Celine Haidar dances on the upper deck of a crimson open-top bus. Around the 19-year-old midfielder, team-mates sing. A flag bearing the Beirut Football Academy (BFA) crest sways to an undirected melody of car horns, drums and mini trumpets.
It is August 10, 2024. Celine’s BFA team are celebrating their first Lebanese Women’s Football League title, achieved in a flawless, unbeaten season which reached its climax earlier that day.
But there are other noises too — the hum of Israeli fighter jets crawling above and the echo of bombs — while around the bus piles of concrete and twisted metal poke upwards into the sky.
In Lebanon’s capital, life has been delineated by similar sounds and sights of conflict for decades. But on August 10, Celine and her team-mates choose to make their own noise. In the car behind them, Celine’s father, Abbas, honks the horn with unbridled pride, prompting the cars behind to follow suit.
Four months later, it would become an emotional buoy from which to cling. Across October and November 2024, Israel ramped up its pursuit of Hezbollah agents. Civilians, including Celine and her family, evacuated Beirut’s suburbs and sought refuge in Baakline, a village in the Chouf Mountains outside the capital.
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