A Promise

The message came suddenly, unassuming, almost too small for the weight it carried. A woman I had never met, reaching out in desperation. She didn’t ask for money, shelter, or food. She asked for something so simple, so human, it made my chest tighten.

"Can you help me get some elderly diapers?"

That was all. No explanations, no details. Just a request wrapped in quiet urgency.

I went.

What I saw was beyond heartbreaking.

A family of five—a mother, her three children, and their elderly grandmother—crammed into a small, bare space. In the corner, under an old, tattered blanket, lay the grandmother. Her frail body curled on the hard floor, the lines on her face telling stories of a lifetime of endurance. When I greeted her, she opened her arms wide, as if embracing a long-lost friend.

She tried to sit up, but she couldn’t. She called out to her grandchild with a voice both tender and commanding:

“Make coffee or tea. We have a visitor.”

She had a broken pelvis. Moving was agony. Yet, in that moment, she wasn’t a woman in pain. She was a host, a matriarch, the keeper of traditions. She had forgotten her suffering, if only for a moment, to do what the people of Baalbeck have always done: honor a guest.

I returned a few days later, carrying more than just diapers. I brought a bed, a walker, something to ease her days, something to lift her off the cold floor. When she saw them, she raised her trembling hands to the sky, whispering prayers I could barely hear.

She held my hand tightly and made me promise her something.
 

Her words carried more than hope. They carried certainty. A future she willed into existence, beyond the rubble, beyond the grief.

For this woman—too old to flee, too proud to complain—the real war was not just about survival. It was about dignity, about holding on to the rituals that make us human.

She was not just surviving; she was keeping something much older than war alive. Matriarchy, and the ability to care for others even in the darkest of times. She did not forget who she was, nor who she had always been: a protector, a nurturer, the keeper of a home that war could not erase.

Her story is one among thousands. And yet, it is hers alone

Lebanese-Israeli War 2024.

War is often told through headlines, casualty counts, and sweeping narratives of national loss. Within these generalized accounts, the individual, and especially the woman, usually folds into a collective experience that overlooks her personal suffering, resilience, and survival. This project seeks to break that silence by documenting the voices of displaced women, whose lives were irrevocably changed by war but whose stories rarely find space in public memory.

Through a series of deeply personal testimonies gathered from women in shelters and displacement homes in Lebanon’s underprivileged urban peripheries, particularly in regions like the Bekaa and Baalback, we aim to highlight the layered and often invisible impact of conflict on women. These areas receive minimal attention from the government, and many are underdeveloped, with weak infrastructure making it more difficult to live a dignified life.

The testimonies collected in this project are not just about displacement; they are about motherhood under fire, generational trauma, loss without closure, and strength in the face of abandonment. They reflect how women carry war in their bodies, silences, and quiet acts of endurance. By centering their voices, we challenge the dominant, family-centered narratives of war and bring forward a gendered lens that reveals the intimate and often overlooked dimensions of conflict.

This project is both an act of documentation and of recognition. It insists that women’s experiences during war are not secondary; instead, they are central. Their voices deserve to be heard not as background noise to the chaos, but as the heartbeat of survival itself.