FROM CAROLINA
The following is an article written by a Canadian friend of mine here in Beirut who was living with a Palestinian family one the camps in South Beirut and who has now fled with them to the relative safety of Hamra, West Beirut.
Beirut, July 19, 2006
Day 7 of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon.
I am feeling very angry right now, I don’t know at what, or at whom or why but I feel very angry right now. I don’t feel like doing anything, not even writing and yet here I find myself.
This summer, as last summer, I was living among the displaced only to now find myself displaced with the displaced. I don’t fear for my safety for some odd reason, although most foreigners are panicking. I don’t want to leave and I know I would never forgive myself were I to board the supposed boats that Harper has sent for us Canadians.
At first everyone in Bourj Al Barajne camp was happy and almost giddy to see a break in the depressing everyday reality of their lives as Palestinians in Lebanon. It had only been days prior when the sound of fireworks and gunfire echoed through the night celebrating Italy’s victory over France. Now people are recounting stories to me about the war, the siege, having had to eat rats. ‘This is nothing’. No one is afraid, yet. Israel’s rockets and sonic booms shook my family’s house as we watched from the roof as Haret Hreik went up into flames and smoke. The billowing and raging fire from the airport only ten minutes away blocked the rising of the red moon. Still however, during the first few days of last week, the shebab discussed whose pigeons flew the highest; arguileh’s were being smoked while people still gathered on their roofs. During these first few days it was almost comforting to have the entire family strewn between the rooms of the house; helping to stock up on food; gathering to watch the news; discussing opinions and estimating when and how the war will continue or end.
This was the first time I didn’t leave the camp for four complete days, not even to the entrance to see the normally busy and noisy streets of Haret Hreik outside. No ‘services’ or buses I was soon told. Although consciously I am not afraid, I think my lack of appetite and constant trips to the bathroom, are telling me otherwise. I didn’t want to leave the camp. I don’t like having the privileges of a foreigner. As I walk through the alleys of Bourj to write an email home, my friends ask ‘badik hon?’ ‘ma haiffe?’.
I am new to the sound of bombs, planes that drop bombs, machine gun fire. By Friday night more people are increasingly nervous. I have noticed myself feed off of peoples’ calmness or panic. I am fine while alone. However Saturday morning I go to visit my neighbour only to discover she has left with her children to the mountains. Soon, visiting family from Denmark comes crying saying their goodbyes. They are leaving for Syria to make their way back to Denmark. I haven’t been able to sleep properly since last Wednesday. I am exhausted and yet can not sleep. I find myself on a diet of sweet Nescafe and waking up various times through the night to the sounds of planes or what I think are the sounds of planes.
People cheer as Nasarallah announces the sinking of an Israeli war ship. The rocket was fired from atop the wedding hall where I had attended a wedding with my mother and friends from Shatila only a week previously. Although I too feel great happiness at this, I can’t help but fear what type of retaliation awaits us.
Late Saturday afternoon I decide to try and make my way to Hamra. I pack two pairs of pants, two t-shirts, my important documents and underwear in a knapsack. My family is lucky to find transport for me. The streets are deserted. We drive underneath the familiar ‘jisr al mataar’ that I always walk under to go visit friends in Shatila. However, there is no more bridge left.
Everything feels surreal to me. Only 3 months ago I stood in the town of Maroun Ras, the site of the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers, overlooking the border with Palestine. Only a week and a half ago I was visiting southern, western and northern Lebanon with my mother. She left the day before the Israeli soldiers were taken. We had been in Saida, walked in Manara and through Bir Abid to catch a bus to Baalbeck. Since then the bridge to Saida has been burned, over forty buildings have been felled in Bir Abid and Haret Hreik or as is mainly known on the news as the Dahieh; the road to Damascus has been destroyed; Baalbeck has been incessantly targeted by Israel; the lighthouse in Manara was struck by a missile; over 200 innocent victims have been killed in Lebanon. It is hard to believe how fast life can change and all that was seemingly important becomes insignificant.
