Loubna El Amine

We had been in Beirut for barely two days when the concierge told us we had only half a tank of water left to use in the apartment. At ten the next morning, he knocked on the door to say we were almost out. The water delivery truck was arriving a bit later, he said, and asked if I wanted to pay him in advance the 500,000 Lebanese liras (slightly more than five US dollars). We had not been at home much since we arrived and, when we were, had been consumed by the challenge of not overloading the power circuit. The concierge had made his disgruntlement clear the second time we asked him to flip the disjoncteur which he alone had access to, as demanded by the private generator company that provided most of our electricity. Now he was telling us we were nearly out of water.

Samir Ayoub pulled his sister out of the burning car where her three daughters, Remas, Taleen and Layan, aged fourteen, twelve and ten, together with their grandmother, burned to death. The family had been driving to Beirut from their house in Blida, a village close to Lebanon’s border with Israel. They had gone back to pick up additional belongings for what now promised to be a long stay in Beirut. An Israeli airstrike hit their car as they drove through the village of Aynata. Ayoub, a local journalist, was driving ahead.