Zain Samir

Ifirst met​ Hassan in October 2024, a few weeks after his flat in Dahieh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, was destroyed in an Israeli bombing. His wife and children, he said, were now living with three other families in her sister’s cramped apartment elsewhere in the city, while he slept in his car. Hassan had lived all his life in Dahieh. Even now, his car was parked on the edge...

To celebrate​ the first week of their marriage, Wafiq decided to cook lunch for his wife. He fried eggs on his brand-new stove while Rana arranged the dishes. Wafiq and Rana got married in the last week of October, and moved into the apartment. Thanks to the war, they decided not to have a wedding party, or even a family dinner.

Wafiq was proud of his new apartment, in the village of...

On a warm afternoon​ in October, the streets of the southern Lebanese town of Aalma El Chaeb were deserted. The petrol station, the grocer, the bakeries and the church had all been shut down. In the middle of town, three grey herons sifted through weeks-old bags of rubbish, oblivious to the monotonous whine of an Israeli drone flying somewhere overhead. On a ridge opposite, outside the...

Early this year​, Samer Fa’our noticed that small earthquakes were rattling his building in the southern Turkish city of Antakya with increased frequency. The tremors were mild, and his wife and children often slept through them, but they made him feel uneasy. Like millions of Syrians, he had lived through years of civil war: Syrian jets and helicopters had dropped bombs on his...

There​ are hundreds of military bases scattered across Afghanistan, from concrete watchtowers, surrounded by razor wire, to massive airbases, fortified with concrete blast walls and watchtowers stretching for miles. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan and foreign soldiers, officers, technicians, cooks, cleaners and generals occupied these bases, along with armoured Humvees, helicopters,...