Tents in Beirut…

When I saw this tent on the beach this week-end in Beirut, it reminded me of a tent-city I passed by a few months ago on another beach just a few miles down the road. It was midnight when my friend and I hopped off his bike to enjoy the waves crashing under the moonlight–after driving through numerous checkpoints since a bomb had exploded earlier that day. As we began strolling down the beach, we noticed a small tent city set up ahead. We both stopped in our tracks, when we realized that those tents had been pitched by desperate Syrian refugees–unable to afford shelter in Beirut. How long, we wondered, had they been living on the beach? How were they keeping warm through the winter? So when I saw the tent above this week-end, I wasn’t sure if it was assembled for a regular family day at the beach, or if maybe some Syrian refugees were starting to set up tents on this beach too…