Writers RESPOND to the Israeli war on Lebanon:

Voices from the South

By four Lebanese women.

Turab, by Huda Fakhreddine
The Enemy has a Name, by Ghia Osseiran
Odeisse, by Sahar Tabaja
Doueir, by Loubna

Turab

It sits there, looking over the valley which gradually loses its boundaries as the evening creeps westward; a two-story construction that barely has definite shape. It has been shaping itself for almost fifteen years, slowly growing walls and smiling windows as if coming to life in the midst of nature. Alone it has stood for winters and summers, looking over at the other side of the valley, waiting for the flocks of grey sheep every afternoon, and listening for the gentle tapping of rain in the pockets of the mountains that stand like old men in the wind.

This is the house. It has only actually become one very recently, but even before it was always ‘the house’. My father didn’t build it. He hid within the walls of small stuffy apartments in the heart of a burning city for twenty years. He watched the black rain fall over Beirut and dreamt of that valley where rain only hovers like the wings of ethereal doves and never really falls. He hid in his fears and sent out his wishes in the dark to build and wrap his house that was to stand looking over the bottomless valley of ethereal rain. I always heard him say that the experience of a house is most enjoyable when it is still coming into being, when the walls are still not very still, when the windows are still openings not to be closed, when the wind can still find its way to every corner.

For fifteen years, construction would proceed and cease depending on the dangers that surrounded that little piece of land where my father had decided to build a house. The worn out structure has witnessed several attacks that surprised it from behind the defeated hills of Jabal ‛Āmil. It has been invaded, violated, occupied, and taken hostage. But every time we returned, it would be there, proudly standing amid its exhausted army of Eucalyptus and Pine, and its unyielding guards of olive and fig. A dreary stillness befalls everything around me at the mere thought of that house not being there anymore. Is it possible that the olive trees have given in and burnt away? Is it possible that the fig trees have recoiled and finally decide to let death march through?

My village Soultanieh has forever existed in this give and take between life and death. We have always lived at the edge, on the borderline between light and dark, but we have always managed to rise again every time. So easily the village squares become crowded with people, summer dances, and rounds of tea at sunset. The old men and women who used to sit on the stone benches in the shadow of the Mosque were always aware of the distant bombing. It had become part of the voices in their heads. They would sit in the long summer afternoons, defying their fears with anecdotes and memories. That square might never be the same again. How can it ever be the same again, if the Mosque might no longer shed its long shadow over the stone benches, if the patient olive trees have burnt? How can things ever be the same again if bright summer houses where breezes heavy with the scent of Jasmine and Thyme used to play, have now become black piles of rubble?

My grandfather now sits small in an armchair in one the corners of our apartment in Ras Beirut. He has been sitting in that chair for almost a month now, holding the buzzing radio close to his ear and staring constantly into the television at the same time. He rarely ever sleeps. He sometimes stretches on a nearby sofa but even then, he keeps the radio close to his ear to avoid missing any detail of a war he has been monitoring for weeks. Even in his sleep he is always ready to jump to his feet, despite weak knees and an aching back. He has a residue of energy that comes alive with despair, an energy that he can muster rising up on his feet in an instant when the bombs begin to fall.

My grandmother sits close by, stretching her aching legs on a chair in front of her. She never ceases to be amazed at the urgent news flashes that come in minute after minute. She does not cry, she sits there horrified and you could see the tears twinkle in the depth of her eyes. It has been almost thirty years of fear and escape, but it is very hard to get used to life in corners and stairwells, when you can still smell the scent of laurel and wild Oak. My grandparents wait for news, their faces darkened behind the walls of the city; their wrinkled hands, open and yielding. What is there to hold on to if you cannot reach out and grasp a handful of soil?

Huda Fakhreddine

The Enemy has a Name

Of this ancient Phoenician city state sprawled into the rugged water, of the crusader’s sea castle, the Souks and the old town, my mind is absorbed elsewhere. Of the enemy’s threat to turn back the hands of time 20 years; my thoughts are fixated on a single spot, a single house that had been bombed many a time, and rebuilt many a time.

They were sitting in the living room across from each other on the couch chatting. They had refused to leave. A bomb stormed right through the double layered ceiling and exploded right in the space in between. I named my first doll Wataniyeh. I was two or three. It was 1985.

