How Lebanon’s wars echo across generations

There’s a moment in Beirut when everything feels on hold. A clear sky, a slow traffic street, someone walking their dog. And then the sound breaks through — a low, mechanical buzz overhead. For George Azar, Lebanese-American journalist and filmmaker, that contrast is instantly familiar.

“I’m walking my dog now in this very nice open space with a tree, and there’s a big blue sky,” he tells The Beiruter. “And then there’s this drone … buzzing constantly.” In the distance, he notices smoke, it fades later on and life resumes.

Azar has spent decades documenting war across the region, but Lebanon carries a particular weight. He lived through the Civil War, reported on countless conflicts, and yet, standing in a park today, he recognizes something that feels both continuous and altered. “It’s always an odd combination in Lebanon of being in the war and being away from the war,” he says.

Even if you’re geographically close, your daily life can be remarkably pleasant in other ways.

That duality of normalcy brushing up against violence is something many Lebanese recognize instinctively. But the way it is understood, processed and expressed often depends on when you first encountered it.

What stays, what shifts

For Iman Hamdan, a pharmacist and mother who came of age during the Civil War, that first encounter came early. Born in October 1979, she grew up in Beirut surrounded by conflict, her childhood shaped by instability that slowly became routine. “My memories are a mix of fear and normalization,” she says. “Things that shouldn’t be normal — hearing shelling, sudden school closures, scarcity — became part of daily life.”

Her recollections are not defined by fear alone, she remembers neighbors checking on each other, family gatherings that persisted despite everything. “There was a strange duality,” she says.

We were living with fear but also learning how to continue despite it.

Today, watching the current conflict unfold, that duality returns in a different form. “What feels familiar is the uncertainty, the tension in the air,” she explains. “But what feels different is how exposed we are. Back then, we were more isolated. Now, fear spreads faster.”

The difference she points to is not just technological — it’s emotional. Where her generation internalized, often quietly, younger people process events in real time, through screens, conversations, and constant streams of information. That shift is something Azar sees in his students as well. “The way the younger generation thinks of storytelling is really different,” he says. “Things can’t stay on screen for more than two seconds. It’s a different form.”

Living it in real time

For Hasan, a 21-year-old from South Lebanon, that form is inseparable from experience itself. At a young age, he moved between Beirut and the south, navigating a life that feels split. “It feels like living two realities at once,” he says. “The south is home — family, roots — but also danger. Beirut feels safer, but not fully safe either.”

That tension is constant; physical distance doesn’t always translate to emotional distance. “You’re in one place but emotionally somewhere else,” he explains. Add to that the daily backdrop of “sounds and bombings,” and the sense of instability becomes ambient, almost expected.

When Hasan hears older generations speak about the Civil War, he recognizes pieces of what he’s living. “The fear, the displacement, the unpredictability,” he says. “The emotional patterns feel very familiar.” But he’s careful with comparisons. “Every war has its own context,” he adds. “It’s hard to measure if things are ‘as bad’ or just different.”

That hesitation echoes Azar’s own reluctance to frame the present as repetition. “I don’t like the term ‘repeating itself,’” he says. “It’s playing out. We’re going along a certain historical line.” The players may shift, the scale may expand, but something deeper continues to unfold.

Memory as a direction

Memory, in this sense, doesn’t preserve the past, it actively shapes how the present is understood. For older generations, it acts as a reference point, a warning system, sometimes even a restraint. Azar points to one fear above all: internal fracture. “A civil war, that’s much worse than anything,” he says. “A thousand times worse.”

That fear is shared by many who lived through it. “Because we were all so traumatized across communities,” he explains, “people know what happens once you let that out.” It’s a kind of collective knowledge, one that isn’t always spoken but still informs behavior.

Hamdan feels it in subtle ways. As a parent, her response is shaped by both memory and responsibility. “I try to be honest with my son,” she says.

I don’t want to frighten him, but I don’t want to hide reality.

She emphasizes three main aspects of her work which include communication skills, empathy abilities and her understanding of conflict resolution through practical experience.

Her son, 14, like many in his generation, experiences war differently. “He understands it through media and information,” she says. “For him, it feels distant. For me, it feels real and familiar.” That gap between lived memory and mediated experience sits differently between them.

New language, same weight

Hasan recognizes that difference too, though from the other side. “Older generations process it through memory and trauma,” he says. “We process it through information, discussion … sometimes even irony.” Among his peers, conversations shift quickly, from political analysis to dark humor, from frustration to memes.

Although that doesn’t mean detachment. “Even if we express things differently,” he says, “it doesn’t mean we’re not deeply affected.”

Across generations, the ways of coping may differ, but certain patterns persist. Azar sees it in the way communities respond collectively. “People are organizing themselves to help,” he says. “Everyone is trying to do something.” For him, that impulse — spontaneous, widespread is part of what defines Lebanon. “Even though we’re different communities, in some ways we’re all the same community.”