Bombings in Lebanon

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1:28conversations titled Israel Hezbollah Ceasefire. Well, fast forward to today and Lebanon's citizens are again caught under fire and many are on the move as they search for a place of safety. The Lebanese Health Ministry says this latest conflict has killed more than a thousand people and displaced more than a million. Amid the wider destruction across the Middle East, there are fears of a major humanitarian crisis. The attacks are being carried out by Israel, which says it's targeting Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia and political party. They say their aim is to stop Hezbollah attacking communities in northern Israel.

2:10For our first conversation, my colleague James Reynolds brought together Sarah, who lives to the east of the capital Beirut, Tasnim, who lives in Beirut, but her family is from the south of the country, and Karim, a PhD student. His family home in the capital has been destroyed. We consider us as one of the lucky ones, right? I'm a dual American citizen. We're a middle-class family. We have more capacity than other people. And despite all of that, we still face immense, immense bureaucratic challenges and major inconveniences. And we are unable to find a long-term house to remain in Lebanon for the next few months.

2:48So we have to rely primarily on family and the generosity of family. Of course, solidarity is a big, important component of surviving any war, but the costs are quite large. Your family home in the south of Beirut got blown up. But as you speak to me, you sound reasonably matter of fact about it. Yeah, I mean, I think we've grown very used to these unfortunate circumstances. And I think in the past few years, many of us have readied themselves for this situation. Maybe not materially, but at least psychologically. I mean, what else would surprise us? I as well live in Beirut's southern suburbs, not too far from Karim's house, actually, in Bir Hassan.

3:30And as soon as the bomb started raining that morning, I waited until my family evacuated from the south. I met them at my home, and then we booked a hotel and moved. Those past couple of weeks have been basically moving between friends' houses, and I have a bunch of pets with me because we have a dog and a cat. As Kareem said, honestly speaking, what's extremely heart-wrenching is the fact that we got used to this. We have lived through way too many wars at this point in life, especially if you're, I don't know how old you are, Kareem, but myself, I'm in my 30s, so we've been living in a perpetual state of war since we were born.

4:11The southern Lebanon was only liberated in 2000. Then we had to live the 2006 war. My house in the south was blown up in 2006. We rebuilt it. Thankfully, it wasn't destroyed this time, but it was also damaged. Let's bring in Sarah. You're east of Beirut. What has your life been like since the beginning of this round of conflict? James, at the beginning, I would like to share my heartfelt sympathy with Tasneem and Karim. I cannot even fathom how it must feel like to relocate and lose your house. And no one, and I mean no one should know how it feels, but the reality says otherwise. I am still considered a quote-unquote blessed.

4:59I still have my house, but I don't live far away from Beirut. Everything has changed. Survivor's guilt is there. I can still hear and feel everything. The day-to-day plan is there. I could no longer plan ahead of time. and spending my time volunteering as much as possible and counting the blessings that I currently have. And I do not wish this experience to literally anyone. And the Lebanese people do not, they don't deserve this. No one deserves this. How do you all deal with the fact that around a million people have had to leave their homes? That's about one in seven of the population. That is a percentage which we've rarely seen in other countries on that scale.

5:49It is actually very sad. We're talking about the majority of the south is almost empty now. As you said, almost a million people, especially in Bairrut, are now relocated to the north and to other areas in Lebanon. It feels surreal, James. It feels surreal. I cannot describe how it feels. But all we can do now is focus on helping each other and support one another however and wherever we can. The irony is that currently, like the past couple of days, it was raining and there was a thunderstorm. And you would no longer, is it a thunder? Is it an airstrike? Is it a sonic boom? And it is not normal that to a certain extent you will get used to it, which it didn't already.

6:34And it's something day to day. Is it your mom moving the couch? Yeah. Or someone closed the door or a motorcycle is passing through the street. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And on the displaced, like honestly speaking, the internally displaced, we are currently blessed to have houses on top of our heads. It's beyond heartbreaking to see all the people living out of tents. Those people that are living in their cars who actually own their houses, who have houses, who had not had time to pack their things, to be able to take what they need. And again, sometimes some days are pretty cold and they're stuck without anything.