I was not born a nationalist, but next to “the enemy” “Al haraka al wataniya,” or the nationalist movement, was perhaps the second most repeated phrase on television, and so I called her that. Wataniyeh. She was never extravagantly dressed, in fact almost always without a dress like a true comrade. That is how I best remember her.

The enemy has a name, but in our newspapers the enemy is known as “the enemy.” In our television broadcasts it is also “the enemy.” As the situation remains “not yet ripe,” over a quarter of the population is displaced, over a thousand dead and over 3000 wounded like check pawns on a battlefield with seemingly loftier ends. “Birthpangs.”

“Birthpangs” reverberated across the country. “Birthpangs” reverberated in the form of GBU 28 laser-guided bombs and missiles. “Birthpangs” reverberate still in the form of unexploded cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions courteously left behind by the enemy, something to remember him by.

July 2006. My 24th birthday. Twenty four years ago I was born with the enemy’s bombs as midwife. 1982. Lebanon was under siege then, also in “self-defense.” My mother gave birth to me in a semi-deserted hospital in Saida. There were no nurses on the floor. The doctor’s wife kindly cooked her meals instead.

Twenty four years later, and the country is under siege. Teta and jiddo again refuse to move. They survived 15 years of civil war, they will not leave now, jiddo tells me. Flyers had been thrown onto Saida over the weekend, demanding that the inhabitants make way for the enemy to launch its assaults. Seventy thousand refugees had flocked into the city. Two Palestinians had settled in the garden outside, and a family of seven from Mayfadoun had settled in the ground floor. They were all not moving.

“Samidoun, samidoun,” teta would tell me over the phone proud of the resistance’s resilience. “They fought like heroes,” residents of the South would exclaim in the aftermath of the incursions.

The enemy has a name. Across the years, that name came to be qualified. “Al Adow al awal” or the primary enemy, “al adow al sahyooni,” the Zionist enemy. But it remained in the singular.

The siege lasted 34 days. Now the enemy asks for its name back. It will soon extend its hand. The enemy is the one “civilized” beacon of hope in the region. The enemy wants peace.

Ghia Osseiran

Odeisse

My first visit to Odeisse was when I was five years old, when the south was still under occupation. I remember snapshots; we were in my mum’s village and my dad was to leave for a two-week trip, on his own, to his birthplace - a tiny village nestled across the bosom of two hills facing the Finger of the Galilee, and in the far distance across east, the Golan Heights. I remember nagging to be taken along, and my mum’s refusal, though at the time I couldn’t understand why. Somehow, I was taken along, my sister, Basma, would of course, be staying behind because she was too young, only three, and my mother had not obtained a tasreeh, one of those special pink or green papers with strange letters on them, informing the border soldier we had been allowed entry into our village by the relevant authorities.

All I remember from the two-hour journey is the stop at the check-point; my dad was not his usual calm self, holding on to my hand very tight, though I had not tried to go ‘exploring’ and had been a good girl. I also remember craning my neck out the window to stare at the proud, vibrantly green mountains, ignoring human borders and maintaining their descent, southern-bound. I now know the mountains that had captured my fantasy as a child, for I looked out for them with almost nervous excitement on the way for a second visit, one Sunday eleven years later. This time, the entire family was going (Farah and Yasmina had been born), we were driving our own car, and there were no border check-points.

I don’t recall arriving there the first time, but I remember my grandmother’s two-room house, where my dad and his nine siblings had grown up. Inherited from her father, the dar was set around a rectangular, communal yard, opening onto the street and town square on one side, our two rooms on the opposite side and a barn on the right. The two rooms perpendicular to ours, on the left, had been inherited by her brother.

Our two rooms became engrained in my memory, with the tiny kitchen in the back, the old bathroom, whose walls, ceiling and floor never seemed to me to be quite parallel, and the boiler in the corner that, to this day, still has the same chipped green paint. Upon my return later, everything seemed identical to the images stored from that first childhood trip, to my delight; the same orange metal gate, the barn where I had taken care of my precious grey goat, and the old couch resting against the front wall of the house, where afternoons had been - and still are - spent in the cool, summer breeze. My teenager eyes, however, could not help but see things in a different light, and I wondered how my grandmother had raised 10 children in this tiny house. My dad’s stories never betrayed any sign of discomfort - or of wanting to leave the place and find a better life. Rather, they all had the warm glow of Fairouz songs; riding on a donkey to help in the fields, pretending to study under the shade of the vine trees on the roof, while trying to catch a glimpse of the neighbor’s pretty daughter, and strolling down to the village spring to chat up the girls. My sister's favorite story and mine’s was of dad and uncle buying ice-cream. As children, as soon as they heard the much-loved beep of the ice-cream bicycle, they would rush to my grandmother, beg for two chicken eggs, and then run back outside to exchange them for two ice-cream cones. My sister and I found this hilarious, and loved to enact it over and over, pretending we were paying for ice-cream with two chicken eggs.

