The sound of silence reigns as Beirutis hold their breath

Getty / Nick Donaldson

Growing up during Beirut’s civil war, in the 1970s and '80s, you quickly learnt that silence can come in many forms. The most common version we experienced, relative quiet, often accompanied the anxiety felt before a battle that could erupt at any moment, but also the opportunity to breathe and check in on loved ones while it was still possible.

Silence could also be tense, signalling a readiness for the next round of violence. It could be scary, as it was when everyone hunkered down in shelters. Silence came before the battle, but also after, as a moment of respite. As teenagers, we sometimes tried to drown out the silence at home with music blaring from our radios – an effort to pretend the war was not raging.

In recent months, silence has seeped back into the everyday lives of those living in Beirut, in the form of pauses. These are the pauses we take when we think how to answer a mundane “how are you?”. There are pauses before deciding to take or leave an item in the supermarket, given the loss of purchasing power.

In recent weeks, foreign embassies have asked their citizens in Lebanon to evacuate and European airlines have cancelled their flights, meaning silence has also expanded to cover the sadness when loved ones depart early or cancel their annual trip to Beirut because of the looming threat of a wider war.

In recent days, it feels like silence overwhelms Beirut, covering its neighbourhoods with a cloth of wariness and fatigue. Silence sets in as Israeli warplanes sow fear with mock raids and sonic booms above the city.

Israeli politicians have threatened to turn Beirut into another Gaza. Silence is loudest when Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah is about to speak, and his followers and haters alike tune in to their televisions, all hoping his words will help them predict what the coming hours or days will bring.

Despite these shared silences, there are no collective or co-ordinated strategies or responses to these threats. If the 2019 uprising among the Lebanese people briefly promised a shared belonging for the battered nation, the failure to impose accountability on the corrupt elites who have captured the state since the end of the civil war has eviscerated these aspirations.

Protests and mobilisation have largely ended, and efforts to secure accountability against the theft of wealth at the hands of the banks that were trusted to secure people’s life savings are limited to a few individual hold-ups that end with isolated negotiations. A feeling of helplessness has solidified over the four past years since the Beirut port explosion as the judiciary was reshaped to secure impunity and protection for suspected criminals rather than pursue justice.

Consequently, Beirut’s residents – young and old, Lebanese, visitors or refugees – await another round of violence largely through ad-hoc and grassroots responses. They do so as families, sometimes as neighbours, perhaps as friends, but nowhere in concerted action under the guidance of a competent public agency.

I say await, and not prepare, because there is little that most of Beirut’s residents can actually do to prepare for the war they are being promised. National bankruptcy has meant that even basic precautions, such as stocking up on canned foods, are only possible for a minority. According to a recent World Bank assessment, 80 per cent of Lebanon’s population lives below the poverty line, and most in the cities have no savings.

When it comes to access to essential services, Beirut’s residents have largely fended on their own for several years now; any “plan B” drawn up to secure basic needs is already in place. Water and electricity are secured through informal, mafia-like suppliers for modest households or, for the better-off, by direct generation at the building level, the national grid having supplied a maximum of three hours of power a day for the past four years.

Moreover, the fact that housing was the quintessential financial asset used to attract foreign capital in the past three decades means that property prices are well above almost everyone’s means. Research from Beirut Urban Lab estimates that the cheapest apartments in the city cost well over 1,000 times the minimum wage before 2018; its surveys found more than 20 per cent of city apartments are empty, held by absentee investors as financial asset for future gains.

In earlier wars, as during the 2006 Israel assault on Lebanon, people fleeing the violence were able to rent temporary apartments in other areas of the city. However, things are more complicated this time around since not only are people poorer and apartments more expensive, but the city’s sectarian divisions are also more pronounced. Indeed, in response to the financial meltdown, the mafia of warlords and bankers that has controlled the country since 1990 doubled down on divisive sectarian and anti-refugee discourses to redirect attention from their direct responsibility for bringing about the unfolding impoverishment.

The failure of the popular uprising mirrors the dismantlement of shared forms of public governance. A decade ago, planners were still drawing plans for a bright, unified future for Lebanon’s once-prosperous capital. However, today the concerted effects of overlapping crises, and the tensions and divisions associated with each of these crises, have pushed away even the semblance of a city government.

Torn by the internal rivalries of the political factions that have appointed them, members of the Beirut Municipal Council have not met for months if not years. A timid Facebook post indicates a preparatory meeting in the city governor’s office, but everyone knows there are no evacuation plans or emergency response schemes. If the war were to start, relief would be delegated to international humanitarian agencies and it will result in further weakening the fabrics of state governance and local solidarities.

People in Beirut face the threat of war as individuals and families, but they do not face it equally. Indeed, the surge in conflict is only the latest of a series of disasters, each of which has reorganised the city’s social and spatial fabrics into an incoherent patchwork of buildings and blocks.

Take the neighbourhood of Hamra where I live. High-end, multi-storey residential buildings that have their own water, electricity and security systems share walls with dilapidated structures where the refugee population and the most destitute Lebanese families often share apartments. During summer, many have taken to just sleeping on the streets, which are less congested than the one-room apartments they rent for two or three families.

A handful of districts cling to life by drowning the silence with an active nightlife where loud music from restaurants and pubs signals the emptiness of residential apartments above street level. This is particularly the case of the areas immediately affected by the 2020 port blast where the bruises of the explosion are still raw. Other neighbourhoods have become eerily silent after sunset since they lost electricity in 2020.

The differences are even wider at the scale of the greater city if one recognises the southern suburbs of Beirut, or Dahieh, as an integral part of the city’s urbanisation. Here, relations with south Lebanon are stronger as most residents trace their roots back to that part of the country. The south was also traditionally a weekend escape from the dense city, particularly in the hot summer months. But even before the unfolding war, the rising cost of fuel had curtailed the customary weekend escapes.

This area has suffered two Israeli strikes since October, but there are precedents. The location of Hezbollah’s headquarters and the strong association of the neighbourhood with the party resulted in its the full destruction by Israel in 2006. More than 20,000 residential units were destroyed, but Lebanon’s regional allies helped and it was possible to rebuild.

As the next war looms, and save for a small percentage of residents whose personal means allow them to rent apartments outside the targeted areas, most have resolved themselves – in line with their relatives in South Lebanon – to “die in their homes” because they cannot afford to rent a place elsewhere. Anxiety about possible destruction is particularly high since everyone doubts there will be sufficient international solidarity to rebuild next time.

Despite this unco-ordinated response to a looming crisis in a splintered city, most residents share similar fears; Beirutis hold their breath in unison. They may disagree on the best way forward, or what strategies they will have to adopt, but no one is preparing for the war to come. The war is here and Beirut faces it with divided positions but a common realisation is that Israel does not want peace. As long as the West supports Israel’s predation and supplies it with weapons, most of us can only hunker down and wait anxiously, in silence, without the protection of a state, like we did so many times before.