Since the expansion of Israel’s war on Lebanon, accompanied by intense bombardment targeting areas in the south, the Bekaa, and Beirut’s southern suburbs, often without prior warning, a persistent feeling of fear has not left me. As the days passed, that feeling did not fade. Instead, it sharpened with the sound of Israeli warplanes that rarely leave the sky, and with the constant buzzing of drones that have once again become part of our daily lives.

When the first airstrikes began, I jumped out of bed in panic. I woke my parents, shouting: “Dahiyeh… Dahiyeh… they’re bombing.”

What I remember most clearly is how violently my body was shaking, and how I stood frozen in place for nearly half an hour, barely able to move.

My parents, by contrast, seemed far more composed. They exchanged puzzled looks about what was happening, but showed no obvious fear or confusion.

The following day, an apartment in Aramoun, about five minutes from our home, was targeted. This time, the strike sounded much closer. My father stayed where he was, calmly looking around before saying, “What was that sound? Seems like a nearby airstrike.”

His reaction angered me more than it reassured me. I turned to him, agitated, and asked, “How are you not afraid? How can you be like this?”

He answered simply, in a way that felt heavy with memories I do not know: “We’ve been through a lot… these sounds are nothing compared to what we lived through.”

Gradually, I began to understand the differences between generations: their experiences, and the ways they adapt to disasters and wars.

My father grew up in Ras al-Nabaa in Beirut. His family home stood exactly on the former Green Line that divided Beirut into “East and West,” separating Christian and Muslim areas during the civil war. Shells fell almost everywhere there. Stories about dealing with snipers and trying to avoid their bullets seemed endless.

For what must have been the thousandth time, he began telling me how a rocket once landed near him but did not explode. He says the neighborhood gathered around it, cautiously but curiously, as if they had grown used to living on the edge of danger.

He also recounts how he lost friends. Some were killed by sniper fire, others by shelling, including Israeli bombardment that struck Beirut. Even my aunt was not spared by the war. She was hit by shrapnel while trying to shield her daughter from the bombing.

And yet my father always insists that life did not stop. He says they found simple ways to resist fear and keep going. They would connect the television to a car engine to watch a football match, or play in the neighborhood until their clothes were dirty and they were exhausted from running, before returning home to the sound of war.

In one story he tells while laughing, he remembers the Israeli army dropping emergency evacuation boxes. He and his friends thought they were shells and ran in all directions. Even the one who claimed he was ready to resist, “with a pistol tucked at his waist,” ran as fast as the others. They scattered everywhere.

My mother was also displaced. She barely remembers the war because she was very young, and spent most of those years in Mount Lebanon, where the family fled to escape the bombing. Perhaps that is why she seems more anxious than my father. She rushes to go to bed before the Israeli airstrikes begin at night, strikes that have become almost expected by many Lebanese.

As for us, the so-called Generation Z, often described by older generations as more fragile or spoiled, we are not used to this.

Yes, we also lived through the years of assassinations between 2005 and 2014, along with our parents’ constant fear of the bombings that struck different parts of Lebanon. We grew up with that daily anxiety, with repeated warnings about places to avoid or roads that might be dangerous.

We also lived through the July War of 2006, and later the events of May 7, 2008, when Hezbollah took control of Beirut and surrounded the city. I did not fully understand what was happening at the time. I was just a child. But I clearly remember the panic that accompanied the sound of gunfire. My parents kept us in the corridor of the house, considering it the safest place, away from the windows, and we stayed there until the shooting subsided.

During the July 2006 war, the sounds felt somewhat more distant. We could hear the warplanes and the bombardment that targeted the airport and Beirut’s southern suburbs. I do not remember all the details of those days, only scattered scenes: the moment the war was announced and people were told to return home, and my mother’s fear when rumors spread that warplanes might fly at low altitude over Aramoun and Bchamoun. That day, she quickly decided to take us to Ainab in the mountains.

The 66-day war of 2024, which was framed as a war of “support for Gaza,” was different for me. By then, I had become a journalist, working as a field reporter, moving between sites that had just been targeted and interviewing people. At the time, fear did not stand in the way of my work or my daily life.

But this week feels different. It is as if my nervous system refuses to adapt to this level of terror. I remain in a constant state of alert, and sometimes I cannot fall asleep before sunrise.

I began to wonder whether I was exaggerating my reaction. Yet when I look around, I see the same anxiety in the eyes of many others. Perhaps we never truly became accustomed to a culture of war, despite everything we have lived through. Or perhaps this time feels more dangerous, as if we are confronting a monster that no one seems able to restrain, not political efforts, not diplomacy, not even military force.

The only thing that remains constant across these different generational experiences is that we inherit a permanent state of survival mode.