Amazingly, my own childhood memories reflect that same tranquility. I do indeed recall my own trips to the fields on the back of my grandpa’s donkey; I clearly remember waking up early every day, and rushing out into the brisk morning cold in my thin pajamas and plastic slippers, to ‘brush the hair’ of my lovely grey goat. The faithful animal was ever waiting for me, sticking its head over the wooden barn door. I was loathe to leave her behind, though I was assured that come winter, when my grandparents leave the village, my dad’s uncle would look after her. Later, I was sadly informed that she had been attacked by a dog (promptly after which I hated all dogs), and had died of her wounds. Truth be told, it’s only recently that I realized what had really happened; that the Ramadan holiday feast (the Eid) that year had been supplied by her meat.

Of the village itself, the reality differed much from my recollections upon coming back. A good deal had changed. I was able to find only one hay, or neighborhood, which was still the same. It was the one where one of my dad’s uncles had lived, and I was supposed to sleep over one night with his four kids, two of whom had become my closest friends. We had grand times, running around the tight, stone alleyways, and then settling down in the late afternoon to play Monopoly – a game I understood little of at the time, and remember being very confused by. As the night fell though, I was suddenly very afraid, crying that I wanted to go back to my grandma’s house. The elder sister patiently acquiesced when I couldn’t be calmed, and walked me back down those alleyways, now dark and foreboding, to my grandma’s. Now, the village square looked much smaller, and was over-flowing with people and noise as families flooded back. Also, there was a funeral at the Husayniyeh for a man who had been killed with a departing missile from the occupying forces, as his tractor cleared the blocked road for the incoming villagers. The village rang with ambivalent sounds of happiness and grief, laughter and wailing.

The week of the liberation was indescribable. In a flash, our weekend plans had drastically changed. Our family wish, every Ramadan at the family Iftar[1] had been ‘God willing, next Iftar would be in Odeisse’- and unbelievably, it would be coming true. Plans were excitedly drawn. The entire family would go up that weekend - for a family weekend that had been anticipated for over twenty five years. Tasks were assigned; who would bring what, there was meat and the chicken for the barbeque, fruits and vegetables, extra mattresses, pillows and blankets. My other uncles were leaving on Saturday, and were staying the night. We decided to join them the next day, and I recall thinking; how are they all going to fit in the old dar? For now, every child of my dad’s family has a family of his own, and as was typical of southern families, there was no shortage of children.

Our journey up was over-flowing with emotion. Cars and cars filled with southerners made their way through, careful to stay on the tarmac as we had been warned of landmines left on the sides of the roads - but there was no apprehension in the air, only jubilation. All were playing national, freedom songs for the south; Julia Boutros, Marcel Khalife and Fairouz blasted from car windows; all carried flags, mostly Lebanese; and all had tears in their eyes, streaming down their face, as most people returned after the absence of decades. As you cross what used to be a checkpoint into the liberated area, a corner bend then reveals to you breathtaking landscape; rolling green hills reclining against majestic mountains, a narrow river meandering through the valley below, and just off in the distance, Jabal el Sheikh (Mount Hermon), glinting in the sunlight with the last hints of snow capping its tip, an old man’s white cap. It seemed spectacular to the generation that was laying eyes on it for the first time, and wonderfully familiar for those who had sorely missed it.

True to my expectations, our arrival to the old house was greeted by a dizzying number of children running around, enjoying freedom from their parents’ attention. The parents were all inside, drinking coffee, preparing lunch, and generally trying to ignore the chaos as they chatted. We were laughingly told how they had all managed to squeeze in the night before, on mattresses carpeting the floor of the two rooms, heads to feet, who had managed to steal the only two beds and who had been forced to take the couch outside. Neighbors came over, people my dad and uncles hadn’t seen since childhood. Reminiscing was the rule of the day. The funniest moment, without doubt, came when my uncle’s old teenage sweetheart (the neighbor’s daughter of course) came to visit with her husband. The spouses teased the old lovers’ mercilessly, to the obvious embarrassment of my uncle, and the utter amusement of the rest of us.

