Celine Haidar dances on the upper deck of a crimson open-top bus. Around the 19-year-old midfielder, team-mates sing. A flag bearing the Beirut Football Academy (BFA) crest sways to an undirected melody of car horns, drums and mini trumpets.
It is August 10, 2024. Celine’s BFA team are celebrating their first Lebanese Women’s Football League title, achieved in a flawless, unbeaten season which reached its climax earlier that day.
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But there are other noises too — the hum of Israeli fighter jets crawling above and the echo of bombs — while around the bus piles of concrete and twisted metal poke upwards into the sky.
Here, in Lebanon’s capital, life has been
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