Do Your Laundry in Case There is a War
on being in Beirut, right now
The first morning of the war, by which I mean at 3am on March 2, 2026, when the Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut, my housemates and I gather in the living room.
Since moving here, I have continuously confused thunder with bombs and fireworks with gunfire. But this morning, it’s abundantly clear. I’ve never heard a sound like that before. You hear it in your stomach. You feel it with your lungs.
And we are 5 km away.
What was less clear, especially when half asleep, was what to do.
Vaguely recalling a story of how my grandma would hide in the bathtub during the civil war, I leave my bedroom. I spot one of my housemates sitting on the living room couch.
“It’s a good idea to get away from the windows,” she says, comforting her dog.
Stunned, I sit down next to her.
I’m holding Django, who’s shivering with fear. Our other housemate appears.
“What are you doing?” she asks, foggily.
I’m already glued to my phone. The repeated banging sounds seem to have stopped.
“Try not to worry,” she says, and shuffles off back to bed.
Later in the day, my Arabic teacher and someone I meet for the first time will both ask if I’ve lived through a war here before. I say no, and they shake their heads, knowingly.
“You’ll get used to it,” they say.
The first person I text that morning is my dad, of course.
He lives north of me, between a 25 and a 1.5 hour drive away, depending on traffic. He’s often up at this time for what he calls his “awake nap”.
“Dad”, I write. Then, “Airstrikes in Dahiye”.
My texts stay on unread.
At a loss, I go back to bed, as far away from my window as possible, and scroll through half of the internet. Django burrows into my side. I text my meditation teacher, who is also my mentor in all things political. He updates me on Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar. Rising gas prices. Geopolitical analyses.
I check my messages again. My dad has now read my texts, but still hasn’t replied. My heart beating faster, I call. He doesn’t answer. What the actual fuck? He will hate me for publishing this, but he is no longer a spring chicken. I moved here partly to be near him. And— according to the internet—the highways are now full of people evacuating from the south. I could’t get to him quickly if I needed to.
Because people are leaving their homes to go to shelters, or parks, or places unknown. For most of them, this is the second time in less than two years. They have lost homes. Olive groves. Livelihoods. Futures.
Parents, siblings, friends, children.
I text my brother, who’s in Montreal and still awake. He says he hasn’t heard from Dad either, but “don’t worry”. This is the same father, I joke, who is constantly lecturing me for turning my phone on airplane when I go to bed, to the point that I now put it on sleep mode so that only his number can get through. Since I moved here, if he texts me and doesn’t hear back for a couple of hours, he calls me. If I don’t answer that, he calls my housemate.
I scroll some more and worry some more and finally, at 6:30, he calls.
“Did you not see what I wrote?” I snap.
“Yeah,” he says, sleepily. “I just didn’t realize you wanted me to answer.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
Anyone Lebanese who’s reading this of that generation, or with parents of that generation, is probably nodding their head knowingly. They’ve watched this country fall apart, again and again. They’ve hid in their bathtubs. They’ve worried from afar and from near.
So did anyone who lived through 2006. Or, of course, 2024 to 2025.
Later that morning, check-ins from friends in similar time zones start to come in. In the afternoon, they come from Canada and the States.
“Natalie. I need another update from you.”
“This might be a stupid question, but are you okay?”
“I just wanted to hear your voice.”
Some people go on to tell me they’re worrying about me. Or they ask when I can leave. How I might leave? They give me advice. They tell me how this war is affecting them.
I know these messages come from a place love. If you sent me anything like this, I love and appreciate you.
But please don’t.
(Please read the full post above if you can.)
I have sent those kinds of messages in the past to friends who were in crisis.
I’ve also done the thing of, “Oh, I’m not going to check in on them or ask how they’re doing because they’re probably overwhelmed and don’t want to hear from me.”
I now know to never do this again.
And lastly, I’ve done that thing (hey, just last week) when I was in such an emotionally dark place that checking up on a friend seemed like too much. But if there’s anything I’ve learned in recovery, it’s that emotional spirals lose strength when you share them. Same with that thing of not following the news because “there’s nothing I can do about other people’s suffering”. There is. I promise.
Call your friends. Text them. Send them a DM. It can be three words. Two. Don’t expect a response, but know that it will mean something. And if you don’t say anything… trust me. It will mean something, too.
The next day, I head to a neighbourhood kitchen that’s making food for displaced people. As someone who speaks almost zero Arabic, it’s one of the only ways I feel like I can do something.
As I get ready to leave, I ask my housemate if I can borrow some socks. I’m completely out, because I’d thought I’d be going to my dad’s this week, which is where I do my laundry. (Before you judge: he has a dryer. We do not.)
“But then I couldn’t,” I conclude, “because there was a war.”
“See?” she says. “Now you’re getting the hang of living here.”
At the kitchen, we prepare 500 meals. It takes fifteen of us several hours. There are, by official count, 60,000 displaced people by the end of the second day. Which means we’ve fed less than 1% of them one meal.
(Since I started to write this post, it has been stated that Israel plans to evacuate 200,000 residents from Lebanon. That’s 15% of the population.)
There are similar kitchens popping up around the city. One of them is in one of my favourite cafes, which is also a second-hand bookstore and event space. I was supposed to facilitate a gathering there tonight, but’s been cancelled, like most things happening in the city this week.
I speak to the owner, who says that they’ve got more than enough volunteers. (I’ve never seen this many people jump to help this quickly in a crisis .) But what they do need, he says, are funds to buy food.
If you’d like to contribute to either of these kitchens, which I vouch for 100%, the details are below. (By the way, if you’re a paying subscriber to this newsletter, your payments are still turned off—now, more than ever, I don’t know how much I’ll be posting over the coming weeks. )
If you don’t have Western Union or don’t want to use it, please contact me directly. I have Wise (and direct deposit in Canada) and will send receipts/proof of payment for anything that goes through me.
If you want to donate via Stripe, please click the button below. All funds will go towards these two projects.
Please don’t turn off the news. Please check in on your friends, no matter what they’re going through, and what you’re going through.
There are no “other people”. The longer we think this way, the worse it’s gonna get.
love,
Natalie
I feel useless in all this, but I want you to know that you and Django are being thought of. Please take care.
Thank you for writing. You and your Dad are on my mind. Keep safe.