'Like someone pressed pause on life': How Israeli strikes transformed Lebanon's buzzing capital

"Let’s smile so we look better in the pictures they are taking," jokes Marwan, the chief waiter at a Beirut hotel.

He and a colleague are gazing at the sky, trying to spot the Israeli surveillance drone buzzing overhead.

Neither the music playing in the background nor birdsong can mask its deep, humming noise. It’s like someone has left a hairdryer on, or a motorbike is doing laps of the clouds.

Marwan’s hotel is not in an area with a strong Hezbollah presence.

It’s in Achrafieh, a wealthy Christian quarter that’s not been targeted by Israel in previous wars. It’s also where I am based.

Days later, two Israeli missiles roar over Achrafieh.

I hear children and adults in the neighbourhood scream. People run to their balconies or open their windows trying to figure out what’s just happened.

Within seconds a strong explosion shakes the tree-lined streets.

Everyone in my building looks towards Dahieh, the Hezbollah-dominated southern suburb of Beirut which is partly visible from Achrafieh.

But soon we realise the strike has hit an area just a five-minute drive away from us.

Local media say the target is Wafiq Safa, a high-ranking Hezbollah security official who’s also the brother-in-law of recently killed leader Hassan Nasrallah. He reportedly survives.

The building that was hit was full of people who’d recently fled to Beirut. No warning was issued by the Israeli army, and at least 22 people were killed. It was the deadliest attack yet.

“Oh my God. What if we were passing through that street?” a neighbour exclaims. “I pass that street to go to work.”

“What is the guarantee that next time they won’t hit a building on our street, if they have a target?” another asks.

The recent turmoil in Lebanon started on 17 and 18 September, when waves of pager blasts killed at least 32 and left more than 5,000 injured, both Hezbollah fighters and civilians. Many lost their eyes or hands, or both.

Air strikes intensified in the south, as well as on Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing high-rank Hezbollah commanders including Nasrallah. On 30 September, Israel invaded southern Lebanon.

Officials say more than 1,600 people have been killed in Israel’s bombardment over the past weeks.

I’ve seen many of the strikes from my own balcony.

The past three weeks have felt like a “fast-forward”, Marwan the waiter tells me. “We haven’t digested what exactly happened.”

I’ve spoken to him many times in the past 12 months since tensions erupted between Hezbollah and Israel.

He’s lived here his entire life and seen all the wars between the two sides. But he’s always been an optimist, and never believed that this round of fighting would escalate into a war.

“I withdraw what I was telling you,” he tells me now. “I didn’t want to believe it but we are at war.”

The face of the Beirut has completely changed.

Streets are packed with cars, some parked in the middle of boulevards. Hundreds fleeing Israeli operations in the south of the country have fled to the capital’s suburbs, sheltering in schools in “safer” neighbourhoods. Many have found themselves sleeping on the streets.

On the motorway towards the airport and the south, billboards show Hassan Nasrallah’s face. Both pro- and anti-Hezbollah people tell me these feel surreal.

In other areas, posters that previously read “Lebanon doesn’t want war” now say “Pray for Lebanon”.

The city’s iconic Martyrs’ Square - usually host to protests and huge Christmas celebrations - has turned into a tent city.

Families squeeze under the skeleton of an iron Christmas tree. Around a cut-out clenched fist installed above the square after youth protests in 2019, there are blankets, mattresses and tents made of whatever else people could find.

More of the same awaits around every corner. Makeshift homes stretch from the square all the way down to the sea.

Most of the families here are Syrian refugees, who’ve found themselves displaced again and barred from shelters which are limited to Lebanese nationals.

But many Lebanese families have found themselves homeless too.

Just over a kilometre away, 26-year-old Nadine is trying to take her mind off everything for a few hours.

She’s one of very few customers at Aaliya’s Books, a bookshop-bar in Beirut’s Gemmayze neighbourhood.

“I don’t feel safe any more,” she tells me. “We keep hearing explosions all night.

“I keep asking myself: what if they bomb here? What if they target a car in front of us?”

For a long time, Beirutis believed that tensions would stay limited to Hezbollah-run border villages in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah, who led the powerful Shia political and military organisation, said he didn’t want to take the country to war, and that the front against Israel was solely to support Palestinians in Gaza.

