Lebanon's lost farewell: war steals final goodbyes from the dead

The traditional Lebanese farewell—a slow procession of the deceased through their hometown streets, held aloft by loved ones—is vanishing, swallowed by the brutal realities of war. As Israel’s ground offensive intensifies in southern Lebanon, families are being forced to abandon centuries-old customs, burying their dead in hastily dug graves far from home, marked only by stark, spray-painted numbers.

A cemetery of numbers and broken rites

In Tyre, the scene is stark. Two-meter-wide ditches now serve as makeshift graveyards, each holding the unclaimed remains of those lost to the conflict. Rabih Koubaissi, a man who has witnessed two wars in just three years, supervises these burials, defying Israeli orders to evacuate. He’s become the reluctant custodian of a growing tragedy, a silent witness to the disruption of fundamental human rituals.

Islamic tradition dictates a specific process for burial: washing, shrouding in white, and direct interment without a casket—a return to the earth without disturbance. Yet, Islamic jurisprudence allows for a technicality, a procedure known as wadiaa, or “deposit,” permitting burial in a casket during exceptional circumstances like war. But even this adaptation cannot fully compensate for the emotional toll.

“A Muslim can be buried in any Muslim cemetery,” Koubaissi explains, “But people have an emotional attachment. They want their loved ones buried in their ancestral land. It reflects belonging, heritage, and presence.” The current situation renders this longing impossible.

The unthinkable: pieces of lives, rushed burials

The conflict has shattered every step of the burial process. Sometimes, the deceased arrive not as whole bodies, but as fragments. “Sometimes we just receive pieces of bodies,” Koubaissi recounts, his voice heavy with the burden of his task. “In those cases, we just collect what we can, place them in a shroud and a body bag, and then put them in the coffin.” The speed and circumstances of these burials leave families reeling, forced to confront the loss twice—once with the initial tragedy, again with the displacement of their loved ones.

The shadow of indefinite occupation

The threat of prolonged Israeli occupation south of the Litani River casts a long shadow. Families fear they may never be able to return their loved ones to their ancestral homes, leaving them trapped in a limbo of grief and uncertainty. The memory of the 2006 war, when villagers returned to find their cemeteries ravaged by bulldozers and mosques destroyed, remains a chilling reminder of what awaits them.

The human cost is etched in the faces of those who remain. Young couples, defying the dangers, still visit the temporary gravesites, tending to the few flowers that mark the resting places of the fallen. Hecham Reda, a medic from Aita al-Chaab, wept as he recalled his friend Hadi, “always with us, putting out fires, carrying the martyrs… In this war, he didn’t have time.”

Koubaissi, surveying the rows of anonymous graves, hears the distant thud of airstrikes. He no longer flinches. “The hardest part,” he admits, is the impossible question families pose: “How did they look?” He provides what comfort he can, knowing he cannot fully convey the truth.

The weight of these losses, compounded by the trauma of a previous war, is almost unbearable. As he looks out over the field of hastily dug graves, Koubaissi knows that the scars of this conflict will run far deeper than the trenches carved into the earth.