A rainbow stretches over the fields
leading down from Bint Jbeil to Tyre
(photo by Serene Assir) |
|
|
|
Bint Jbeil -
With the first rains,
the fine thread that had held the mood together in towns
across the southern belt of Lebanon snapped. Embraced by
dry mountains peopled by olive trees, ochre-coloured
rocks and twisting roads that always seem to lead
upwards, Bint Jbeil was eerily empty as families ran for
shelter from the sudden showers. But one woman with
lines on her face from age and worry refused to let me
find my own way back to Tyre, though I had grown
accustomed to doing just that on numerous reporting
trips to the area. "We don't want you to end up getting
in a taxi with a stranger," she said.
Five minutes in the rain, and she, her husband and I
were drenched. An old red Mercedes pulled up, and the
driver, dressed in black, asked us if we needed a ride.
Umm Hussein and Mohamed Bazze got in the back,
whispering to me not to tell the driver I was a
journalist. "You never know," they said, exercising
extreme caution and care for me. "You're young; we don't
want anything to happen to you."
The haggling started, as did the warnings. "You'd better
take care of her, you hear?" And as they climbed out,
back into the thrashing rain which seemed to pour down
on us from an ever-nearing sky, Bazze called out, in an
act of fatherly kindness, "Send our regards to your
family!". I had spoken with the couple for less than 10
minutes, and they had of course never met my family. The
predisposition they had for helping a complete stranger
was extraordinary.
The driver looked across the road at the couple as they
scuttled for shelter before he turned the ignition key.
"I hope you're not worried. I'm the brother of a
martyred fighter, so of course I can be trusted." His
face pockmarked with freckles and his hair mountain red,
Hassan (not his real name) began to talk about his
younger brother Jamal (again, not his real name), who
was among the first Hizbullah fighters to be killed
during the summer war. On the rear windshield of the
car, Hassan had pasted a poster with a photograph of his
brother. He wore a Palestinian kuffiyeh and the designer
had placed an image of the Dome of the Rock behind him,
a permanent symbol of pan- Arabism.
All the while, as he spoke Hassan kept his eyes fixed on
the road, as though talking through the tragedy required
enormous amounts of concentration. By the end of the
war, 19 Hizbullah members had been killed in Bint Jbeil.
"The night he was martyred, I was with him," he said.
"We were both on our way out of the house. Missiles and
rockets were raining all around us, and to start with we
were safe under the storm. But soon enough, he was
injured. I tried to carry him to Bint Jbeil Hospital,
which was still up and running. Jamal was the one who
told me to leave him there, on the roadside, to die."
Hassan sighed, his eyes remained transfixed on the road,
and he stopped speaking for a good two minutes. As I
hadn't told him I was a reporter, I felt unjustified in
urging him on. I also felt that if I told him now, the
trust bond that had been established between Hassan, the
elderly couple and myself would be broken. I remained
silent.
Soon enough, it was clear that Hassan needed to tell his
story, as he had probably already told it to countless
passengers in his taxi to and from the border villages.
I felt as ready to listen as I was to share his honest
account of his experience of the summer war, which would
have invariably changed had he known I might divulge it.
But this story is about Hassan as much as it is about
scores of people in south Lebanon wearing black today,
still in mourning over the loss of a brother, a friend,
or a father, still living in uncertainty. For this
reason, it is worth listening to.
"Jamal was already drenched in his own blood, but I
couldn't heed his request at first. But then, he told me
that one of us had to survive, to take care of our
mother, and to continue fighting. 'I can already see the
Imam Ali: I'm not coming back,' he told me. I walked
away," Hassan said.
I ask him how he feels. "How do I feel? How do you think
I feel? I am fire inside. My life is not worth living
any longer," he said, with clearly restrained but
explosive anger in his voice, his hands clutching the
wheel, the rain still battering the windscreen. "He was
my little brother, and my best friend. My mother doesn't
go a single night without dreaming that he has come to
her, begging her for forgiveness. When she prays, she
says she sees him too. When we sit at the table to have
lunch or dinner, she still lays out a plate, a fork and
a spoon for him. Every day, I ask her why. Every day,
she says she knows Jamal's coming back. Her eyes are
swollen, and she cries all the time. But the tears, they
won't come out any more."
Hassan went on to talk about his own condition after the
war, saying he cannot eat without feeling sick. "Dealing
with my mother's pain is in itself incredibly difficult.
So much so that I only have time to think about my own
when I'm out on the road. Simply put, I feel completely
alone in the world without Jamal. I have lost so much.
Bint Jbeil has also lost a great deal. He used to work
with the disabled through a Hizbullah charity -- now
those he used to care for come to the house and cry in
our arms. They're the only ones who are being honest
about it. Everyone else, when they come and visit, they
say 'haniyyan', and walk out again." Haniyyan is the
term used during visits to the family of someone who has
been killed in fighting, as opposed to 'Allah yirhamo',
or may God rest his soul, which is used as the general
term of condolence in Arabic. Haniyyan implies a
conferral of positivity, similar to God bless you,
suggesting a means of congratulating the family on the
fighter's advent to paradise. "That's like someone
visiting a friend who's on his last legs, dying of
cancer, and saying to him, may God grant you a long,
prosperous life."
The dark turn in the tone of Hassan's voice prompted yet
another silence, but meanwhile the storm had started to
abate, giving way to the creation of a rainbow
stretching all across the sky and the mountains beneath
it. He noticed my attention was no longer with him as I
scrambled for my pocket camera. He stopped the car to
let me take a picture of the rainbow, whose colours, to
my eyes, literally transformed the scene from one of
misery to one of intense hope. "Do you know what that
rainbow means?" he asked. After I offered my
interpretation, he shook his head gravely and replied,
"It can only mean one thing, and that is rain." We drove
on.
With the anguish in his face subsiding into something a
little calmer but no less pained, I asked him whether he
regretted the loss. On this, he was clear. "We do not
fight Israel for any reason other than the fact that it
has targeted our people. When it stops, we will too. The
loss has caused me so much pain, but we have no choice.
We are just people, the people of the south, and we grew
up poor. But it is our responsibility to not give way.
Otherwise our children will grow up in the same misery
we have witnessed all our lives, whether under
occupation or under threat of occupation."
As we came closer to Tyre, he stopped to pick up a woman
in her forties in Bazouriye, coincidentally enough on
the exit of the native town of Hizbullah chief Hassan
Nasrallah. And he started to tell his story all over
again, with her reactions much more marked than mine had
been. On hearing that his brother had died without
having borne children, she showed visible distress. The
way he told his story this time round was similar in
content, different only in tone -- with references to
the glory of martyrdom and speculations on whether
martyrs truly spend eternity with the Prophet Mohamed
and Imam Ali decorating the narrative.
She got off a few minutes before I did, just in time for
me to get one last question in. Do you think there will
be another war, I asked Hassan. "Of course there will be
another war with Israel. With Israel there is nothing
but war. All I can do now is look forward to it, for I
too shall become a martyr in the next war." The rest was
silence. As I got out of the car, he apologised. "I am
sorry if my story has upset you, if it was too sad. You
look like you have a long life ahead of you. Don't worry
about me."
* Serene Assir is a freelance
journalist based in Lebanon.
|
