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A mother who works for an Irish charity in Lebanon has said she tries to stay strong for her three children as their country is bombed.
Amena Hareb said she first told her three-year-old son Suleman that an attack on her home village in south Lebanon was balloons in the sky.
She, her husband and their three children travelled back to Beirut but have been living in a hotel for more than a week after hearing and seeing bombs hit in the areas where they were staying in the Lebanese capital.
She said she worries about the impact of the conflict on her daughter Noor, four, Suleman, and 18-month-old Mohamed.
As a protection programme manager for the Irish charity Trocaire, Mrs Hareb holds calls and meetings with partners – tasked with providing food, hygiene kits and psycho-social supports – and she tries to reassure them.
“I’m the mom, I need to be strong for my children, for my family, and I’m the protection programme manager,” she told the PA news agency.
“Everything is really horrific for us. We do not know when this will be end, but we need to keep moving, we need to be strong, especially for the sake of our children.”
After a year of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and an exchange of fire with Hezbollah, the Israel Defence Forces launched a ground invasion in Lebanon on October 1.
Thousands of airstrikes have also struck Beirut and southern Lebanon; in the past four weeks more than 2,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of people displaced.
“It started one Saturday night,” Mrs Hareb said of the first bomb they heard.
“We were in the village, and they start attacking our village. The strike, the booming sound, it was really big.
“I woke up (scared), me and my children, especially my three-year-old boy, so I told him ‘It’s fine, it’s like a balloon in the sky’.
“And then he wants to sleep beside me, the three children were sleeping beside me and my husband slept on the floor.
“On Sunday, we took the decision to move to Beirut. We went back to our home and three days later they started attacking Beirut.
“The sounds were really terrifying, and the children start shouting and running in the corridor at home. They asked me ‘What is this? What is this?’ I told them ‘it’s fine, it’s fine’.”
They went to live with her parents-in-law in a different area of Beirut, and two weeks later, while practising breathing exercises to help cope with stress, she saw a missile overhead.
She said: “An airstrike, a rocket, a missile – I don’t know what to call it – went above me. The sound was terrifying. I can’t describe the fear that came to me. And then the electricity went off. So my children were sleeping but my three-year-old woke up shouting, scared.
“My husband wasn’t at home, I felt really helpless, so what could I do? I took a really deep breath. I gathered my children and went down using the stairs and not the elevator. I was pretending to be okay.”
They have been living in a hotel for a week now, where they feel “somewhat safe” as there have not yet been attacks in that region.
She added: “Now, we are still hearing some sounds, but it’s not like the sounds we were hearing in other locations.
“Mohamed runs to me when he hears anything. I hold him, I hug him, and I start singing to him.”
She said it is more difficult to console her son Suleman who has nightmares.
She said: “We used to have the news on the TV all the time, and then I figured out we shouldn’t do that because sometimes he was seeing what was happening.
“He started telling me ‘Mom, look, it’s an attack, attack, attack, they are hitting here, look, the building is on the floor, what is happening?’
“I tell him ‘Yes, there is an attack, we are facing some difficulties’, I’m using simple words.
“There’s no school, so I put on some cartoons and at night, I tell them stories, and I tell stories just to forget.”
Asked if her children believe her now when she tells them the bombs are balloons, she said: “They don’t believe (it).
“(Suleman) runs out to the balcony and asks me ‘Where is the balloon?’
“I’ve started to tell him ‘Yes, there is an attack on our country. We cannot go back to our home. It’s not safe’.”
She said her daughter Noor – who loves puzzles, Lego and painting – asks a lot of questions and knows the word “war”.
She added: “She wants to know what is happening. She’s asking me why we do not return home, why she didn’t start school. She loves school.
“She’s asking why are we being attacked? Why is there a lot of people fleeing from one area to another, why this is happening?
“I told her there is a war, there is a conflict between two countries, but we are trying to end this, hopefully, so then there will be school.”
She added: “One thing my daughter always tells me is ‘I’m feeling cold, please hug me’. I know it’s not cold. I know she wants attention, she wants warmth, she tells me ‘hug me, please protect me’.
“It’s heartbreaking for me. Always I need to pretend to be cool, to be strong, to be hopeful about everything and I’m trying to normalise our day. Every day we wake up, I thank God we are still alive.
“I know it’s okay to cry, but at night, really I need hours and hours to cry so I can survive for the next day for my children. It’s not, it’s not easy for me, it’s not easy for three children.”
Mrs Hareb said that though it is difficult to talk about, she wanted to share what it is like for people in Lebanon caught up in the conflict.
She said that every morning she checks on her parents, who are still living in their home village in south Lebanon.
She said: “People are relocating and are dying in the area they have relocated, so they tell me, ‘I’d rather die in my land, in my home, rather than in another area’.”
She said that when she finishes work every day, she spends as much time as she can with her children.
She added: “You need to sit with your children. You need to listen. This is very, very, very important.
“Especially my daughter, sometimes while I’m working, she tells me ‘Mama, I want to talk to you, please, can you listen?’
“It’s a very important to sit, to listen to our children, to what they need, to protect them, and to provide them with a lot of hugs.”