It seemed surreal to me, that a Sunday in May six years ago, we really could go back to the village, that village that had been much further away than simply a two-hour drive. Now, it seems more so. I wonder when we will go back, and more apprehensively, to what will we go back? What will we find? What remains and what still stands? How are things going to be rebuilt? Will the same town square be kept? What about the old Husayniyeh – maybe they won’t rebuild it since a new one had recently been built? Or has that been destroyed too?

Sahar Tabaja

_________________________
[1] dinner to break the fast

Doueir

My interest in Nadim greatly increased when I learnt that he was from Nabatiyeh, which is very close to Doueir, my mother's hometown, and that he used to drive to Doueir to speed down its main large road to impress the girls who strolled back and forth on the sides of the road every evening. I liked the idea that Nadim knew the south and Doueir, and could have even seen me there, when I was still thirteen or fourteen, walking down the street with my cousins. He might have seen me in that black leather dress, which I had bought for the occasion of the Eid , and was immensely proud of-after all, it won me the compliments of a young man who stared at us from across the street, and turned out to be no other than the love interest of my eighteen-year-old cousin.

I don't know Doueir beyond that large two-way road, and even just a short section of it, not more than two kilometers, starting from the intersection that we come into after driving out of the village of Sharqieh and ending in the gas station, not far from uncle Hussein's house. The road looks like any other large road connecting villages together: it features miscellaneous shops on both sides, including many grocery stores, catering primarily to the travelers across town. The houses are usually part of the same buildings as those of the shops, as is the case with my uncle's house, while the villas and smaller houses are often located in the areas further east and west of the road.

My grandparents' two-storey white villa stood directly off the road; a grapevine-covered entrance, where three cars could park in line, leading into it. It stood between the house of grandfather's half-brother, uncle Ismail, and the house and grocery store of Abu Salem. We did not go much to uncle Ismail's, especially after he built a long fence to separate his house from my grandparents', presumably to keep "Flash," my grandparents' dog, away from their garden. His daughter, who was two years older than me, but always behaved like a young "madame," did not like to play in the fields anyway, and we duly kept her excluded from our clique. As for Abu Salem, a poor old man with blackened teeth that made him look scary to us when he smiled, he was probably thrilled when we came into town. He did make his best earnings of the week after all selling us cheap candy that had probably been in his big dark, dusty shop for months.

Not too far behind my grandparents' house stood what we called "the mountain," but which is actually a mere land elevation, where Mehdi, Maha, Mada and I constructed, from rocks and tree branches, a "military base," and while on guard, peeled and ate lemons covered with a lot of salt. When bored from our military camping, we would head to the public school with the black metal gate, a few meters up from uncle Ismail's house, and climb the gate to go in and play basketball in the school's courtyard. My girl cousins did not always like to play with us, for we also excluded them from our military base, and they admonished Maha and me for climbing up the gate, like boys. But Maha and I loved to spend time with them nonetheless, talking about the family, sharing secrets, fixing each other's hair, and listening to Arabic songs.

To the joyful melodies of the same Arabic songs, Mada and I got married virtually every other week-end, as we loved to play bride and groom, and walk together down the stairs of my grandparents' house's entrance, with our cousins throwing on us petals of roses and yellow marguerites. On the same stairs, the whole family gathered in the afternoon, kids and adults alike, chatting, eating pumpkin seeds, the women with food in hand, sorting out lentils, or piling up grape-leaves, my uncles and grandfather often playing cards on the porch.

I was surprised that Nadim knew about Doueir because not many other people had heard of this small village and the large road where cars can stop to buy candy from Abu Salem's shop. Not many people knew of it before the night of July 12 when an Israeli air strike killed a man, his wife and their eight kids in their house in Doueir. As the first in the war, the massacre was cited in the local and foreign media, and the Lebanese prime minister mentioned Doueir in his first speech during the war.

Hence it was that Doueir made its way to fame, though late and tragically. Only my grandfather got to be in Doueir just when it was getting famous, for he stayed to feed the cats and water the plants, and watch the house which shelters so much of our past

Loubna

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