Aamir eyes a paper newspaper remotely, which took pictures of pieces of meat and chicken, but the image is not realistic for him and will not help him even inhale the smell of what it contains.
Aamir Al-Dahn borrows a bundle of bread that rose from 1,500 pounds to 2000 pounds earlier this week. The son of the northern city of Tripoli flirts with pictures of meat as a piece that has become rare to keep in his memory or as a masterpiece in an antiquities museum, as it is not possible for him and his family to coexist with it After today, in light of the worst social and financial crisis Lebanon is going through.
Amer, 55, is experiencing chronic pain and holds several medications in his hands in the Shaarani neighborhood, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the northern city of Tripoli.
Consisting of a few previous months, he explains the state of living deficit that his family reached, regaining the close memory two months ago, saying, "The last time we bought meat was in the month of Ramadan ... We no longer bought meat or meat, we began watching them in magazines and the newspaper, and we took them away."
Amir, who leans on his cane and reveals after every question about an operation in his back and ulcers in his feet due to diabetes, has four children who live in a house that needs restoration.
He says that with his wife, they changed their lives and they became "the honorable door of God ... life became very difficult and the dollar is still going up, and the state is unable to do any solution and does nothing, watching the world and people suffering from both."
And this bitterness increases in the words of Sultana, the wife of Amer, who no longer invokes meat, but rather wishes the soul to obtain legumes in order to satisfy the hunger of her children.
On the balcony of her fall-supported home, which is supported by wooden columns, Sultana explains a changing reality that has been reflected in the foodstuffs, saying, "Our food has changed, and the cost is not acceptable, even lentils, beans, chickpeas, and beans are very expensive."
Difficult economic situation
This difficult economic situation in the city of Tripoli is reflected in all Lebanese regions, across its different sects and doctrines, with the exchange rate of the dollar on the black market from 1517 liras, the official price, to the threshold of ten thousand liras on Thursday night, which led to the erosion of salaries and the melting of the middle class in the country.
Tens of thousands have lost their businesses or part of their income, with most shops closing their doors and an unprecedented wave of high prices in a country that is almost free of primary resources and imports most of its products in dollars from abroad.
Bogar Hawksa of CARE International in Lebanon described the country as a "humanitarian crisis" and urged the international community to intervene and said, "We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who are on the edge of the abyss."
Although the city of Tripoli includes a large proportion of the rich Lebanese, politicians and wealthy leaders, it is more than a large area of poverty, as the World Bank considered it in 2017 as the city that contains the absolute majority of the number of poor people in Lebanon.
Between narrow alleys, eroded houses, and compact rooms, popular neighborhoods that Lebanese politicians only remember during the municipal and parliamentary polling processes are bound together.
And with the aggravation of the financial crisis, the burden of life intensified on the sons of the Tripoli dialogue, especially those who pile up in one room and sleep on the way (heel and head), which is a common term for poor people sharing the same bed.
Spotted anemia
Omar Al-Hakim, who works as a guard at a construction workshop in the Al-Qobba neighborhood, says that with his six children, they live in one room with a salary of 600,000 liras, which is equivalent to today, only $ 60 a month.
Referring to one of his children sleeping on the floor, al-Hakim says that his sons are unemployed and are between 11 and 22 years old.
Omar complains of the high price of a bundle of bread in Lebanon from 1500 to 2000 pounds, and indicates that his family needs four or five ties a day.
"Sugar, rice, or lentils, O scientist or bulgur, what would it have been? Show us a hundred thousand today," he added. "If we want to spend, we pay 100 thousand per day. I have to sleep outside the house in the workshop because our house does not accommodate all of us."
Like others longed for meat food Omar said, "In the past, we used to cook meat, chicken or fish ... Now we finished eating ... It was a time, now half an ounce of meat, we can do well. I swear by the Lord of Glory I miss her, and God from the feast swears by God, I did not miss () Meat has entered the house. "
Imaginative prices
Food prices have doubled in Lebanon and unemployment has prompted many to turn to charities and food banks. However, hunger may spread widely when the dollars used by the central bank to subsidize the prices of bread, medicine and fuel are depleted, which will happen sooner or later if Lebanon does not receive foreign aid.
And the poor of Tripoli resort to borrowing from small stores in the nearby neighborhoods, but these small shops, in turn, are suffering on two fronts, after the debts of customers who cannot pay are accumulated.
Kawkab Abdul Rahim, the owner of a small shop in her thirties, is complaining about a tragic situation in the language of the commercial movement in her store, saying, "My debt situation has become deplorable, for example, the world was working, receiving and paying, and the debt accumulated."
She added, "No one is working and getting paid to pay, this situation in itself is a crisis for people, but it worked for me, I have two crises, because the merchants no longer give me goods, and I do not have my money (money) for me to buy, and instead of I was buying a box, I started to buy three pills."
But a planet that has kept borrowing available to customers despite its distress and asks, "Do you have a heart? They want a bundle of bread, do I have a heart? Forbidden ... They beg, for example, they have a kilo of rice, a box of milk (milk) in order to feed their children or a thousand pounds of labne (cheese), my concept. At this time, we are talking about selling a thousand labels, a thousand labels means a spoon, which the mother applies to three or four children.
Currency collapse
The Lebanese pound has lost 80 percent of its value since popular protests erupted last October against the elite who rule the country along sectarian lines.
At a time when rapid poverty is fueling feelings of anger, despair and fear of a social explosion, it appears that the efforts of the ruling elite in Lebanon to save the country from financial collapse with the assistance of the International Monetary Fund are going in the opposite direction.
In Lebanon, which is known amongst the countries of the Middle East as Switzerland of the East, poverty has heralded dire consequences that appear in the images of citizens begging on the streets or scavenging garbage in search of something suitable for eating or bartering their furniture for food.
But in Tripoli, there are those who do not have furniture to barter and their house is a place to fall.
Maryam Khaled Maqsoud (48 years) stands under the roof of a dilapidated kitchen that threatens to collapse. She says, "We are six people in the house. I am my husband and my children are sitting without work now. By God, from the beginning of Ramadan, it is not possible to get an ounce of meat. coffee beans".
In her hall, which is a narrow corridor that does not enter the light, Mariam sat down to explain her situation, announcing the abdication of food from meat and chicken, because she was unable to secure it at high prices, and she said, “Meat we dispense with it, the chicken dispense with us, dispense with everything. The situation is bad and hot. Like me, like them, and uncle we owe to answer the top of the bread, labneh (cheese), eggs ... Shampoo is not because it is expensive and I do not want anything, but I hope from the Lord of the Worlds to save my debts and relieve myself of religion. "
With tears pouring into her cheeks throughout her speech accompanied by feelings of fear of an unknown future, Mary says that she started relying on legalizing everything to continue and stay. "For example, I used to wash a week three times, now I reduce my laundry to once, and sometimes times what will be in Dua (powder) Washing ... showering too little because it's in shampoo. "