That all changed.

In Beirut, although strikes mostly land in the southern suburbs, where Hezbollah dominates, they send shockwaves across the city - resulting in sleepless nights.

Businesses are affected. Aaliya's Books is usually a lively place, hosting local bands, podcasts and wine-tasting nights.

We were filming here for a report right after the first air strike on Dahieh, on 30 July, which killed Hezbollah’s second-in-command Fuad Shukr.

Intense sonic booms could be heard overhead as Israeli jets broke the sound barrier.

But a jazz band played all night, with dancing patrons crowding the bar. Now the place is empty, with no music and no dancing.

“It is sad and frustrating,” says bar manager Charlie Haber. “You come here to change your mood but again you will end up talking about the situation. Everyone is asking, what is next?”

His place closed for two weeks after Nasrallah’s killing. Now they’ve reopened, but shut at 8pm instead of midnight.

Day by day, the psychological strain on staff and customers worsens, says Charlie. Even a post on Instagram takes half a day to write, he adds, because you “don’t want to look like ‘hey, come and enjoy and we’ll give you a discount on drinks’ in this situation”.

It’s hard to find anywhere open late any more in this area.

Loris, a well-loved restaurant, never used to shut before 01:00 - but now the streets are deserted by 19:00, says one of its owners, Joe Aoun.

Three weeks ago you couldn’t get a table here without a reservation. Now, barely two or three tables are taken each day.

“We take it day by day. We are sitting here and talking together now, but maybe in five minutes we’ll have to close down and leave.”

Most of Loris’s staff come from Beirut’s southern suburbs or villages in the country’s south. “Each day one of them hears that his house is destroyed,” says Joe.

One employee, Ali, didn’t come to work for 15 days as he was trying to find somewhere for his family to stay. They’d slept under olive trees in the south for weeks.

Joe says Loris is trying to stay open to help staff make a living but he’s not sure how long this can continue. Fuel for the generators is extremely expensive.

I see the frustration on his face.

“We are against war,” he says. “My staff from the south are Shia but they are against war too. But no one asked for our opinion. We can’t do anything else. We just need to to hold on.”

Back at Aaliya’s, both Charlie and Nadine are worried about community tensions rising.

These parts of Beirut are mostly Sunni Muslim and Christian - but the new arrivals are largely Shia.

“I personally try to help people regardless of their religion or sect but even in my family there are divisions over it. Part of my family only help and accommodate displaced Christians,” she says.

Out in the squares and alleys of Achrafieh and Gemmayze, more and more flags can be seen of Lebanese Forces, a Christian party that strongly opposes Hezbollah.

The party has a long history of armed conflict with Shia Muslims, as well as Muslim and Palestinian parties during the civil war, three decades ago.

Nadine thinks this is a message to displaced Shias who have recently arrived, saying “don’t come here”.

With the movement of people, there are also fears that Israel can now target any building in any neighbourhood in its search for Hezbollah fighters or members of allied groups.

Hezbollah says its high-ranking officials do not stay in places assigned to displaced people.

None of this bodes well for local businesses.

Many in Gemmayze were already badly affected by the Beirut port explosion four years ago, which killed 200 people and destroyed more than 70,000 buildings. They’d only recently started getting back on their feet.

Despite the financial crisis, new places were springing up in the area - but many of them have closed now.

Maya Bekhazi Noun, an entrepreneur and board member of the restaurant and bar owners’ syndicate, estimates that 85% of food and drink spots in downtown Beirut have shut down or limited their opening hours.

“Everything happened so fast and we couldn’t do any statistics yet but I can tell you more around 85 percent of food and beverage places in downtown Beirut are closed or working for limited hours only.”

“It is difficult to keep the places open for joy when there are many people are sleeping without enough food and supplies nearby.”

Despite the tough situation in Beirut, you can still find bustling restaurants and bars around a 15 minute-drive north. But Maya says that too is temporary.

“Strikes may happen in other locations too. There have been attacks on some places in the north. There is no guarantee they will be safe either.”

It’s like someone pressed a button and life stopped in Beirut, she says.

“We are on hold. We were aware of the war in the south - and somehow affected by it too - but many like me didn’t expect the war to come this close.”