, the woman leaves the groceries to her husband, gets in the car and slams the door, still oscillating between fury and grievance. They drive home silently.
The grocery bags sit on the cluttered kitchen table. No one volunteers to put them away.
The husband slowly tears one of the bags he could have easily opened, looking for his cigarettes. His wife watches him, making sure he feels her judgment. At dinner, he fills his own plate and she fills hers. Before any conversation can start, she turns on the TV.
The flashing news bar lights up the room, tinting their faces in a dark shade of red.
The day passes, filled with a 100 more micro-agressions, all relatively harmless but deeply intentional.
The war inevitably leaks into their everyday life, staining all that was once mundane. Their spark is either a raging fire, or an ice-cold indifference. The never-ending news and increasingly surreal numbers they read everyday consume their relationship.
Eventually, the war will end. The wife, who is originally from Adloun, will drive back to her village to visit her grandparents’ home and graves. The husband will wait for her, and he will hope she realizes that his disappointment at that moment was misread, that his concern was only what she must have felt to say such a thing, that he wanted to hold her because he could feel her sadness.
When we address Israel’s psychological war, we talk about their drones, and their fighter jets breaking sound barriers, but we fail to name all the ways that an ongoing existential war frames our lives.
This new wave of violence sits in the most vulnerable, broken parts of us. It lives in the personal.
Israel kills 2 in southern Lebanon, shattering 3 days of relative calm