Montreal art photographer Nadine Track has her hands full these days with projects to complete.
But she is having trouble finding inspiration — her mind is on her country of birth, Lebanon.
“I would do anything to jump on a plane now,” she sobbed. “I look at the videos and I scroll, and I scroll, and I try in my mind to give them something. But I’m helpless.”
Track worked in the Red Cross during the civil war in Lebanon when she was a child. Now she wants to return to help in this war, too, because of the number of civilians who are being affected.
But she has a family here to consider.
“If I didn’t have my kids, I’d be on the first plane,” she told Global News, fighting back tears. “Actually, I feel embarrassed because my pain is nothing compared to the Palestinians and the Lebanese living there.”
Since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah resumed last week, the country has come under heavy bombardment, particularly in the south and the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut.
According to Cyril Bassil, spokesperson for CARE International in Lebanon and a Montrealer, the situation is dire because people are fleeing at-risk areas.
“Hundreds of thousands are still staying in the streets, and when I say street, it means any type of public space,” he said. “It could be a sidewalk, it could be a beach, it could be a park.
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“Yesterday, there was a particularly heartbreaking moment for us at CARE,” he recalled. “We were offering water and food to a woman that gave birth 72 hours ago, and she and her newborn are sleeping on the sidewalk.”
He added that as of Monday morning, around 400 people had been killed and thousands more injured.
Georges Homsi, another Montrealer, estimates that he lives about a three-minute drive from some of the bombings in south Beirut and sees the blasts from his balcony.
“It’s like when you see an atomic bomb,” he explained. “There is nothing and then slowly, it becomes like a mushroom and then it spreads in the sky.”
He is staying with his mother, doesn’t think he’s in any danger for now and has no plans to leave yet.
But for him and others, like Track, this latest conflict is frustrating; it seems wars are never-ending.
“It’s like we’re doomed to pay a price every time to get peace,” Track said.
She remembers that her father was always hopeful that despite numerous conflicts, prosperity would eventually come.
“He really believed that. I saw my dad being like this until he died,” she said. “And sometimes I feel ridiculous because I don’t want to be like my dad.”
These recent hostilities have some fearing a civil war and wondering when conflicts there, and in the surrounding region, will finally end.
“The whole situation gets me angry,” said Nancy Chaho, who has been watching developments in her country of birth from her home in Laval.
“It’s repetitive. It’s constantly happening — the same thing. It’s the same issues that keep coming up, and the people who end up losing the most are innocent civilians.”
The way she sees it, successive governments have also been ineffective in looking after the interests of the population.
“And that’s why Lebanese people are known for being fighters and survivors because they rely only on themselves,” Chaho said.
Though it’s hard, some, like Homsi, believe hope is important.
“I think hope can start with a good government where we don’t see any interference from the outside,” he said.
While Track struggles between the love of her family and being here for them and the love for her birth country and being there to help, she refuses to see a glass half empty.
“I’m hopeful,” she laughed, while fighting back tears. “I’m ridiculously hopeful, like my dad.”
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