Suzanne al-Hussein, and her two daughters on April 23 in the Shmistar cemetery, the target of an Israeli strike on April 8, 2026. (credit: Lina Malers/L'Orient-Le Jour)
Reda Hijazi smiles as a small ginger cat snuggles against his leg. He puts down his hookah and strokes it with his large hand. "I took him in after a bombing, he was perched on top of a crumbling wall. Since then, he hasn't left my side," smiles the 53-year-old man on April 22.Aquiline nose, cerulean eyes, and a square jaw... The serenity that emanates from the Sour native is as deceptive as the shrill noises rising from the field of ruins across from the café where he smokes his apple-flavored tobacco.There, two excavators' jaws pile up mounds of crushed cinder blocks mixed with bits of mattress, dusty clothes and broken furniture. They are searching for human remains. If no dead body emerges from their misshaped pyramids, they turn with a groan and continue their search elsewhere in the ocean of rubble.Mohammad,...
Reda Hijazi smiles as a small ginger cat snuggles against his leg. He puts down his hookah and strokes it with his large hand. "I took him in after a bombing, he was perched on top of a crumbling wall. Since then, he hasn't left my side," smiles the 53-year-old man on April 22.Aquiline nose, cerulean eyes, and a square jaw... The serenity that emanates from the Sour native is as deceptive as the shrill noises rising from the field of ruins across from the café where he smokes his apple-flavored tobacco.There, two excavators' jaws pile up mounds of crushed cinder blocks mixed with bits of mattress, dusty clothes and broken furniture. They are searching for human remains. If no dead body emerges from their misshaped pyramids, they turn with a groan and continue their search elsewhere in the ocean of rubble.Mohammad,...
