Lebanon’s young lovers reunited after months

“I was very happy to be here,” Sahar says. “When he left, I felt empty because I was used to him being around me.”

Before conflict in the Middle East escalated in late September, Sahar and Mohamad, whose family moved from Sydney to Beirut a decade ago, imagined life in Lebanon.

Mohamad’s family, now living in Sydney, still scan social media and news sites daily for news from Lebanon, especially since Mohamad’s father remains at home to care for his elderly mother.

“Now that she (Sahar) is here, I feel like a million dollars, but obviously there is still a sense of fear for my father and her family,” Mohamad says. “But for the most part, I’m very grateful.”

Sahar says that the feeling of security has not yet come.

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The day before Herald visited, she dreamed that drones were circling over Sydney.

“I still feel like I’m not safe,” she says.

Sahar also fears for his family in Lebanon, who have moved to the north of the country.

“Even though we are here, we are very concerned,” she says. “Sometimes I feel uncomfortable because all I do is think about them.”

Sahar’s family, torn between her joining Mohamad in Australia and staying in Lebanon, decided she had to leave. “They were sad, but they told me: life must go on,” she says.

A few days earlier, they had learned that a family friend, a first-year student at the American University of Beirut named Farah Mokdad, and her family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Bekaa Valley, northeast of Beirut.

Other friends displaced in Lebanon are among hundreds of people living in schools and mosques, surviving on rationed supplies without hot water. Shortly before Sahar fled, an airstrike destroyed the store where she bought her engagement dress.

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The couple lives in hope of an end to the conflict and a ceasefire.

For now, their focus is on building a new life in Sydney: Sahar hopes to pursue a master’s degree in biology; Mohamad is applying for a master’s degree in computer science.

“We’re just happy to be with each other at the moment,” he says.

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