He sits in the scorching sun, crutches and a plastic bag filled with medication by his side.
“I am disabled, I don’t have money, I went only with my clothes,” says Rabii Ayoub. “We are so badly humiliated. This is the worst humiliation that could happen.”
Ayoub, in his late 40s, is one of hundreds of displaced people dotted around Martyrs’ Square in central Beirut, and one of up to a million now displaced by Israeli attacks, according to Lebanon’s prime minister.
He is also a symbol of the many crises his country has been through. His disability came from being born prematurely, he says this was a result of his mother’s terror during Lebanon’s civil war. The lack of care he is getting now could be a symptom of Lebanon’s failed government.
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“Of course, the civilians are the ones affected ... [And] in wars, no one cares about disabled people,” he says.
Since the loud series of explosions that shook people across the city on Friday, killing Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah and at least 11 others, Israeli air strikes have continued in Beirut and in the east and south of the country.
The full death toll since September 16th is at least 1,079 people, including at least 56 women and 87 children, according to Lebanon’s ministry of health. They say 41 of the dead were health or ambulance workers. At least 6,352 other have been wounded. The ministry noted there are also still bodies under the rubble, missing people and unidentified remains.
In Beirut, the sound of drones overhead has been almost constant in the last few days.
WhatsApp groups come alive with each new sound – is it an air strike, sonic boom or the bursts of gunfire that marked Hizbullah’s announcement of Nasrallah’s death?
Dahiye, previously a densely populated suburb of southern Beirut known as a Hizbullah stronghold, has been described as a “ghost town” by some of the few journalists allowed to enter it.
Mohammad Hashim fled Dahiye with his three children and pregnant wife. “What shall I tell you? It’s a humiliation, a disaster, hunger,” the 23-year-old barber said.
After days without showering, he describes entering an abandoned cinema to pour bought water over his body. Behind him, a mother washed a naked child by the side of the road.
“Only God knows, maybe I’ll go back [home] tomorrow or never, we’re waiting for the bombing to get less,” Hashim says.
He is upset, too, about Nasrallah’s demise – the controversial figure was loved by some, particularly Shia Muslims, and considered a perpetrator of atrocities by many others in the Middle East.
“He’s a good person, he protected us. Since I was a child, and I opened my eyes to this world, I knew he was defending us: the Arabs ... against others.”
Car mechanic Riad Mustafa escaped the Ghobeiry neighbourhood in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
“At the beginning there was some bombing but we didn’t leave. Then there was another, so severe, we decided to leave and everybody came here,” he says.
The 18-year-old does not believe that Nasrallah’s death, and the killings of Hizbullah’s other senior commanders, will mean the end of Israel’s assault.
“It will continue like Gaza,” he says. “God gave us this life and its destiny.”
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