War Was Easier than this, Says Lebanese Entrepreneur Hit by Economic Collapse

  • Date: 21-Apr-2021
  • Source: Asharq AL-awsat
  • Sector:Economy
  • Country:Lebanon
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War Was Easier than this, Says Lebanese Entrepreneur Hit by Economic Collapse

Suzanne Mouawad lived through Lebanon's civil war and built a successful advertising business in the hopeful days after the fighting ended, but she says her country's economic collapse is breaking her in a way that even missiles did not.

Mouawad, 56, comes from a well-to-do background and previously led a privileged life, running her agency as well as a family-owned paper manufacturing business, taking frequent holidays abroad and receiving rent from properties she owns.

Now, both the advertising and paper businesses have all but dried up, the tenants can no longer pay the rent, and she finds herself pondering the price of items in the supermarket during her weekly grocery shop.

"I didn't let Lebanon down. It let me down and it hurt me," she said.

With no end in sight to economic and financial paralysis, Mouawad feels a hopelessness that was not there during the war, which broke out when she was 12 and lasted 15 years.

"With war you get a couple of missiles falling one day and then the next day you pick up and you go back to school or back to work and you start producing and making money," she said.

"Now the money is being held at the banks and