Loss is not new to Hiba. In August 2020, the Beirut port explosion destroyed much of the building where she lived. She persevered and rebuilt her life in another part of the city.<\/p>\n
Then war uprooted her family once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hits differently when you\u2019re the mother of young children and war breaks out,\u201d she says. \u201cI was scared to leave my children at home, but I had to go to the office and keep working. I am a frontline worker. I am needed, but my sons need me as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the conflict escalated, she and her family had to flee again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know where to go. I had my baby in my arms, and there was smoke everywhere. I didn\u2019t know where to turn: the bathroom, the stairs, or the street. The voices were so loud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hiba doesn\u2019t describe the cacophony as sounds. She calls them \u201cvoices.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hear the plane coming above you. You hear it firing. You don\u2019t know what will be hit. Then you hear the hiss of the missile flying through the air. The loud boom of the impact. Then the building collapsing.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pauses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel those voices throughout my whole body. I tense up and think, \u2018I\u2019m going to hear them again. It\u2019s coming.\u2019 And then I do.\u201d She pauses, then says, \u201cI\u2019ve lived through war before. But when it started again in 2024, I couldn\u2019t bear the voices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, her sons are beginning to hear those \u2018voices\u2019 too.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the bombs fall, my three-year-old says, \u2018Mommy, Mommy, it\u2019s thunder.\u2019 And I tell him, \u2018Yes, it\u2019s thunder.\u2019 Then he looks out the window and asks why there isn\u2019t any rain. So, I tell him maybe it\u2019s fireworks. He\u2019s too young to understand war.\u201d<\/p>\n
She remembers being that innocent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever there was fighting when I was little, my father would bring the mattresses into the hallway and lay them side by side. We all slept there together. I felt safe. It\u2019s one of my good memories because I didn\u2019t understand what war was then.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, she is the one trying to create that same feeling of safety for her children.<\/p>\n
Supporting displaced families while living through war<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Loss is not new to Hiba. In August 2020, the Beirut port explosion destroyed much of the building…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32],"tags":[38704,5652,39593,93,62376,70321],"class_list":["post-254605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lebanon","tag-care","tag-health","tag-humanitarian-response","tag-lebanon","tag-maternal-health","tag-world-humanitarian-day"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117117167954061719","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}