The caravans began forming well before dawn. For weeks, the main arteries of southern Lebanon had been arteries of flight, clogged with families fleeing Israeli bombardment. Now, at the stroke of midnight, the direction reversed.

Israeli forces had continued to strike the south right up to the 12 a.m. deadline, the booms of their final sorties fading only as the truce officially took hold. On the darkened highways, headlights flickered to life, and the long, snaking convoys of cars began their slow, hopeful pilgrimage home.

Near the ruined skeleton of the Qasmiyeh bridge, a critical crossing over the Litani River, traffic ground to a halt. Displaced residents, many of whom had heeded urgent government warnings not to return due to the persistent presence of Israeli troops, found themselves in a bittersweet gridlock.

They had come to pick through the rubble and salvage what remained of their lives, their only route a temporary crossing by a bridge reduced to twisted metal and shattered concrete.

The night was a jarring symphony of sounds: the nervous rumble of engines, the joyful—and dangerous—crack of celebratory gunfire erupting from the capital, and the distant, humbling quiet where explosions once echoed. For the first time in weeks, the roads led south not to danger, but to whatever was left of home.