7:18There are kids on the streets. It's genuinely heartbreaking. Do you all know people from the South who've come up to Beirut? Oh yeah, thank you. Tell me the conversations you've had with them. I think there are several. It's a multifold conversation. The first conversation is ensuring and safeguarding security at the bare minimum for the next month or so. The second conversation is finding some level of short-term housing. The third conversation is trying to maintain work because many people are working class people. They need to work to get the bare minimum of income to actually survive the war.

7:54Some of them do remote work. Some of them actually have to work in the South, so they don't have any income anymore unless they have a company that's able to ensure that. Others have work in Beirut, so they have things slightly better. Not all companies have adequate insurance. Other companies do have adequate insurance. So it's not all the same, right? So that's on a social and economic level. But also a lot of resentment and frustration towards the global reality that we live in and the impunity in which Israel is able to really enforce itself. So it's very multifold and it depends on the audience you're speaking to and the diversity of audiences you're speaking to at this stage.

8:29Yeah, well, the other types of conversations, the first question is, are you guys safe? I'm speaking about the instance, like the first couple of days when they started to bomb the South and like a mass evacuation happened overnight and like people were stuck on the road for like hours on end, even a full day. At first it was, are you guys okay? Do you need anything? Do you have a place to stay? Fortunately, some of the people that I know are friends of mine do have apartments and houses in the areas that are not being targeted. So they're good. Other families went to shelters. So as a Lebanese citizen, the first thing that we can do is to ask what do they need and they're okay.

9:19And then you start asking, is your house okay? What about work and stuff like that? But mainly, the main conversation right now is, ironically speaking, did you hear that? They just struck this area. Did you feel it? Did you hear it? Let's go, let's come back to our houses. Now they're gonna bomb X, Y, and Z. In recent years, there have been periodic rounds of conflict. You've all made reference to the war in 2006, and there have been several rounds since then. How do you all as younger people try to plan your lives when you know that your country is routinely involved in waves of conflict? Sarah?

10:00it's it's about here we go again in 2006 i was 11 years old i was aware of the things but i was a kid at the time so i did not feel its intensity as i am now and in 2024 compared to now it was more targeted rather than random hits people are sleeping like they give us a warning around like 3 p.m. and you can find all the surrounding areas everyone has evacuated and the people who didn't who live in nearby cities have opened their windows and yet again they only bomb us at 3 a.m 6 a.m there's no structure there's no specific target it's just okay let's remove them and that's it we don't care about the consequences we don't care about anything we're just doing what we're doing and we just have to pay the price over and over again um the resilience that is embedded in the Lebanese people it is is what what's keeping us going what makes us finish our studies and dream of a career and work on it and and build a house and basically live on our land.

11:16Sarah you have your own personal plans for the future work and marriage and so on? Of course of course but Everything's on hold now. Everything's on hold. And it's not the first time. Every generation has to go through the same thing over and over again. Different means, more technologically advanced, but it's history repeating itself in some way or some form. It's generational, unfortunately. And I'm pretty sure that Tasneem and Karim can agree with me on that. Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah. I think everywhere in the world, people have plans. Unfortunately, in Lebanon, people do have plans, but they also have to have three to four to five contingency plans.

12:03And although that can allow someone to be more robust, be more prepared, it also does de-inspire people. It does really put them down. It also does burn them out. And that really affects the Lebanese economy too. It affects our productive progress of the people, whether that's institutionally, technologically, or politically. For example, I mean, the way to make Lebanon stronger includes political struggle in Lebanon, you know, actually making sure Lebanon becomes an institutional, just, fair, productive, social, political, economic enterprise. We can't do that in Lebanon because we're being bombed, right?

12:37We can't compete with the sectarian system because we're being bombed. We can't actually advance Lebanon as a country because we're being bombed. So there is this myth sometimes by many people in Washington who believe that if you bomb a country, then you could reform it. And I think that's a tragic, tragic, tragic policy that's really put us in a very bad direction. Karim, Sarah and Tasnim. That conversation was recorded a few days ago, but we've since been in touch with them to check in and thankfully they're all OK. I'm Rob Young and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

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15:12They start here. They grow here. Not culture or business. Culture and business. Puerto Rico. It's not what's next. It's where. Visit investpr.org forward slash business. As well as the humanitarian cost of this war, as Karim mentioned, there's also a financial price. We've discussed the dire state of Lebanon's economy on this programme in the past, but earlier this year the World Bank had more positive news, saying the country's finances were recovering after the 2024 ceasefire and even tourism was making a comeback. In our second conversation we brought together three business owners. Zainab's family runs a fashion accessories company, Khodor is the manager of Barzak, a cafe and bookshop in Beirut, and Tarek has two restaurants in the city.

