These Shia families withstood Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and are now struggling to find where they fit.
Dahiyeh, Beirut, Lebanon – Fatima Kandeel, 43, and her two sons moved into a new rented apartment in the southern suburbs of Beirut in March.
They had been staying with her sister Aida nearby for four months after a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon had stopped the worst, but not all, of Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, and it felt good to have their own place.
In their barely furnished living room in Laylake, Dahiyeh, with only two armchairs and a shisha pipe between them, the walls make clear where the family stands.
A framed photo of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah hangs beside a martyr’s portrait of Fatima’s 21-year-old nephew, a Hezbollah fighter killed in an Israeli air strike in Jnoub in October.
