Amid economic crisis and a culture of ‘militarised masculinity’, domestic violence is on the rise in Lebanese households and the sizeable Syrian refugee community
There is little left of Hanaa Khodor in the dark ground-floor flat where she lived from the age of nine. A blusher palette and brush that she gave her half-sister. A small stove for making coffee she gave her father’s wife for Mother’s Day. Photographs of her smiling into the camera live only on the family’s phones. Otherwise, all her loved ones have of her are their memories.
The last time she came to visit, her stepmother recalls, the 21-year-old made crepes and prepared the morning coffee. She complained of fatigue but she was several months pregnant with her third child in the heavy heat of the Lebanese summer, so that wasn’t surprising. If she was worried about anything, she did not say.