Saturday I am lucky to find a room for thirty five dollars a night. All of Dahieh is in Hamra. Everyone looks out of place. People here live in a different world then in Dahieh. Girls still take time to blow dry their hair, pick out sexy outfits and gather with their friends at the Macdonalds. Cars go by blasting music. It’s as if they are all unaware that their city is being bombed only 10 minutes away. Yet this indifference and ignorance doesn’t come as a surprise to most.
The text messages from my family in the camp all through Saturday night were too chipper to be sincere. By Sunday I begin looking for a place for the rest of the family. They arrive with three plastic bags of food, a bag with their important papers and the clothes on their backs. They tell me that from one to five in the morning the shelling across the street and down the road from the camp did not stop. My family had stood in the living room crying, those who I believed unable to be afraid, left the camp first thing Sunday morning.
I go to visit my fellow ex-pats. One Canadian, one Australian, one German. All wish to remain in the country. Perhaps my reasons for wanting to stay are more personal but I am also filled with an overwhelming feeling of guilt and responsibility at what is happening here. How, how, how, how, how, how can I abandon a family I have come to love so much? How, how, how, how can I leave those who welcomed the closest person I have to me, my mother, into their home; those who shared their house, their family, their stories, love and lives with her? How, how, how, how can I leave now? How can I leave when the going gets rough? Simply because I am a foreigner? How can I leave when I know my own government supports the Zionists, who were only looking for a reason to invade Lebanon once again? How can I leave feeling that people in the world deem my life more valuable than all those left to suffer here in Lebanon?
Israeli commandos invaded southern Lebanon this morning. Apparently Hizbollah has been waiting for this.
But what can you do? many ask. To be honest I have no idea. I began organizing children’s activities with the refugees at Sanayeh, distributing food. I can write, get the message out, the truth. I can simply show solidarity with the people I love by staying here. I haven’t suffered at all when I think all the people who have lost everything in the South; those who have sought safety with no food, five children and nothing to go back to.
But there are people who love me across an ocean who are sick with worry. I feel guilty for staying as well.
What will happen when all the foreigners leave Lebanon? Once the evacuations have ceased? It is then that Israel will be able to achieve its ‘very clear goals’ which apparently will only take ‘a few weeks’ according to Major General Moshe Kaplinsky. However what war against terrorists targets dairy farms, pharmaceutical plants and paper mills?
I am tired of watching the news. I am tired of asking for translations and people are tired of translating. I figure when I bombed hits we’ll hear it.
The frustration of my friends and family from the camp is growing. I can see it. Mine is as well but I feel guilty letting it. I have a boat coming to ‘save’ me; I haven’t lost my job because there is no more work; I haven’t been displaced yet again; I haven’t suffered at the hands of those who stole what was once mine and now claim the right to defend their country. I won’t have to rebuild shit. All I will have to do is go back to the comfort of life in Canada and recount what is was like to have ‘survived’.
At the same time, everyone is becoming impatient with each other. Tension is high; bread is becoming scarce. And yet many just worry about their brothers in Gaza and West Bank and not about themselves. There is nothing anyone can do right now, areas we thought were safe are no longer. The mainly Christian part of Beirut, Acharafiye, was bombed this morning. Is it not obvious to anyone what Israel is trying to do? Has anyone stopped to think why Hizbollah kidnapped the two soldiers to begin with?
I don’t have any answers but perhaps the UN can save the civilians as they did in Rwanda, Yugoslavia and so many other countries in the world? Yes, let’s let the UN come and save us with a special mission to Southern Lebanon. Perhaps they will care for those left in this country once we foreign nationals are all gone; perhaps they will care just as much as they cared for those in the bus carrying more than 30 women and children who were turned away from the UN compound seeking refuge only to be bombed while following orders from the Israeli leaflets dropped on their town of Marwahine.
