The Enemy Made My Home His Headline, and I Watched Him Roam Every Corner

Editor's Note: The article “The Enemy Made My Home His Headline, and I Watched Him Roam Every Corner” was first published in Arabic by Manateq on April 20, 2026. 

It was another evening of displacement. We had been forced out of our home and into a room that was witness to our counting down the days, waiting for the return. I was sitting with my family watching the news on television as we usually did, and this was when we saw it: our very own neighborhood appeared on screen. The houses of the neighborhood, and among them our home, flashed before our very eyes. The aired clip was titled “Soldier’s bodycam reveals military devices in a civilian home in southern Lebanon.” And just like that, my home became a fleeting military news story. Earlier that day, a force from the Nahal Brigade had fallen into an ambush on the outskirts of Beit Lif, forcing it to withdraw. 

Soon after, on April 17, 2026, we obtained an aerial photograph of the village, showing widespread destruction. Entire neighborhoods had been decimated. Our neighborhood — and in it, our home — was rigged with explosives and blown up, setting the olive and fig orchards on fire.

We knew that the enemy’s advance onto the outskirts of the town would inevitably mean entering homes and orchards and destroying them. Little did we know that they wouldn’t simply enter the house, but also film it from the inside and use it as a stage to fabricate a story, before booby-trapping it then blowing it up. 

Last week, the occupation army broadcast images of its soldiers in the neighborhood, seemingly before its destruction. In the footage, they claim to have confronted resistance fighters and to have found weapons inside civilian homes. It wasn’t enough for the enemy to enter and defile the place. They rewrote the entirety of its history and the memories it holds, to suit their twisted narrative. As for the world watching, it can be divided into three: those who are deeply disturbed by the scene, those who believe the narrative on display, and those who watch and stay silent.

How I Imagined the Break-in 

The lump in our throats is not from the loss of material things. It is because I woke up to find the enemy walking inside the house I dreamt of returning to every night, transforming it into a battlefield. The doors of those rooms — that we would knock on before entering and through which we would politely seek permission from one another — had been forced open, their locks broken. 

I see him scouring the entire house. He finds an old suitcase that we had planned to get rid of, then fills it with old phones, an iPad, a laptop, some cables and connectors, an old passport. He enters our bedroom, opens the closet, finds my sister’s Civil Defense suit and her Risala Islamic Scouts uniform, tears open drawers, takes our diplomas and private records. 

He lifts the mattresses, throws our clothes and belongings to the floor. He enters my brother’s room, rummages through the wardrobe, takes out whatever he can adapt for his narrative: a hunting outfit, a cartridge pouch, two hunting rifles. He then goes to my parents’ room, flips the mattress and uses it to cover the window. Then he stages the suitcase with what he has collected inside, arranges the uniforms and hunting weapons beside it, and crafts a scenography of his own design to serve his narrative and fabricated story.

This image became part of a news report, along with multiple houses in our neighborhood, where he staged fictional battles and claimed to have found weapons in the homes of ordinary people. Then he exited the neighborhood, detonated some of the houses, and bombed others. For him, this was the end of the scene. 

For us, this was the beginning. First, the shock, then denial in search of some kind of error, followed by acceptance and grief, before realizing that this will only intensify our desire to return. We agreed that, if worse comes to worst, we would pitch a tent under the remaining olive tree and sleep inside. 

My House Is Your House and I Have No One To Turn To

Since October 7, I have learned to leave my house in waves. I left the house for 10 months during the "War of Support", and then for two months during "The Battle of the Fierce" (Awwali al-Ba’s). When that phase was over, the enemy warned us against returning home hardly two months into the ceasefire. Then I left the house again at dawn on March 2, 2026, when the resistance announced it entered the war. 

Despite the burden of displacement, leaving the village, and leaving work, knowing that the house was still standing gave me the strength to await our return. To anyone else, my house is like every other house. But for me, these houses are not all the same. Every house has its story, scent, and sound, its symbolism, belongings, and neighbors. 

It is not a pile of rubble as the enemy sees it, and as those who stand “above the fray” see it. The house is us: years of labor, and different stages of our lives gathered in its corners. The house is my mother’s coffee on the balcony among roses and basil. “Bayti ana baytak, ma ilna hada” — “my house is your house, and we have no one else” — I often sang these words and prayed that this blessing would last.

I turn to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who wrote: “the house is our corner of the world.” I quote him to describe the scene from within, not how it appears from outside, and to explain its psychological impact on us, a family that owns this house and what surrounds it. What everyone sees as just a house being violated and bombed — mere walls, tiles, material things — is, in truth, the violation of my selfhood and the sanctity of my home. This violation trespasses onto my personal space and belongings and pries them from my hands.

The enemy sets foot on a land he knows nothing of. He does not know that the hakoura — the little garden outside the house that he crossed — is where my mother would watch our steps closely, ensuring we did not trample the seedlings of mint, thyme, marjoram, onion, and arugula.

Negotiating With the Enemy in Our Homes

It dawned on me that displacement burdens the displaced with a familiar weight, until the house is lost. Then it becomes a beast perched on our shoulders, turning our chests into its grazing ground. Every step toward the village becomes hard, and every step away from it even harder. 

As we southerners endure the loss of lives, homes, and livelihoods, and as the enemy proudly documents his massacres and violations, the Lebanese state continues down the path of negotiating with him. What is the meaning of negotiations when our villages are being destroyed and as bombs are raining down on us? What is the meaning of peace when our remains are still missing? How will we negotiate with the one who continues to booby-trap our homes to detonate them? How can security be discussed at the negotiating table, when it is stolen from our bedrooms? What ceasefire when the enemy occupies our border villages? 

All that’s Left is This Small Bag

We always used to say, “We will return for the things that don’t fit in the bag.” Until we lost those things. Our houses have been destroyed, along with the trees we raised from branches: carob, silver poplar, oleander, mulberry, almond, fig, and olive.

Their systematic entry into the place and its destruction is an attempt to reshape our collective memory — the images of these places in our minds — and to rearrange the pieces to fit their own vision and ambitions.

They would have us abandon any hope of return and fall for the idea that nothing remains for us in our distant villages. Even though it is difficult to restore our memory like we rehabilitate and rebuild our houses — and even though it is hard to forget that they entered our homes and staged their narrative from within — it is still possible. 

Restoring our memory will simply require more time and deep faith that these roots cannot be torn out, that our will cannot be snatched from us. Suitcases may change, but the idea never will.