The hotel, which was built in 1874, once hosted famous guests including former French President Charles de Gaulle and American singer Nina Simone.

Overlooking a large archaeological complex that includes the ruins of an ancient Roman city, Palmyra has kept its doors open after several conflicts and years of economic collapse.

“This hotel has not closed its doors for 150 years,” Salika said, explaining that it hosted guests at the height of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war and during Israel’s last war with Hezbollah in 2006.

The 45-year-old has worked there for more than half his life and says he won’t be abandoning it now.

“I’m very attached to this place,” he said, adding that the hotel’s vast, deserted halls leave “a huge ache in my heart.”

He spends his days dusting decaying furniture and antique mirrors. Cleans shards of glass from broken windows.

Baalbek, known as the “City of the Sun” in ancient times, is home to one of the largest Roman temple complexes in the world – a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But the latest Israel-Hezbollah war has cast a spell over the eastern city, home to about 250,000 people before the war.

Life at a standstill

After a year of cross-border clashes with Hezbollah, Israel last month stepped up strikes on the group’s strongholds, including parts of Baalbek.

Only about 40 percent of Baalbek’s residents remain in the city, local officials say, mostly crammed into the city’s few Sunni-majority districts.

On October 6, Israeli strikes fell hundreds of meters (yards) from the Roman columns that bring tourists to the city and the Palmyra hotel.

UNESCO told AFP it was “closely monitoring the impact of the ongoing crisis in Lebanon on cultural heritage sites”.

More than a month into the war, a handful of Baalbek’s shops remain open, albeit for short periods of time.

“The market is almost always closed. It opens for an hour a day and sometimes not at all,” said Baalbek Mayor Mustafa al-Shall.

Residents shop quickly in the morning, rarely going out after sunset.

They are trying “not to linger in the streets, fearing that an airstrike could strike at any moment,” he said.

Last year, nearly 70,000 tourists and 100,000 Lebanese visited Baalbek. But the city has attracted only five percent of those numbers so far this year, the mayor said.

Even before the war, local authorities in Baalbek were struggling to provide public services due to a five-year economic crisis.

Now, municipal employees are working mainly to clear debris from the streets and provide assistance to shelters housing the displaced.

A hospital in Baalbek was put out of service in a recent Israeli strike, leaving only five other facilities still fully operational, Shall said.

‘None’

Baalbek resident Hussein al-Jammal said the war had turned his life upside down.

“The streets were full of life, the citadel was welcoming visitors, the restaurants were open and the markets were crowded,” said the 37-year-old social worker.

“Now, there is nobody.”

His young children and wife fled the fighting, but he said he had a duty to stay behind and help those in need.

“I work in the humanitarian field, I can’t leave, even if everyone is leaving,” he said.

Only four houses in his neighborhood are still inhabited, he said, mostly by vulnerable elderly people.

“I visit them every morning to see what they need,” he said, but “it’s hard being away from your family.”

Rasha al-Rifai, 45, provides psychological support to women facing gender-based violence.

But in the month since the war began, she has lost touch with many.

“Before the war … we didn’t worry about anything,” said Rifai, who lives with her elderly parents.

“Now everything has changed, we work remotely, we don’t see anyone, most of the people I know have left.”

“In the 2006 war we were displaced several times, it was a very difficult experience, we don’t want that to happen again,” she said.

“We’ll stay here as long as it’s bearable.”

© 2024 AFP