16:07I began our conversation, which we recorded on Wednesday, by asking them about the ongoing airstrikes on the capital. So last night was a pretty tough one. We had a lot of bombing on the suburbs of Beirut and a lot of low-flying fighter jets all night. I think last night was very, very rough for the south of Lebanon. For the suburbs, it was not as intensive as before. There were like one or two strikes, as I know. But the jets were very, very low all over the suburbs and Beirut, extremely low last night. I live in Beirut, so I'm hearing a lot of strikes in Beirut, in central Beirut and on the suburbs as well.

16:49No, I couldn't agree more. You know, the same thing. Like it was very low yesterday. I think all of Beirut was awake yesterday night. I want to find out a bit about your businesses then. Tarek, tell me about your two restaurants. So we have one called Buko in Saifi Village. It's very central. It's like downtown Beirut. And the other one is close to it in a amazing neighbourhood called Bayhouse. Both are still open during the war. And our team, whoever can make it, is coming. But business has been very slow in a way or another, depending on the intensity of every night and the sounds, basically.

17:29So, Anab, is your family's fashion business still open? No. So basically, yeah, we do operate a fashion accessory supplier and we're currently not operating just like the 2024 war where we also stopped supplying. As demand really decreased significantly, we had the Ramadan season and the 8th season, which, may I say, were dead. Usually it's one of our busiest seasons yet where we have a high demand and designers and manufacturers usually push a great deal of deals. But right now, everything stopped and we are currently not operating at all. Khadr, what about your cafe and bookshop? So we are a cultural place in Beirut called Berdah.

18:09We are a cafe shop, restaurant and book space. The business is very, very, very slow. So now we're doing like we used to do in 2024. We're doing meals for displaced people and we're trying to help as much as we can. The business is not busy, so we're doing something else to help the community. but everything is happening like it's affecting the business really bad and the number of the customers are really really less than before like i think the business is backward like in 80 at least 80 that's a huge drop off in in business you're still open though we're still operating but you know to keep surviving in in all of this you have to do some kind of amendments like i I made the manual way less because if you have to buy stuff and the price is now skyrocketed, like everything is more expensive than before.

18:56The ingredients, the raw materials, even if you want to buy the gas or like if you want the generator, because you know that the power problem in Lebanon since 10 years back. So you have to pay more. So, yeah, you have to make amendments in every aspect. The biggest challenge for us as a business in Lebanon, even without the war, is the utility expenses. because like we get the electricity from the government, but it doesn't come all in the 24 hours. So we have to have kind of like generators and same with the water. So utility has been our biggest challenge in the business, giving now the higher prices of fuel and all of that.

19:34So everything got like pretty much more expensive for us. What was last night like, Tarik, at your restaurant? Did anybody come in to eat? Yeah, we had a few covers. So if you want to say the one in downtown Buko is more casual and it's like kind of a burger. So you get more traffic to it. The fine dining one, Bayhouse, is more affected. It's like a proper outing and you go to have a full experience. So yeah, it really depends on the night and the intensity of the night. So if they put a kind of a warning on the suburbs of Beirut, the business dropped drastically. The days we don't have hits on the suburb, we work a bit more.

20:16But like as Khudor said, the business is like down at least 80%. Why do you stay open then? Because, you know, if we close, it's going to affect the city. It's going to affect our employees. It's going to affect everyone. So we stay open just for like kind of resilience. We meet with the team every night, whoever can come. We make a staff meal. We take care of each other better than closing and tell them to sit at home. Like what Tarek said, we're making it a safe place to express, to talk, to be distracted. Because this bubble you're making is like you're disconnected from what's happening outside.

20:57And also, when the strikes, for example, happening in the suburb in Dahye, the business is affecting somehow, you know, like it's affecting. But like when it's getting to start in center of Beirut, like someplace, not in Rahi, the business really go down next day. You know, you have no one because people will start to be scared to go out. And like they will be like, no, if they're hitting here, for sure they will hit Hamra. For sure they will hit in downtown. So people fear will be bigger. So the staff right now, they're having the target of helping people. They're feeling like doing something.

