‘We are stuck here’: In cramped shelters, Lebanon’s displaced dream of their villages

‘We are stuck here’: In cramped shelters, Lebanon’s displaced dream of their villages A 72-hour-old newborn is laid to sleep on a thin, worn-out mattress on the floor of a school in Sidon, south Lebanon, his first days unfolding in a classroom-turned-shelter. His mother, Hala Loubany, 29, has just had a C-section. She watches over the baby boy, one hand resting protectively over the throbbing scar on her stomach.

Next to them, separated by a shelf crammed with canned food and clothes, an elderly man is preparing lunch for himself and his wife. Three families live in this classroom, their few belongings packed into corners as they wait to return to Nabatieh’s southern district.