Sister Mirna, a Lebanese sister, has just returned to Rome from a short stay in southern Lebanon. Here is her moving and valuable testimony, which gives voice to the suffering, hopes and courage of the Lebanese people. It is an appeal to our conscience.
“Since the beginning of 2025, a wind of promise has been blowing over Beirut. Lebanon has elected a president, Joseph Aoun, ending two years of presidential vacancy. Then Prime Minister Nawaf Salam formed a government with a clear mandate: economic reform, restoration of state authority throughout the country, and a clear commitment to implement international resolutions.
For many residents of the south, including my family, these words have rekindled hope that the state will no longer be absent and that its promises will not remain dead letters.
However, during my short stay, I found that the reality was very different from that portrayed by the media. Away from the spotlight, an entire population lives suspended between fear, silence and resilience. For the citizens of the south, hope collides with reality and vanishes like a drop of dew.
During my stay, I observed the sky dotted with drones that tirelessly criss-cross it and continue to launch missiles, kill civilians and destroy property in the border area. Witnesses who preferred to remain anonymous assured me that this “cold war” is managed by hyper-powerful artificial intelligence. Imagine that the victims are informed via a message on their mobile phone of the decision to eliminate them. I quote precisely some text messages that have been published by the relatives of the victims:
‘Slow down and stop your car on the right if you want to save your life, we are only targeting the car in front of you.’
‘In five minutes you will die. If you want to save your family’s life, leave your house immediately.’
‘Delete the photos you just took with your phone, otherwise your device will be destroyed immediately.’
It’s absurd! What human conscience could accept such a fate? How do the Lebanese survive so many threats and challenges? Who should and can protect the lives of citizens? The Lebanese state, in ruins and corrupt, is powerless. The police forces are sorely lacking in reinforcements. In the south, I felt like I was living on the margins of my own country! It’s hard to admit, but it’s the reality! Citizens are left to fend for themselves: no control over the quality of food, water or commodity prices, no security. It’s organised chaos! People oscillate between anger and resignation. Anger against the slow-moving state, against delays in aid, against neighbourhoods that have been destroyed and not rebuilt; resignation because every new agreement, every new promise seems to be fraught with inertia, sectarian or international calculations.
In Lebanon, appearances are deceiving. To understand the situation, one must take the time to listen to people, observe them and wait for the words to flow from their hearts, wounded and traumatised by a war that never ends. A war that spills more blood than ink! A deaf, mute war, without emotion, without shame and without scruples. A war that resembles a silent haemorrhage that obscures the horizon for young people, draining their energy, their skills and their dreams.
A tacit war that aims to voluntarily transfer the inhabitants to other regions. A war that lies beneath the ashes and risks intensifying if an agreement is not reached soon. ‘We feel forgotten, sacrificed. First and foremost by the state, which does not protect us. Then by the leaders, mired in their disputes, their interests, their corruption. By the world that looks the other way,” Chawki insists in front of his completely destroyed petrol station. In some villages in the south, families live in cracked houses, sometimes without roofs, in partially evacuated villages, with closed schools and empty shops. Social life is crumbling. So is dignity.
Yet the Lebanese ward off their misfortune by celebrating, singing, laughing and ridiculing their situation. Resilience is not a simple denial of reality, but an overflowing awareness that relies on the will to resist and to live. The Lebanese take revenge on life by loving it, celebrating it, deifying it! Their resilience translates into prayer, supplication and solidarity.
I conclude with Maha’s statement: ‘Despite everything, we remain. Not by choice, but by necessity. Because this is our land. Because our parents, our memories and our roots are buried here. And also because, even in the worst of times, we share bread and support each other. Solidarity is all we have left‘.
My testimony is not a cry of anger, but an appeal to the conscience of all those who, in one way or another, can help to change things.
Sr Mirna Farah
29 September 2025
Photo by AHMAD BADER on Unsplash
