[LCM Articles] My sister's war dairy

['Amer M.A. Khayyat]

*Sunday, July 16*

We've been at home for days. We are glued to the TV, internet and radio,
listening for updates and thinking about what to do: implement a micro-level
state of emergency or go on as usual? Heiko (my husband) and I are not sure.
I am conferring with my mom on the phone: she thinks this is 'War'. She has
made a run to the supermarket to stock up on things and is urging us to come
with our 9 month old son Nessim and stay with her. We quickly weigh the
considerations: the electricity in our neighborhood is erratic (there is a
generator at my mom's); Nessim is bored and fussy (my mom and sisters can
help); we have not stocked up on war-time essentials like candles,
batteries, drinking water (my mom has). Another factor I consider is
psychological: our apartment is in Kantari, a residential area between Ras
Beirut and downtown, yet when the sound of the shelling booms throughout the
city, especially at the preferred hour of 4 am, drowning out the call to
prayer, I get scared. I was never very brave when it came to war things,
even though (or because?) I grew up in civil war Beirut. My parents' house
is in Doha, a little south of the city, and sits on a hill, with a bird's
eye view of Beirut (and the shelling). Being slightly above the fray,
geographically speaking, is a little more reassuring than being at the
worm's-eye level. We decide to go. We pack our toothbrushes, a change of
clothing, put out a huge pot of water and dry food for our three cats, and
leave, driving like the wind along the new highway that hugs the western
border of the *dahiyeh* and plunges underneath the airport runway. The
highway asphalt reflects the summer sun like a mirror: ours is the only car
on the road.



*Monday, July 17*

We are not the only family to take refuge in my parents' house. Our
housekeeper Ghada, who is from Ramieh, a village in the south that sits on
the border to Israel, has moved in with her husband and little daughter, her
ailing mother-in-law and two sisters-in-law, one of whom is married and has
a young daughter. Ghada's brother Ali, his wife and five young children have
also joined. They all live in Naameh, a nearby neighborhood on the coastal
foothills, also home to the headquarters of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian armed faction that the Israelis love
to bomb even in less violent times. Since the shelling began Naameh has been
a potential target, and some of the bridges that straddle the highway that
passes under their balcony have been destroyed. Ghada's family suffered
deeply during the civil war and although she was a child, she bears the
scars and is very frightened now. One of her sisters, Mariam, who has five
young children, lives in Aita al-Shaab, a village in the deep-south that has
been the scene of heavy shelling. Ghada has not heard from her since the war
began. Her eldest sister, Hala, lives in the *dahiyeh* (the southern
suburbs) and has been displaced by the vicious shelling that has flattened
entire neighborhoods. Hala, her husband and six children are living in a
school with other refugees from the southern suburbs. They are being cared
for by Hizbullah and the many NGOs who are participating in a formidable
war-relief effort to help alleviate the plight of the more than 500,000
displaced who have taken shelter in the cities.



*Tuesday, July 18*

After another night punctuated by the window-shaking thuds of shells falling
on the airport and southern suburbs, I was woken up at 6 am by my baby who,
unlike me, was happy to start a new day: 'bop, bop, bop' he says to me with
a wide smile showing all six of his teeth. My bones are aching from the
stress of the unknown and erratic sleeping patterns but I scoop up my child
and step outside into the front garden to greet the young day. The sky
slumps onto the earth in a brown-gray fog, trapping the heat of the morning
sun. Beirut is out of sight; I can't even see the sea that lies as silent as
a pond underneath the bitter haze just a few hundred meters from where I
stand. The air tastes bitter: the burning fuel from the bombed airport and
Jiyeh depots have been burning for days, and whatever comes out of those
hundreds of bombs rained down on the *dahiyeh*, had poisoned the morning and
ruined our lives. They are taking away our air to breathe! Panic wells up
inside me: I suddenly feel there is nowhere to run. I fear for my child. I
grew up in war, but I never ever thought my baby would too. How do I protect
him from something so out of my hands, something so deadly?  So far over 300
souls have perished, a third of them children. I quickly go back inside.



*Wednesday, July 19*

My aunt, who has been weathering the incessant bombing in and around Sidon,
got a 4 am phone call. When she picked up the phone, a recorded voice said
to her in Hebrew accented Arabic that she should not throw her fate in with
those Hizbullah 'terrorists'. "The State of Israel will utilize any and all
forms of force to exterminate those terrorists hiding in their caves," the
recording said. This is a particularly obtuse form of psychological warfare,
but it does make the skin crawl, if only because of the memories of Israelis
speaking of violence in accented Arabic that come tumbling back from the
1982 invasion. My aunt, who lives alone, was furious. "If Olmert wants to
threaten me, then why doesn't he call me himself? I want to curse him to his
face, what's the point of shouting at a lifeless recording?" she says
angrily over the phone. She is stuck in Sidon, as the entrances and exits of
the city have been bombed repeatedly. The Israelis have also been
terrorizing the Palestinians in the city by bombing around the refugee camp,
the largest in Lebanon. Because it is the largest city in the south,
Sidonis coping with an enormous amount of refugees from the southern
villages
under siege, and because it is also cut off from food and medicines, the
humanitarian situation is verging on the catastrophic. A friend of mine who
has been working in the relief effort talks of fleas and skin diseases and
lack of hygiene. So many unwashed bodies crammed together in buildings with
no facilities, and so many children, in the unrelenting and humid heat of
the Lebanese summer. "It's a living hell," she says, "but we're doing what
we can, given our limited means".

