The windows of my apartment in Beirut rattled with the force of the blasts. I heard screams, I heard terror, I heard death. I haven’t properly slept for weeks now. How can anyone sleep, or even rest, with explosions around us and dread within?

For more than three weeks now, Israel has been bombing Beirut and has sent troops into the south in its pursuit of Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese political and paramilitary force that is Israel’s sworn enemy. More than 2,300 people have been killed and more than 10,000 wounded over the past year — most in the past few weeks — and some one million people displaced. The recent attacks have killed at least 127 children.

Nowhere is safe; no one is secure. This is not life. It is an excruciating wait for the possibility of death. But in truth, living in Lebanon for the past 50 years has been a lot like waiting for the next disaster.

First it was the civil war that stretched from 1975 to 1990, killing 150,000 people and shattering the country. Then came a series of assassinations over the years, mainly of anti-Hezbollah politicians, journalists and activists; the devastating 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah; and one of modern history’s worst economic collapses in 2019. The next year a catastrophic explosion at the port in Beirut brought another superlative: one of the most devastating nonnuclear blasts in history, ravaging much of the city. Lebanon was thrust deeper into poverty, homelessness, unemployment, insecurity and deprivation of medicine, power and water supplies. Generators and water deliveries have become a basic way of life.

I’ve witnessed so many wars and tragedies here that I sometimes feel 100 years old.

My father, Atallah, was from a small village in southern Lebanon on the border with Israel — a beautiful place called Yaroun. We buried him there last year, granting his last wish before he died. This month his hometown was leveled. Do you know how many times Yaroun has been shattered and rebuilt from the ashes? It’s the phoenix metaphor that has been applied to the Lebanese people throughout recent history. We are told we are resilient. We are admired for bouncing back, for making do, for finding a way. Ah, those plucky Lebanese!

We, too, used to value this quality in ourselves, whether we bragged about it openly or secretly inside. “We snap right back to our feet,” we used to tell ourselves and others. “Look at us rebounding.” But more and more, I hear people speak of Lebanese resilience with disdain, even anger. We don’t want to be resilient; we just want to live, and to live with a sense of a future — not this “carpe diem” existence which fuels our tendency to ignore our problems and remain oblivious of the past.