The war returned. I realized it before I even opened my eyes.

At around three in the morning on Monday, a series of massive explosions jolted me awake. I found myself standing in the middle of the living room, mumbling words I did not understand. I could not grasp how I had left the bed, or how I had walked all the way there. It felt as if my body had moved without my awareness.

This chaos is familiar. It is war… once again.

In the morning, I was on the streets of Beirut trying to do my job as a journalist: interviewing displaced people. But this time, a sense of embarrassment followed me. It was the second displacement in two years.

What can you ask people who fled their homes in the middle of the night, only to end up on sidewalks with their belongings stuffed into black plastic bags?

We walked carefully through streets that had once again turned into the stage of a vast human tragedy.

Bread bags, blankets, and pillows were scattered everywhere.

Most of those fleeing were still in their pajamas. They escaped as they were, without even the time to change their clothes.

“We were sitting comfortably in our homes,” one woman says, pointing to the street around her. “And now the war is back again.”

Her three children cling to her. Their small hands hold school bags decorated with images of Frozen and Spider-Man. As if they had just come out of school, not fled their homes under bombardment.

A few steps away, a woman lies stretched over her suitcase. Slowly exhaling cigarette smoke, she says: “Seven hours on the road.”

A man carrying a small child whispers:

“I can’t talk… we’re getting hit from every side, you know what I mean?”
He gestures to the camera, signaling the danger of speaking openly at such a sensitive moment.

We approach a small truck loaded with mattresses. At the back, the door hangs open. A pair of shoes lies on the road. Blankets are spread inside, and someone is trying to sleep amid the noise.

In the front seat of the parked truck sits a woman with swollen eyes and a face exhausted from fatigue. When I approach, she raises her hand to signal that she cannot speak.
Hher voice won’t come out,” the man beside her says.

Nearby, a police officer stands holding a sheet of paper with school names written by hand. He tries to guide people toward places where they might find shelter.

We take van number four toward Hamra.

At the entrances of cheap hotels, displaced families crowd together. A dirty room can cost up to five hundred dollars.

The faces of passersby on the busy streets of Hamra look exhausted. Along the way, the same sentence repeats again and again:

“They threatened Dahieh… where did they strike?”

The question echoes among pedestrians, in cafés, and along the sidewalks.

Above us, drones circle relentlessly, their buzzing drilling into our brains. At the same time, markets are crowded and banks are packed. People move quickly, buying supplies, withdrawing cash, trying to arrange whatever can still be arranged. The fear of the unknown is palpable.

With us was a fellow journalist who had also been displaced. Along the way, we stopped several times to photograph phone numbers of apartments for rent written on walls and signs, hoping she might find somewhere to stay.

Our walk leads us to Manara. The sea always opens its arms to everyone.

Cars packed with mattresses. People in pajamas. And many children climbing the iron railing overlooking the sea, staring at the horizon.

A grandmother holding her granddaughter’s hand says:

“We can’t find an apartment… they want three hundred dollars per night.”

We approach another family.

A man in his forties says:

“After the 2024 war we left the tents, but we couldn’t go back home, so we moved to Dahieh. I sold my car to pay the rent… look now. No house and no car to protect us from the cold.”

Another man says:

“In 2024 we fled to Tripoli… can we go to Tripoli now? We can’t.”

On one of the benches overlooking the sea sits a mother and her daughter. Between them is a small cage holding a yellow bird. The family could not leave it behind. The bird fled with its home, inside its home. But the little girl who takes care of it now has no home.

“She felt sad for it,” the mother says softly. “Poor thing.”

Baby strollers, wheelchairs, and scattered bags fill every corner.

A woman in labor lies beside the road. Fear has triggered her contractions. She twists in pain, alone.

Another woman sits on the sidewalk beside her father and says:

“They threatened our home today…”

Nearby, a young woman in her twenties sits smiling, with bright blue eyes. She welcomes us and says she is writing her diary because it gives her some relief. She reads us a few lines, then waves goodbye:
“Come visit us again.”

We approach another woman hoping she might agree to an interview. With deep anguish she says:
“We are decent people… not like this. I can’t be filmed like this.”

Another man says quietly:
“There’s nothing we can say. Complaining to anyone but God is humiliation.”

On a nearby bench sit two girls, around ten years old, coloring in a drawing book. Their legs swing in the air, too short to reach the ground.

“We ran away,” one of them says simply while coloring. “There were many airstrikes, and they were loud.”

This is their third day on the street.

Earlier today they called out to us from afar and we met their grandmother. The entire family now sleeps inside a small truck.

By the end of this long day of reporting, the entire scene felt like an open question.

In war, cities do not only disappear under bombardment. The meaning of things changes as well.

Sidewalks become homes.

Cars become bedrooms.

Children learn the art of escape.

And we walk through these stories carrying our notebooks and cameras, trying to document what is happening.

But the harsh truth always remains simpler than words:

The war has returned, and people have returned to the streets.