LEILA FADEL, HOST:
More than a fifth of the country of Lebanon is now displaced. Families, mostly from the South, where Israel says it's targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, have fled their homes. And many are now taking refuge anywhere they can find it, including nightclubs. And NPR's Arezou Rezvani takes us to one.
AREZOU REZVANI, BYLINE: If you had visited Skybar just a couple of months ago, you'd have found the crown jewel of Beirut's night life.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
REZVANI: Perched on the waterfront, Beirutis and foreigners would drink and dance until dawn. Those days are now long gone. What used to be the dance floor is now home to hundreds of displaced families. The DJ stage is covered in sleeping mats. And those big, burly club bouncers - they're now babysitters, watching children chase each other in and out of the club while drones buzz overhead. Skybar, one of Beirut's hippest night clubs, has been transformed into a shelter for displaced families fleeing Israel's bombing. In one corner of the dance floor, I meet 48-year-old Fatten Assaf, whose life has turned upside down.
FATTEN ASSAF: We sleep somehow, unpeacefully, feeling afraid, feeling scared. I think there is no place which is safe now - 'cause people are being killed everywhere, and I can't feel safe anymore.
REZVANI: Fatten was a high school English teacher - her husband, a plumber. For years, they had lived a quiet life in Dahiyeh, a densely populated suburb of Beirut, with their two kids. That all changed the day Israel dropped massive bombs on their neighborhood to kill Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah.
ASSAF: The explosion was so huge - many explosions one after another, and I dragged my children - like, dragged them so fast. Even I run away without my scarf.
REZVANI: They've been living at Skybar ever since, eating food and sleeping on mats donated by nonprofit organizations and donors. She's grateful to be alive, but having watched the horrors unfolding in Gaza, she's resigned to what war could bring her.
ASSAF: I'm so tired. We are tired. Now, just I don't want to run away anymore. I will stay here. If God wishes me to die, then it's God's wish.
REZVANI: Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel the day after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel last October, triggering a low-key conflict across the border. A month ago, Israel stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah, killing its leader and then sending ground troops into Lebanon. When I ask Fatten who she blames for the war, for her displacement, for her family's uncertain future, she holds back. Whether out of fear or frustration, she steers clear of politics. But across the dance floor, 57-year-old Sabah Farhad has little doubt.
SABAH FARHAD: (Non-English language spoken).
REZVANI: "Israel and America," she says, her daughter echoing her in the background. "Israel has no mercy, does not differentiate between fighter and civilian, between young and old," she tells me.
FARHAD: (Non-English language spoken).
REZVANI: Sabah shows me her little patch of the dance floor. A tea kettle boils in one corner. She tells me her family has been twice displaced, first from their village of Houla in the south, where Israel has carried out the most intense bombardments in Lebanon, and from the Beirut suburb they relocated to that Fatten also fled from, Dahiyeh. Like many people in this club, she's certain her home is gone, destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. And like many people in this club, it's not Lebanon's government she sees coming to their aid or defending their lands. It's Hezbollah.
FARHAD: (Through interpreter) We want to allow the resistance, the fighters to do whatever they can to fight the Israelis back. We want them to liberate our lands and to allow us to go back to our villages with our heads held high.
REZVANI: There is no going back for Sabah or Fatten - not any time soon. The war is expanding. Israel has ramped up its bombings across Lebanon in recent days. Hezbollah continues to launch drone and rocket strikes into Israel, and more than a million displaced Lebanese people are watching and wondering if they'll ever make it back home.
Arezou Rezvani, NPR News, Beirut. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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