By Sonia Caballero Pradas, EMMIR Edition 11
As part of the European Master in Migration and Intercultural Relations (EMMIR) programme, students immerse themselves in migration-related work through internships and field research. Sonia Caballero Pradas, an Edition 11 student and her cohort's student representative, is currently pursuing her internship at the Institute for Migration Studies (IMS) at the Lebanese American University in collaboration with The MENA Organisation for Services, Advocacy, Integration & Capacity Development (MOSAIC). Since October, she has been contributing to migrant-led relief efforts while documenting her experiences for IMS’s Borders and Limitations Blog. Here, Sonia shares a poignant field diary entry from Beirut during a time of war, reflecting on the intertwined realities of displacement, solidarity, and the human spirit in crisis.
It is 7 p.m. on November 26. My friends, my partner and I sit idly on the couch, eyes fixed on the TV, anxiously hoping for news that Israel and Lebanon have finalised the ceasefire conditions. Outside, the sound of bombs persists while a news reporter stands before the rubble of a freshly destroyed building in Hamra, Beirut, delivering updates on the latest martyrs just moments before peace could take hold.
I arrived at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport in early October, amidst the Israeli-Hezbollah war that has filled the country again with scenes of rubble and dust. As the plane descended, smoke from a nearby bombardment lingered in the air, refusing to blend into the clouds. From my window seat—chosen from a long stretch of empty rows—I watched dark plumes of fog engulf the surrounding houses. I thought about the balconies of those houses, once hosting vibrant coffee conversations between neighbours on either side of the narrow streets, their words and the electricity cables crisscrossing above.
The airport was nearly empty, save for a few police officers, myself and a group of young Ethiopian women arriving in the country for the first time to work as domestic workers. They too gazed out the plane’s windows as we crossed Beirut’s sky, showing signs of confusion about what was happening beneath them. In Lebanon, the recruitment system for African and Asian workers offers little in terms of safety, protection or even basic information. They are the fuel for a racialised classist apparatus that demands cheap labour, regardless of whether the ravages of war consume them all together with the houses they sign to serve.
As I left the airport, cars carrying mattresses crossed every intersection. At times, there were so many mattresses on the highway that they seemed to merge into one, creating an endless, fluffy landscape stretching all the way to the North of Beirut. Displacement had become a daily reality, overshadowing the rhythms of our everyday lives. Yet, “displacement”, as the term exploited in our conversations and on the news, does not capture the full devastation that those mattresses, floating on the road, perhaps do. I have learned that being displaced means losing safety and privacy, the life savings once carefully hidden under beds or floor tiles to evade Lebanon’s banking horror movie, irreplaceable documents and certificates and the need to constantly reinvent the creative strategies required to make a functional home out of dysfunction.
"Displacement", as the term exploited in our conversations and on the news, does not capture the full devastation that those mattresses, floating on the road, perhaps do.
Strategies! These months have revolved entirely around them. Just as strangers’ hands once cleared shattered glass after the brutal Beirut Port explosion, they are now seen stirring stews in enormous pots or slicing endless piles of vegetables to prepare sandwiches. I, too, would find myself under the Israeli drones’ buzzing cacophony, joining collective efforts to prepare meals for displaced people in public schools, private shelters or along the promenade in Corniche el Manara and Ramle el Bayda. I would witness migrant women, like those who had arrived with me on the same plane, forming resilient support networks to rescue workers abandoned by their employers. And, in the warmth of The Great Oven, a space where foreign spices and tender meats mingled in the air, they would talk and I would take notes, surrounded by an unspoken recipe for intercultural solidarity.
Yesterday, before the ceasefire was announced, we were cooking again, sharing stories that reached far beyond the confines of that kitchen located in the heart of Beirut. We used those stories to steal brief smiles from friends and colleagues who had recently survived an explosion in their buildings, their injuries still raw and visible in their skin. But the laughter vanished as a bomb rattled the windows, sending us into simultaneous silence. For some, it brought back the rubble they had just escaped.
“Is everyone okay?”, someone asked.
“Was that a sonic bomb or a real one?”.
“It must be a bomb. It was too close”.
The bombing continued until I packed up and prepared to leave. I removed my apron, went outside of the building I jumped into my friend’s car, merging into the chaos of blaring horns and traffic as people fled the city. “Tonight”, he said, “Israel will flatten Beirut”.
We opened a bottle of wine. The ceasefire agreement had just been reached and would start at 4 a.m. The night would be long once more, but tomorrow, people would return to work and to whatever remained of their homes in Dahye, the South and the Bekaa. On the TV, we watched men celebrating, chanting and waving Hezbollah’s yellow flags. Others voiced defiance, blaming the same party for bringing war to the country. And countless others said nothing at all, clinging to silence as perhaps the only thing they still owned.
"Wait, so after all the massacres… that’s it? We won’t be bombed tomorrow? A few words and no more war?” my friend asked, her voice full of disbelief. “Until the next one”, another replied.
A year of war has just ended, the first year I have been away from Beirut since I left to start my Master’s studies with EMMIR. And as I write this, I watch from my balcony the row of mattresses floating again on the highway. This time, they are heading back home.
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