Letters From Lebanon: This Pain Has No Ceasefire

Israeli Missiles Still Crash into The Memory of What Once Was

Barucha Calamity Peller

August 14th, 2006 - Five hours after the ceasefire between Israel and
Hezbollah. In a village just north of the Litani River I walk over
houses, houses that have become ruins of what once was. Here are
prayerbeads still in their box, there a single shoe, a
little farther-a babywalker. Lift up this foam mattress and there is the
blood of the child who slept there when the missile hit.

Walking through the rubble I come across something more lying
there, something somehow familiar. They are two photographs -moments
frozen in time, something that once was, suspended in my shaking hand.
A woman with black eyes like arrows piercing space, lips set and her
hand motionless holding a piece of fruit. The next photograph is a
group of people, men, women, girls and boys, posed with hands on
eachothers backs in the foyer of a home.

A man walks through the rubble, he picks up pieces here and there
and drops them again. Suddenly he walks towards a bulldozer with a
Hezbollah flag waving from the top and directs the driver towards one
end of the wreckage before walking back in my direction. His mother,
sister, nephew and cousin where asleep where this home once stood when
the Israeli missile struck fierce a few nights ago. The ceasefire has
permitted him to come back to the site to silently
sift through the remains of his family.I stumble over the ruins to him and gently hand him the photographs.
He shuffles slowly through the pictures of his family, one over
another, three times, and puts them in his pocket. He looks at me,
looks through me, eyes empty.

There is a ceasfire, but how to put the pieces back together?

Twenty minutes before seven am, when the ceasefire was scheduled to
take effect, Israeli bombing could be heard in all directions, near and
far, and the missiles seemed to race against the last seconds of war.
Fifteen minutes before ceasefire, one of these missiles hit a home
outside of Nabitiye and killed a forty year old disabled man who lived
alone. His neighbors did not rejoice in the ceasefire-they were busy
collecting the man's body parts. His head was found severed with a
single finger in the mouth.

Today many Lebanese people, displaced by the four week war, left the
schools, centers, and parks housing refugees in the north to return to
their homes.

Many of them did not know if their houses were still standing, and
what had become of family members and friends left behind in the
villages. Some, whose homes had been destroyed, remained in the centers,
or arranged to stay with relatives. Because Israel bombed virtually all
of the roads and bridges in the south of Lebanon and over the Litani
River, those returning spent hours on the road as a makeshift bridge was
hastily constructed.

There was some joy, though not entirely celebratory, visible on the
roads and entrances to towns. Hezbollah flags were held in passenger's
hands and the portrait of Nasrallah a common sight in rear windows. As
the Israeli soldiers retreated from southern Lebanon with occasional
glances over their soldiers, and missile launching planes vanished from
the sky, people felt at ease on their land again. After the destruction
of two Israeli warships, fourteen tanks, and the deaths of over 70
soldiers, all culminating in a somber Israeli retreat, Hezbollah claimed
the ground war victory. For many Lebanese this was predictable-If during
its 23 year occupation here Israel was unable to defeat Hezbollah and
the Lebanese resistance (finally being pushed out by Hezbollah in 2000),
then how could Israel expect to disarm and crush Hezbollah in one month?

Yet amongst the relief of the Israeli retreat, there is an utter
sadness of returning to places in the south where there were once parks,
stores, homes, schools and entire villages, where now only a few houses
remain and the rest is flatened, where histories have become totaled
beneath cement. Some villages stink with the decomposition of bodies,
and as the cleanup continues, the Lebanese civilian death count will
surely multiply. And from within the anguish of the rubble and lives
lost there is danger: undetonated grenades, cluster ammunitions, and
fragmentations illegally used by the Israelis. In the first day of the
ceasefire a few people returning to their homes and a red cross worker
have triggered these weapons.

As a Uniter Nations MAC worker (part of a mine cleaning team) put it:
"We just finished cleaning these things up in the south from the last
time the Israelis used them. They (israelis) even gave us maps of where
they were. Now they scattered them everywhere all over again. Its like
going right back to zero."

The families must start all over again as well. A group of sisters
and their small children, who have been living in a refugee center in
Saida, plan to stay with relatives in Beirut. They survived the bombing
in their village on the Israeli border for twenty days. When the house
they were in got hit the women called out the names of their chidren and
where able to find the ones that survived. One woman with her children
was unaware that her sister was only meters away for an entire week
obstructed by the rubble that had fallen between them. Another, who was
seven months preganant with twins, gave premature birth into the toilet
while the village burned and bombs fell continuously. Among the sounds
of bombs were her cries and those of the first baby she birthed,a girl
who came out feet first and died instantly. A boy was birthed
afterwards and died 24 hours later. She had been trying to concieve for
four years before the war. The sisters were able to walk with their
children to another village, and then another, under impossible
circumstances of air bombardment and artillerally fire of soldiers
crossing over from Israel, and were eventually evacuated by the Red
Cross to Saida.

In refuggee centers in Saida survivors of the first Qana massacre in
1996 await to return to Qana once again, where this month an Israeli
missile killed 65 people, mostly children. A family with eight children
from a village outside of Nabatiye will stay with relatives-their house
was destoyed by a missile and they hid out for a week, as two of the
children fell very sick from having no water or food, until escaping the
bombardment to arrive to relative safety in Saida.

There is a ceasefire, but how to put the pieces back together?
Families shattered, scattered from graveyards to the long highway home.
Eyes tatooed with scenes of horror. Bodies waiting beneath wreckage to
be named and buried. Homes gone.

Yes, there is a ceasefire. A ceasefire that cannot stop the pain.

Dahiye, the southern suburbs of Beirut, is a city of rubble. People
appear miniscule walking amogst the skyscraping ruins. Even in the
chaos of wreckage- clothes and toys strewn about, rebar twisting sickly
towards the sky, mountians of concrete and remains-there is a certain
absolutness to destruction, somehow everything that is still remaining
becomes the same- gone.

The walls of homes that once protected families and cradled their
lives are now in pieces, shreds, fine dust. Sift through the rubble.
Kick the rubble. Stand still, silent, alone with the absolutness of
destruction and accompanied by the millions of shattered pieces of
everything that was here before. Leave the rubble. Try to forget. Walk
away from the terrible sight. But your mind is in pieces, lives in
pieces, people who never again will stand in the doorway with greetings.
You can walk away. There is a ceasefire. But missiles fall, they fall,
not from the skies, but behind Lebanese eyes, they fall forever in
memory, they are still crashing into what once was.

Contact: macheteyamor@yahoo.com