‘Here’s how it feels’: how a Lebanese businessman lost everything in five years of turmoil and war

Ibrahim Abdallah on the roof of his home in the hills overlooking Beirut, whose southern suburbs have been hit by Israeli airstrikes. Photograph: Daniel Carde/The Observer

From the balcony of his flat in a monied suburb nestled in the mountains overlooking Beirut, Ibrahim Abdallah could see the smoke rising from a night of airstrikes that pummelled the ghostly southern suburbs below.

Columns of white smoke drifted over the smouldering, scarred and deserted tower blocks and up into the tree-lined hills, where some of those displaced mingle among people taking an evening walk near the presidential palace and the Lebanese defence ministry.