Children are often disproportionately affected by war – and the 2026 Lebanon war is no different. But how do children adapt to loss and displacement, and what helps them make sense of their situation?
By the time the school in Beirut's southern suburbs comes into view, on the forty-fifth day of the war, the day is already beginning to transition into evening. The light softens, but the playground has not quieted yet. Children are running through the open yard, chasing each other toward the far wall and back again. Their voices travel easily through the school grounds, blending with the lower murmur of adults seated on benches, standing in thresholds, or moving across the courtyard. Around the yard, two unfinished buildings loom over the scene. They had been under repair before the war intensified, then the work stopped, leaving behind exposed concrete, broken edges, and missing windows.
Whenever Ali Atwi spots a familiar face, he runs toward it, even if he is in the middle of playing with the other boys. He breaks away from the playground and comes to sit on the concrete steps – though not quite settling, his gaze is still pulled toward the restless movement of the yard. He is a boy with red cheeks, front teeth still growing, and a slight lisp when he pronounces the letter “r.”
“My name is Ali Atwi,” he says carefully, almost formally. “I am nine and a half years old. I am from South Lebanon, and I live in the southern suburb of Beirut. I am in grade 3.” Ali and his family have been in this shelter since the war intensified on 2 March 2026. It is a boarding school, so families are not sleeping in classrooms but in the school's own rooms – while mattresses spread across the floor and belongings gather into corners. His father died several years ago due to a heart attack, and ever since, his mother has been raising his sister, his brother, and him on her own. Today, the four of them shelter here together.
When Ali remembers life before the war, he begins with listing small things. Toast with cheese for breakfast. Teachers who were “very kind.” A rooftop where he played with his uncle. “Do you know what happened today?”, he asks, brightening up at once, lifting his shoe to reenact how a nail went through the sole and came out the other side without touching his foot. By the time he finishes, he is already somewhere else, talking about his shoes and why he finds his white pair “too girlish.”
A short walk from the playground stands the dining hall, its wide windows opening to the yard outside. Wooden columns rise toward a bright ceiling where ribbons and stars still hang – small remains of a celebration that had once filled the space. Ali settles on the steps beside it, where the sounds of the playground still linger, softened by distance. When the conversation turns toward home, he begins with a room. His favorite place had been the bedroom. “It was full of toys, everywhere, around the beds and under them. Cars and other kinds of toys.” His favorite had been a huge toy car without a roof. Then comes the sentence that quietens everything around it: “When the house was bombed, we didn't find anything except one of its wheels.”
The house had been the family's first, newly painted and furnished before it was destroyed in the previous war. So, when asked what features a new house should have, he does not say electricity or more space, but instead: “My toys, my cars.” Other children in the shelter possess some, but he does not want those: “They are their toys.” There are other things missing too. He had a small yellow tennis ball, but lost it. He had a scooter. “It was very nice, but it broke.”
Laure Saad is a clinical psychologist specializing in children and adolescents. She has been working with displaced families throughout the war. Displacement, she says, is never restricted to the loss of a house. “It also means the loss of routine, familiar objects, and the predictability that helps a child feel safe. When those are repeatedly disrupted, children may become more attached to what remains – a toy, a piece of clothing, a sibling, a parent – not because the object itself matters more but because it begins to hold the feeling of what might be lost again.” In that setting, she adds, play becomes even more important: “It is one of the main ways children express what they cannot yet fully say, connect with others, and keeps some part of development moving amid unstable conditions.”
When Ali imagines what comes after the war, he does not think about rubble or repair. He thinks about tidying up. “The first thing we will do is cleaning the house, the clothes, and everything on the floor.” Children, Saad notes, do not usually understand war first through politics. “They make sense of it through what changes around them: the fear or calm they read in their parents' faces, the move to another place. They don't need an overload of detail; they need clear explanations in a language they can hold, and adults who can help make the world feel legible again.”
When asked where he dreams of living, Ali answers without hesitation: Markaba, his home village. He loves the village square, though he says, “Israeli bulldozers have razed it.” He no longer knows whether his grandparents' house is still standing. When asked who he wishes were with him in the shelter, he answers at once: “I wish my aunt Khadija was here.” Her name softens his voice. She would send him to buy groceries from the shop beside her house.
By the time night settles over the shelter, only a few children are still playing in the yard. Ali wants a room filled with toys and a phone his mother has promised to buy him when the war ends. When asked what he might like to become one day, the question seems to delight him. He speaks of having a phone store and, with the same eager certainty, of becoming a combatant. For Saad, a child's dreams cannot be separated from the setting in which they are formed. “Children imagine the future through the people around them, the culture they live in, and the examples they see closest to home. In war, ordinary wishes do not disappear – they are reshaped, continuing alongside the language of conflict.”
Death has entered Ali's imagination too. He tells of a boy he used to fight with at school, someone he believes was killed after seeing his photo on a phone. How does he feel? “It was normal.” The boy had not been polite, he says, and so he does not think he is in heaven. Who goes to heaven? “People who are kind.” And him? “I think I will go.” Heaven, he adds, is “a very nice place.” He grows quiet for a moment, then says: “We will die for sure.” Children grieve, Saad notes, but often not in the ways adults expect. “A calm or casual tone can mean many things: uncertainty about what happened, or simply a way of keeping painful feelings far enough away to go on living beside them.”
Then someone from the shelter calls Ali's name. He rises quickly and runs off toward the building. The playground is beginning to empty. Children make their way inside, called back by mothers, gathered by older siblings, or peel away from their games on their own. The steps only hold the echo of what has been said – a toy car reduced to a single wheel, a village square razed, a future imagined in the same breath as death. The children still crossing the yard seem to carry the outline of stories not yet told, with their own wounds, absences, and small surviving hopes to carry into the years ahead.
Reporting Lebanon is a collaborative storytelling project that brings together independent Lebanese journalists to document everyday life in a country shaped by war, displacement, and prolonged instability. Through in-depth reportages and narrative-driven features, the project focuses on the human, social, and psychological realities that have unfolded in the aftermath of the 2023–2024 escalation – at a time when violence has formally subsided in parts of the country, yet insecurity and uncertainty persist. Rather than offering situational reports, Reporting Lebanon prioritizes long-form journalism that stays close to its protagonists. The project seeks to capture how people experience, remember, and endure war – and how its consequences continue to shape daily life long after the headlines fade. Reporting Lebanon is a cooperation between the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and zenith.