21:28They're feeling like we have a mission to do. Disconnected from everything happening outside. So that's the bubble we're trying to make. to keep active? Because if you're going to stay at home thinking what's happening around you, you'll go crazy. So what we're doing, basically all the team comes, we set up the restaurant, and we do four times a week trainings on different topics with the team, some related to cost control, some related to service, some related to business in general and P &L. So we're trying to stay active as much as we can so we can maintain our staff and we can teach them something and train them for hopefully whenever this ends.

22:08For us, our showroom is completely closed. And since it's a family business, so we're majority family members. But for the people who are not regular employees, we just told them to stay at home. And we will, of course, pay you guys at the end of the month regardless. But for now, there is no work. The showroom is closed and they better stay safe at home. We're taking it week by week for now. We cannot project how long it's going to stay. Eventually, if it's going to stay three, four months, no one can retain a business with no income for three, four months. So we're going to have to assess every week.

22:45And now it's worse, actually, because last word in 2024, it was a Lebanon thing. Now it's a global problem. Prices are increasing everywhere. So as Starik is saying, yeah, we're working literally week by week to see how we're going to keep going. Yeah, exactly. For example, we ship our products from Dubai, Turkey and China. And right now everything is everything stopped. So we cannot ship from everywhere. Even suppliers don't want to take the risk. So for us, it's completely shut down. And it's not the first time that happened. As I mentioned, in 2024, we also did this for 66 days. But the surprising thing is that after the war back then, the business boomed like no other.

23:26Like people were really ready to go back to life again. And we had a very big boom this time. We don't even know if it's going to last for two months or even more. And we do not know if our clients will be able to rebuild everything that they've lost. And on that point that Zainab makes, is that the hope that when the war ends, people are desperate, Khadr, to go out and socialise? They're desperate to regain some kind of normality. It's different because, you know, we rely a lot on the expats flying in or expats supporting their families here. But this time, the main bulk of expats that come or support are the expats in the GCC.

24:06But these times, the GCC is having the same problem. So we don't really know if it's going to end, that people will come the way they did last war or send enough money for people here to go out like last war. That's right. And you don't know how long it's going to last. Because, for example, now we are in March. We're going to be in like spring and then summer. and as an FNB, we always rely on summer season. So if you're going to stay, for example, till spring or the beginning of summer, you lost your season. Last war, we had kind of vision. You were trying to understand some things. You have some factors to help you to figure things out.

24:40This war, we're literally in chaos. You have nothing to get a clue from. You're just living day by day, seeing what's going to happen. Hopefully it's going to end. But the easiest thing you can say, like we don't know we don't know nothing yeah definitely that's the problem yeah i agree actually because i said this to my friends as well as we were monitoring news in 2024 we were almost certain that a ceasefire was going to happen eventually like everything on on the ground was saying so this time it's hugely different and every day is different like every day you you hear statements saying that yeah this week or next week but in general like they don't even know when they're going to stop.

25:25So anybody listening to this in Beirut, if they do fancy going out tonight, Tariq, what's on the menu? Ah, if you come to Bayhouse, you'll definitely have to try our take on shawarma and our take on kibbinaya and the duck wrapped in vine leaves. Sounds terrific. Khadol, what's on the menu tonight at your place? Now I'm just doing the house sandwiches. I stop the daily dish. Whenever you come to Beirut, you have to try our chicken chimichurri, you'll love it. He is hoping Khadol gets to serve plenty of that chicken chimichurri in the future. Thanks to him, Tarek and Zainab for sharing their experiences.

26:05And just to say you heard a reference there to the GCC, that is the region of Arab nations bordering the Persian Gulf, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which have seen drone and missile attacks from Iran in recent weeks. I'm Rob Young and you've been listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

26:50The RealReal. and copywriting to shipping and pricing. So you can just sit back, get paid, and make room for things that actually feel like you. And with 10 ,000 plus new arrivals every single day from top designers like Prada, Celine, Louis Vuitton, and Loewe, all for up to 90 % off retail, you're bound to find something perfectly on brand to fill that extra closet space with. Plus, right now, you can get an extra$100 to shop when you sell for the first time. Make room for what feels like you. Go to therealreal.com to start selling and get your extra$100 to keep shopping at therealreal.com. That's therealreal.com.

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