Beirut, Lebanon – Over the last 11 months, as air raids hit villages near their home, Lakmani and her mother Sonia decided to stay in their south Lebanese village of Jouaiya, about a 25-minute drive east of Tyre and a little under an hour from the southern border.“There were some raids not far away,” Lakmani, 26, said
Her 45-year-old mother Sonia continued, “And they broke the sound barrier a few times.” Shortly before giving birth to Lakmani, who has resided in Lebanon her entire life and works as a private tutor, Sonia traveled from Sri Lanka to work as a cleaner in Lebanon.
Sitting on a park bench in downtown Beirut, where she and her mother currently sleep, Lakmani told Al Jazeera, “But then on Monday, bombs started falling and we said: ‘Okay, we should go.'”
That day, September 23, would go on to become the deadliest day since the end of the country’s civil war in 1990. Israeli bombs rained down on villages in the south and the Bekaa Valley in the east of Lebanon, killing at least 550 people
Lakmani and Sonia gathered a few belongings, mostly clothes, and fled to Tyre, thinking they would be safe there.
But after three days, the air raids around Tyre were so violent that they decided to move north to Beirut.On Friday, September 27, the Israeli military sent evacuation orders for large parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, creating a displacement crisis in the capital.They, like other foreign workers in Lebanon, are now sleeping rough