My younger brother, who found himself unable to cope with the situation, has
decided to get out. Using his Austrian residency (which my family has from
the days when we escaped from the civil war) he catches a ride with the
Austrian evacuees out of the country. They ride all night on a Greek warship
to Cyprus, crouching in the hallways. The next day they are airlifted by
military plane to Vienna.



*Thursday, July 20*

Today is the quietest day so far, but that has an opposite effect on
people's nerves: Rumors are getting the better of everyone's sanity. Many
are saying that this lull is all about the massive evacuation of foreigners
and that once they are gone the bastards are going to bomb us to
smithereens. Today the Marines have returned to Beirut to remove
stranded UScitizens, and their presence is not seen as benign. "We are
the next
Iraq!" some proclaim. We take advantage of the relative calm and make a run
along the deserted airport highway to our apartment. Our neighbor Um Walid,
who is taking care of our cats, is standing on the landing with her
mother-in-law. They both lived through the civil war and the 1982 Israeli
invasion. "This just is how the invasion started," Um Walid said, "God help
us". Her mother-in-law, the old *hajjeh* looks at me with tears in her pale
green eyes: "Don't leave your house, they will come and take it from you. I
was here during the war and they occupied this building. They pushed us and
said 'Sit aside and not one word!' We couldn't do a thing." My neighbors,
like most people here, are trapped between the realities of their bad
memories and the specters of their fearful imagination.

Heiko said let's go: there is a ship we can get on tonight. I am not yet
ready to leave because my mom doesn't want to go (she doesn't want to leave
her animals) and my sisters won't leave her. I am also afraid of the voyage.
Isn't this going to end soon? But tonight is bad and I don't know if I can
take anymore. We were sitting around monitoring the TV and internet and all
of a sudden a massive metallic crash swept through the darkness…and then
another one, pushing in the windows like an invisible monster. Nessim was
sleeping in another room, I ran to him to protect him, with my body if
necessary. He hadn't woken up, but I picked him up once my legs could hold
us both and ran into the hallway, shaking with fear. There is nowhere to
hide from fear, it follows you everywhere. Two more massive blasts followed.
They had finally blown up the bridge under Ghada's apartment in Naameh,
about 2 km away.



*Friday, July 21*

Ghada's husband went to survey the damage to their apartment. The bridge was
gone and all the glass in the house was pulverized and there was shrapnel
everywhere. My mom went out to look for medicine for her high blood
pressure, but everything is closed. People are terrified, but more seriously
we are under blockade. The airport has been closed for more than a week and
the Israelis have systematically shelled all land routes out of the country
in addition to maintaining a vicious sea blockade. Things are running out. I
went to the supermarket yesterday and the fresh stuff was scarce, there were
a few wilted lettuces on the shelf. What is there is exorbitant. A kilo of
lemons is going for 10 times its price a week ago. When will food and
essentials start running out?

Israel is massing on the border and there are rumors of a land invasion
tonight. I am so scared and wish I had gotten out of here before now. When
will the last boat leave? Are we in danger? I am so scared I can barely
breathe. The worst thing about war is the unknown: new realities emerge
every minute and every decision taken is a gamble.



*Saturday, July 22*

Wartime is a curious time, and the Lebanese settle into it like a favorite
old armchair. With the first strike against the airport they started to fall
into step. But this kind of war is different than any I have lived through
so far. It caught everyone unawares, blowing in from the south with no
warning. By the time I was old enough to understand that I was living in war
as a child, the war already had been going on for several years and so the
locals were already old hands at everyday violence. The lightening-speed at
which things went from ho-hum to catastrophic this time around has resulted
in what I consider the anomalous existence of wartime creature comforts:
electricity (internet! AC!), running water, traffic police – things like
that. But for how much longer?

Everyday I struggle more with the thought of leaving. I know it is my
responsibility to take my child to safety, but is it safer to stay or to go?
I know that out there the daily life of the world is going on as before, can
I deal with re-entering that sphere of existence, knowing that my family, my
country, (even my cats!) are in mortal danger? I don't know, I just don't
know. At night I am sure I will leave tomorrow. But when the morning comes,
like this morning, and the night before has been quiet, I think: this will
all be over tomorrow and we will all be safe.

