In the summer of 2022, Lebanon’s bread shortage produced long lines outside bakeries in Beirut. AFP recorded people waiting for hours for a bag of subsidised Arabic bread. With much of the country’s wheat normally imported from Ukraine, the war compounded Lebanon’s financial crisis, and bakeries began rationing sales.
What distinguishes this queue is its repetition: households had to return and wait again for a daily staple. The subsidy kept bread financially within reach, but scarcity redistributed access through time.