For nearly two decades, Mario Habib has kept his barbershop running in Beirut's Furn el Chebbak neighbourhood (a predominantly middle-class district in the Lebanese capital) through wars, economic collapse, and political turmoil. Habib says his customers increasingly visit not just for haircuts but for conversation and a sense of normalcy in a country where everyday stability has become elusive. The shop has come to symbolise quiet resilience in Lebanon, where successive crises have made ordinary life feel, in Habib's own words, "the dream."