Lina al-Khalil has fled her south Beirut home to escape escalating Israeli attacks on Hezbollah, but she still returns daily to the bombarded area to keep the family business running, according to AFP.
“It's more important than my house,” said the pharmacist, in her 50s, of the business she inherited from her father in Haret Hreik, a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital.
Whenever the Israeli military issues a warning to evacuate before a strike -- a near-daily occurrence for nearly two months -- she closes down the shop and rushes out.
Khalil said she has moved most of the pharmacy's stock to her second home in the mountains for safekeeping.
To serve the few customers she still has, she drives up to collect the medicine they need, and even delivers it to their homes when they can't reach the pharmacy.
Despite the ever-present fear and the steep decline in business activity, Khalil does what she can to keep her business afloat, like many other shopkeepers in Beirut's southern suburbs.
“With the drop in customers, the financial impact has been severe,” Khalil told AFP, adding that she has had to halve the salaries of her employees due to the pinch.
As the war continues, the size of damage to business in the southern suburb remains unclear.
The vast majority of the area's estimated 600,000-800,000 residents have fled, seeking refuge elsewhere.
When the war began in late September, Ali Mahdi and his brother shuttered their clothing stores and warehouse in Beirut's southern suburbs as well as in Tyre and Nabatiyeh, taking some of their merchandise with them.
They set up shops in several locations including Beirut's Hamra district, at a distance from the majority of the strikes.
But they still face many challenges there.
Mahdi added that he had to make some of his 70 employees redundant and dock pay from the rest.
With their future shrouded in uncertainty, “we're trying to clear our stocks,” he said.
The business sector in Lebanon has been severely affected by the ongoing war between Hezbollah and Israel since September 23, after nearly a year of limited cross-border clashes over the Gaza war.
In a recent report, the World Bank estimated that the Lebanese commercial sector incurred losses of $1.7 billion over 12 months of conflict, on top of billions more in losses to the economy and material damage.
An estimated 83% of losses are expected to accrue in conflict-affected areas, with 17 percent occurring in the rest of Lebanon.
There's nothing left but stones
Mahdi is anticipating the next phase of his life when he runs out of supplies. “We don't know whether to import new products or save our cash,” Mahdi said.
According to the World Bank report, losses are mainly driven by the displacement of both employees and business owners from conflict-affected areas, causing a close-to-complete cessation of business activity; the disruptions to supply chains to and from conflict districts; and changes in consumption behavior in non-conflict zones with a concentration on necessary rather than discretionary spending.
In the southern suburbs, an Israeli strike turned the cafe Abdel Rahman Zahr El-Din had opened five years ago into a pile of rubble.
He said he must salvage what he can, now that he has lost his only way to make ends meet.
“There's nothing left but stones,” he said as he inspected the upper floor, emerging with a small table in his hand, unharmed but covered in grey dust.
