‘I can see the despair on their faces’: Lebanon’s economy unravels

‘I can see the despair on their faces’: Lebanon’s economy unravels

From her wedding dress shop in the impoverished northern Lebanese town of Akkar, Suzanne Hammoud has been selling bridal gowns for more than 15 years. She has revelled in her customers' excitement as their weddings approached, and often stayed in touch as their lives progressed, sometimes making outfits for their children.

But this year, Hammoud has become more of a buyer than a seller of dresses. Sales racks are full of gowns she has bought back from families who have no other means of income left, except for selling their memories.

"I'm buying their used dresses at cost,“ she said. "I can see the despair on their faces, and I don't have the heart to say no. Even the few brides who are still coming in have hopelessness in their eyes. When they used to come to us, I saw them happy and hopeful.“

On the dusty high street of one of Lebanon's poorest corners, and across all pockets of a country conditioned to hardship over decades of war and tumult, the effects of a catastrophic economic implosion are straining its social fabric. The resilient Lebanon that somehow always made it through is fast becoming a fable, and ghosts of a recent past