Days ago, these young lovers became engaged. Now he’s flying to Sydney without her

For the first two days of their engagement, not even the looming threat of war could dampen the joy of Mohamad and his fiancee Sahar.

Despite the escalating conflict threatening to spill over the Israeli-Lebanese border, they celebrated with family in the south of Lebanon and dreamed of a life together.

Lovingly, their families nicknamed them the “war couple”.

Mohamad and Sahar celebrated their engagement a fortnight ago.

“It did make us feel special that we [were] engaged [during] war,” Mohamad told this masthead from a crisis centre in Cyprus where hundreds of Australian citizens and permanent residents evacuated from Beirut are staying.

But just over a fortnight later, they face the real prospect of not seeing each other again after Mohamad and his family fled Lebanon’s war-torn capital, Beirut, for the safety of Australia. Sahar, 21, who is not an Australian citizen and who could not secure a seat on a flight out of the country, remains in Lebanon’s north with her family.

“I’m gutted,” Mohamad, 22, said.

“I couldn’t hold back tears leaving her. It’s the hardest goodbye that I’ve had and I’ve had a lot of goodbyes in my life.”

Mohamad and members of his family are set to touch down in Sydney on Monday.

Two days after the couple engaged on September 21, the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese military and political group, forced Mohamad, Sahar and her parents to flee her family’s home in the southern city of Nabatieh as Israeli airstrikes rained down around them.

With just the clothes on his back, his laptop and a pair of thongs on his feet, he left behind the life he had built since moving with his family to Lebanon from Sydney in 2014.

“All of a sudden, airstrikes left, right and centre. It was very scary,” he said.

“Every turn we took, it was a new airstrike. It was like a horror movie.”

Hundreds of Australian citizens and permanent residents have been evacuated to a crisis centre in Cyprus after fleeing Beirut.

A week later, his family fled the capital with the few personal possessions they could fit in their cars as Israeli attacks on the city intensified. On Saturday night (AEST), Mohamad, his mother, Lina, sister Fatima, 24, and brothers Abbas, 20, and Hassan, 19, were among hundreds evacuated to Cyprus on emergency flights organised by the Australian government.

Mohamad and his family, along with hundreds of other Australians, boarded a flight for Sydney on Sunday night (AEST) after weeks of desperate efforts to leave the country.

But Mohamad’s father, who asked not to be identified out of fear for the safety of his remaining family in Lebanon, was forced to stay behind to care for his ageing mother and continue working to provide for his wife and children.

After initially escaping Beirut, he returned to the city to gather as many of his family’s belongings as he could before being forced again to flee during airstrikes just hours after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated in an Israeli attack on the group’s headquarters.

He now faces the possibility that he will never see his close-knit family again.

“There’s no guarantee,” he said.

For now, he is relatively safe sharing a rented apartment with family in Lebanon’s north, but he fears an attack could come at any time.

“With this modern warfare, nowhere is safe,” he said.

“There is always this fear that you might get caught in the crosshair and caught in the crossfire.”

Feelings of guilt and regret are mixed with Mohamad’s relief to have escaped Lebanon, but he hopes he can secure safe passage for Sahar to start a new life in Sydney.

“There’s a part of me that feels like I’m betraying not only my country, but my loved ones,” he said.

“Life in Lebanon has essentially ended.”