Semiramis
Since 2019, the crisis has been slowly worsening day by day in Lebanon, without anyone being able to predict its end. Like Beirut, Semiramis, once an iconic building welcoming rich tourists from the Gulf and where many films were shot, is now falling apart. Because of the soaring inflation in Lebanon, its owners stopped maintaining it and are evicting its residents.
Mona, on the fifth floor, is a Lebanese hairdresser married to an Egyptian grocer who can hardly work anymore - her clients now cut their own hair. Her children are going abroad because of the lack of opportunities.
Nextdoor, Amer, 24, lives with his parents. He is an activist and is politically engaged in a youth movement close to the Communist Party, a supporter of George Abdallah, and was imprisoned several times during the demonstrations in 2019 and 2020. He had, however, at one time considered going to fight with Hezbollah in Syria.
On the third floor, Hanaa, 82, lives "for her father" Hussein Mroue. He was a communist intellectual and was assassinated in his flat in 1988 by the Shiite movement Amal, allied to Hezbollah. She spends her days and nights behind her computer transcribing his writings from Arabic to English on Facebook to make them resonate with the crisis.