Carolina Vergara Lamarre
Beirut, July 19, 2006
Day 7 of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon.
I am feeling very angry right now, I don’t know at what, or at whom or why but I feel very angry right now. I don’t feel like doing anything, not even writing and yet here I find myself.
This summer, as last summer, I was living among the displaced only to now find myself displaced with the displaced. I don’t fear for my safety for some odd reason, although most foreigners are panicking. I don’t want to leave and I know I would never forgive myself were I to board the supposed boats that Harper has sent for us Canadians.
At first everyone in Bourj Al Barajne camp was happy and almost giddy to see a break in the depressing everyday reality of their lives as Palestinians in Lebanon. It had only been days prior when the sound of fireworks and gunfire echoed through the night celebrating Italy’s victory over France. Now people are recounting stories to me about the war, the siege, having had to eat rats. ‘This is nothing’. No one is afraid, yet. Israel’s rockets and sonic booms shook my family’s house as we watched from the roof as Haret Hreik went up into flames and smoke. The billowing and raging fire from the airport only ten minutes away blocked the rising of the red moon. Still however, during the first few days of last week, the shebab discussed whose pigeons flew the highest; arguileh’s were being smoked while people still gathered on their roofs. During these first few days it was almost comforting to have the entire family strewn between the rooms of the house; helping to stock up on food; gathering to watch the news; discussing opinions and estimating when and how the war will continue or end.
This was the first time I didn’t leave the camp for four complete days, not even to the entrance to see the normally busy and noisy streets of Haret Hreik outside. No ‘services’ or buses I was soon told. Although consciously I am not afraid, I think my lack of appetite and constant trips to the bathroom, are telling me otherwise. I didn’t want to leave the camp. I don’t like having the privileges of a foreigner. As I walk through the alleys of Bourj to write an email home, my friends ask ‘badik hon?’ ‘ma haiffe?’.
I am new to the sound of bombs, planes that drop bombs, machine gun fire. By Friday night more people are increasingly nervous. I have noticed myself feed off of peoples’ calmness or panic. I am fine while alone. However Saturday morning I go to visit my neighbour only to discover she has left with her children to the mountains. Soon, visiting family from Denmark comes crying saying their goodbyes. They are leaving for Syria to make their way back to Denmark. I haven’t been able to sleep properly since last Wednesday. I am exhausted and yet can not sleep. I find myself on a diet of sweet Nescafe and waking up various times through the night to the sounds of planes or what I think are the sounds of planes.
People cheer as Nasarallah announces the sinking of an Israeli war ship. The rocket was fired from atop the wedding hall where I had attended a wedding with my mother and friends from Shatila only a week previously. Although I too feel great happiness at this, I can’t help but fear what type of retaliation awaits us.
Late Saturday afternoon I decide to try and make my way to Hamra. I pack two pairs of pants, two t-shirts, my important documents and underwear in a knapsack. My family is lucky to find transport for me. The streets are deserted. We drive underneath the familiar ‘jisr al mataar’ that I always walk under to go visit friends in Shatila. However, there is no more bridge left.
Everything feels surreal to me. Only 3 months ago I stood in the town of Maroun Ras, the site of the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers, overlooking the border with Palestine. Only a week and a half ago I was visiting southern, western and northern Lebanon with my mother. She left the day before the Israeli soldiers were taken. We had been in Saida, walked in Manara and through Bir Abid to catch a bus to Baalbeck. Since then the bridge to Saida has been burned, over forty buildings have been felled in Bir Abid and Haret Hreik or as is mainly known on the news as the Dahieh; the road to Damascus has been destroyed; Baalbeck has been incessantly targeted by Israel; the lighthouse in Manara was struck by a missile; over 200 innocent victims have been killed in Lebanon. It is hard to believe how fast life can change and all that was seemingly important becomes insignificant.