The evil will of those bastards Olmert, Peretz, Bush, Rice, is being
implemented and no one is saying a word. Where is everybody? Getting your
own folks out of here before things really get ugly does not pass for
humanitarian intervention, world! Have you seen all the children dying? All
the old people heaving their creaky old bodies onto sheets on the sidewalk,
displaced from their homes for the 100th time? They buried 70 bodies
in Tyreyesterday in a mass grave, plywood coffins lined up side by
side. The death
toll is topping 400 so far and thousands have been wounded. Has everyone
forgotten 1982 and the 17,000 who perished because of the Israelis and their
vicious hubris fanned by American megalomania? When will this stop? I am
boiling with rage. How many more will have to die before anyone intervenes?

The jets are overhead again.



*Sunday, July 23*

We're back in Beirut. We came back yesterday. Up in Doha my stomach has been
tied in knots from stress and fear: just thinking of the airport highway
that we have to potentially cross with our baby if we decide to leave and
wondering when, just when they are going to bomb the Khaldeh bridge and cut
us off from the rest of the world, because the Sidon road is blocked and
Beirut is the only outlet. It is another world up there on the hill,
isolated, and one feels exposed and vulnerable. We got into the car, I held
my baby on my lap really tight, closed my eyes and sang to him, repeating
the same words over and over. Heiko drove fast down the empty, glittering
ribbon of road and in 15 minutes we were back in our neighborhood. In the
week we've been gone, Beirut has transformed, or more accurately, reverted:
from a pretentious and flashy city crawling with Gulf tourists here to
consume alcohol and sex (and who all got out on the first day of air
strikes, streaming like rats across the border to Syria in their four wheel
drive vehicles), to a city of refugees, boarded up businesses and
neighborhood thugs. Those who were local militia bullies throughout the war
and found themselves emasculated in the post-war era have come back into
their own. One guy who, used to be the neighborhood boss of the Amal militia
during the war and strutted around my street like a useless cock before this
latest war, is already making trouble. I just witnessed an argument from my
balcony between him and the police: he wants to mobilize a break-in to an
empty building, supposedly to put up refugees. But these are the tactics
harking back to the stateless civil war days, in and through which militias
would claim space in the city by putting up dependents in the houses of
others (who either left on their own or were forcibly cleansed) and those
refugees would come to constitute their power base. The neighborhood is
already overflowing with people and refugees are everywhere: in the school
down the road and in the school up the road, young men hanging out on the
curbs, women hanging out the laundry, children chasing each other in the
street.

I am already seeing the strain on my neighborhood, which is mixed Sunnis,
Shi'a, Christians and Armenians. The two Christian shop owners on our
street, Renee who runs and laundry and George, who sells plants and flowers,
have boarded up their shops from the first day of this war and have
disappeared. Our Armenian neighbor across the landing, Isabel, has left. But
Abu Talal the Shi'a shopkeeper has remained open in between his absent
Christian neighbors and is jacking up prices. Our Sunni neighbors are
fearful. Walid, who is a policeman, and usually works at the airport, has
been relocated to General Security headquarters and is working on
surveillance. His group is composed only of Sunnis and Christians. The state
has become wary of its Shi'a citizens. The neighborhood is unraveling along
its sectarian seams. If this situation sustains itself much longer, the
friction will get worse: now at least there are still policemen doing the
rounds and disallowing break-ins. When will the state finally crumble? If we
leave, what will become of our house, this land, our family and neighbors
and pets? Are we back to civil war?



We went out with our son this evening to meet a friend at one of the handful
of cafes still open in Hamra. We walked there. The scenes of street life (or
lack of it) gives one an uncanny sense of déjà vu harking back to Beirut
circa 1986: the garbage is piling up in the garbage cans and on the
sidewalks, shops are shuttered, advertising billboards suddenly look crass
and hollow and anyway don't refer to any reality anymore. In time they will
fade and tear, yet remain as a testament to a former time of frivolity. All
these scenes I normalized growing up as a kid in the war; I had no
recollection of warless times because I was born after the war began.
Refugees are everywhere. On our street we were given unfriendly glances by
young men lounging on the corner: 'what are you still doing here?' they seem
to say.



I turned on the radio in the kitchen to listen to *sawt al shaab*, the
communist station that provides updates on the situation, interspersed with
nationalist music. Fairouz came in over the static singing about what a
wonderful place Lebanon is. All of a sudden her voice cracks with static and
morphs into the robotic voice of a man speaking Hebrew accented Arabic. It
is the same recording that my aunt heard on the phone at 4 am. I jiggle the
antenna, trying to get away from his creepy pronouncements but there is no
escape. I turn off the radio and leave the kitchen.
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