A friend sent me a satellite image of his house in southern Lebanon — or rather, the gray patch of ash where it used to stand. He had spent years building it stone by stone, only for it to vanish from the map before he ever got to live in it. What do you say to someone whose home has been erased so completely? How do you offer condolences for a house?
The destruction of homes in war is not unusual in itself. Houses are flattened by airstrikes or systematic demolition, while their owners can do little but watch helplessly. Most civilians in southern Lebanon now find themselves trapped between the two sides of the conflict: the Israeli military on one side and Hezbollah on the other.
Many Lebanese have begun paying significant sums every few days for updated satellite images of their villages, simply to check whether their homes are still standing. Commercial European satellite services now provide near-live imagery of southern Lebanon. Google Earth, by contrast, remains outdated. Entire villages that have since been destroyed still appear untouched in older images, frozen in time before the war. Some residents almost wish those images would never update.
The friend who sent me the image of his obliterated home had spent years building it but never got the chance to move in. I often accompanied him to inspect the construction site. He used to say he felt as though he were raising the house like a child, watching it grow gradually — from a plot of land to foundations, then columns, walls and a roof. Over time, the project became real, nearly complete.
He followed the construction of my own home in the same way. For years, we spent weekends checking on what had been completed, watching our houses slowly take shape in manageable installments. People like us, without large savings or cash reserves, build our dreams piece by piece. During Lebanon’s banking collapse, we believed ourselves fortunate for not having left our savings in the country’s financial system, where depositors lost access to their money. We thought investing in homes in southern Lebanon might spare us that fate. Those who escaped the banks, however, saw war consume the savings of a lifetime instead.
I consider myself lucky. After more than a decade of construction, I managed to live in my home for a few years before emigrating to the United States. My friend never had that chance. He was still waiting to finish the final details — the “finishing touches,” as builders call them. We used to visit his house overlooking the valley in the town of Zawtar, near the Litani River at sunset, checking on the cement bags, steel bars and pipes scattered across the site before continuing to my own half-finished house in the nearby border town of Shaqra.
Like many others, my friend no longer knows where to direct his anger: at Israel for destroying his home, or at Hezbollah for turning civilian areas into part of an unwinnable war. Days ago, a voice recording circulated on WhatsApp of an angry man from the south asking: “Under what religion or law does anyone have the right to break into someone’s home, shelter inside it and expose it to Israeli bombardment?”
Some of the destruction in southern Lebanon — particularly in the so-called buffer zone — has been systematic and indiscriminate. Political positions have offered little protection, even for critics of Hezbollah. Israel, for example, demolished the home of Lebanese historian and researcher Ahmad Beydoun, a prominent Shiite critic of both Hezbollah and the war. Along with his home, he lost much of his personal library and archives. Writing on Facebook, he lamented the destruction of nearly half his books, papers and files, losses that no financial compensation could truly replace.
My friend, who avoids politics whenever possible and focuses on his private life, says he does not absolve Hezbollah of responsibility for the “blood” of his home. He says fighters use residential areas to launch rockets and drones, while neighboring homes remain untouched.
An uncle once told me that building a house for people like us is a form of gambling. He meant that a house consumes everything you earn and is never truly finished. There is always another improvement to make, another repair to complete. But in this part of the world, building a house really is a gamble — in a land trapped for decades in conflict over territory, religion, ideology and competing visions of the afterlife itself.
A single up-to-date satellite image costs about $50. Many residents of southern Lebanon now pay that amount almost weekly, just to confirm that their homes still exist. I have done the same repeatedly to check on my own house and my family’s home in the village. Last week, my house was still there. I do not always have the courage to open the files. I fear seeing what my friend saw: my home reduced to a gray stain on the map.
When I saw the gray patch where my friend’s house had once stood, I felt as though I had been struck across the face. I did not know what to say to him.
What do we say at the funeral of homes?
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