Saturday I am lucky to find a room for thirty five dollars a night. All of Dahieh is in Hamra. Everyone looks out of place. People here live in a different world then in Dahieh. Girls still take time to blow dry their hair, pick out sexy outfits and gather with their friends at the Macdonalds. Cars go by blasting music. It’s as if they are all unaware that their city is being bombed only 10 minutes away. Yet this indifference and ignorance doesn’t come as a surprise to most.
The text messages from my family in the camp all through Saturday night were too chipper to be sincere. By Sunday I begin looking for a place for the rest of the family. They arrive with three plastic bags of food, a bag with their important papers and the clothes on their backs. They tell me that from one to five in the morning the shelling across the street and down the road from the camp did not stop. My family had stood in the living room crying, those who I believed unable to be afraid, left the camp first thing Sunday morning.
I go to visit my fellow ex-pats. One Canadian, one Australian, one German. All wish to remain in the country. Perhaps my reasons for wanting to stay are more personal but I am also filled with an overwhelming feeling of guilt and responsibility at what is happening here. How, how, how, how, how, how can I abandon a family I have come to love so much? How, how, how, how can I leave those who welcomed the closest person I have to me, my mother, into their home; those who shared their house, their family, their stories, love and lives with her? How, how, how, how can I leave now? How can I leave when the going gets rough? Simply because I am a foreigner? How can I leave when I know my own government supports the Zionists, who were only looking for a reason to invade Lebanon once again? How can I leave feeling that people in the world deem my life more valuable than all those left to suffer here in Lebanon?
Israeli commandos invaded southern Lebanon this morning. Apparently Hizbollah has been waiting for this.
But what can you do? many ask. To be honest I have no idea. I began organizing children’s activities with the refugees at Sanayeh, distributing food. I can write, get the message out, the truth. I can simply show solidarity with the people I love by staying here. I haven’t suffered at all when I think all the people who have lost everything in the South; those who have sought safety with no food, five children and nothing to go back to.
But there are people who love me across an ocean who are sick with worry. I feel guilty for staying as well.
What will happen when all the foreigners leave Lebanon? Once the evacuations have ceased? It is then that Israel will be able to achieve its ‘very clear goals’ which apparently will only take ‘a few weeks’ according to Major General Moshe Kaplinsky. However what war against terrorists targets dairy farms, pharmaceutical plants and paper mills?
I am tired of watching the news. I am tired of asking for translations and people are tired of translating. I figure when I bombed hits we’ll hear it.
The frustration of my friends and family from the camp is growing. I can see it. Mine is as well but I feel guilty letting it. I have a boat coming to ‘save’ me; I haven’t lost my job because there is no more work; I haven’t been displaced yet again; I haven’t suffered at the hands of those who stole what was once mine and now claim the right to defend their country. I won’t have to rebuild shit. All I will have to do is go back to the comfort of life in Canada and recount what is was like to have ‘survived’.
At the same time, everyone is becoming impatient with each other. Tension is high; bread is becoming scarce. And yet many just worry about their brothers in Gaza and West Bank and not about themselves. There is nothing anyone can do right now, areas we thought were safe are no longer. The mainly Christian part of Beirut, Acharafiye, was bombed this morning. Is it not obvious to anyone what Israel is trying to do? Has anyone stopped to think why Hizbollah kidnapped the two soldiers to begin with?
I don’t have any answers but perhaps the UN can save the civilians as they did in Rwanda, Yugoslavia and so many other countries in the world? Yes, let’s let the UN come and save us with a special mission to Southern Lebanon. Perhaps they will care for those left in this country once we foreign nationals are all gone; perhaps they will care just as much as they cared for those in the bus carrying more than 30 women and children who were turned away from the UN compound seeking refuge only to be bombed while following orders from the Israeli leaflets dropped on their town of Marwahine.
Carolina Vergara Lamarre
posted by Austin Gerassimos Mackell at 9:25 PM
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