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.
