While Israel created opportunity and breathed life into our existence, the combined forces of Muslims and the PLO suffocated any type of normal life. Because of their bombardment of our area, the major employment centers, such as the bank, the hospital, the electricity plant, the water plant, government offices, business offices, and the movie theater, were closed.
One technological development of the West that would influence and become a major factor in my life was television. Before the war I had always hated it when my father would get engrossed with the news in the evenings. Nobody could talk and nobody could change the channel. Now TV was a welcome diversion, a major form of entertainment, and a source of information. During our long days and nights in the bomb shelter we operated a small TV on a car battery. It was my window to the world. It was also my comparative window to cultures and societies in the Middle East. The greatest thing it showed me was the differences between how people and governments treated people in their countries.
On Israeli TV I saw people from the government visiting with schoolchildren my age and talking with them as if they were concerned about their well-being. I never saw anybody from my government come and visit with us. I sensed a greater equality between men and women in Israeli society than there was in Arab societies. Women seemed to be working side by side with men. I did not realize how the influence of television would eventually affect my opinions and then my behavior. As I slowly became Westernized in a society that lived according to Middle Eastern customs, I was setting myself on a collision course with my Arabic culture.
Whenever we were lucky enough to get a couple hours of electricity, I would watch not only the news but American programs such as Dallas and The Love Boat that ran on Israeli and Jordanian TV. I fell in love with the people, the language, the culture, and the music. There was an opulence on Dallas that was another world compared to the one I was living in. The romance and glamour of The Love Boat swept me far away from the regimented and restrictive nature of Middle Eastern courtship between men and women. What I really came away with was a determination to learn English. I knew that if I ever wanted to leave Lebanon and go to America, I had to speak the Americans' language. I considered it my ticket out of hell. I knew I would have to be ready with knowledge of the language so when the opportunity presented itself I would be able to use it.
TV became my English tutor. All the American shows were in English, with Arabic subtitles at the bottom of the screen. I would write the Arabic subtitles on the palm of my hands and then a phonetic rendering of whatever English word was spoken when the subtitle appeared. My second language, French, came in handy, helping me link subtitles in Arabic with what I heard. Since we were low on water and didn’t shower daily, I would build up a big vocabulary on my hands and up and down my arms. Since there wasn’t much to do during the day, I would study and practice the words and phrases on my “notebook” in my hours of endless boredom. I never got any real practical experience talking in English, but I had it all in my mind, ready to go. I got to the point where I was comfortable listening to the English dialogue and understanding a lot of it without reading subtitles. Despite the hopelessness and difficulty of the situation, I had a vision for my future and the will to figure out how to prepare for it.
As a result of the military support and social services provided by the Israelis, our way of life began to improve somewhat. We were getting electricity for about two hours a day now and water for about two hours every other day. However, the presence of the Israelis in southern Lebanon also meant more targets for the enemy. Now the Israelis were even closer to them, in their land, on their roads, and in their cities. Shelling attacks from the Islamic and Palestinian fighters began to increase as they adopted new tactics. Before, their barrages had been predictable. We would know when the Palestinians were going to attack, and an announcement could be made to alert the town. Shops and schools would close, and we would be able get to shelter before hell fell out of the sky. But now, everything would be peaceful, and then all of a sudden the world would explode. An attack might last for days, and then, just as suddenly, everything would go back to normal.
Just before Easter, 1982, we went without any shelling for twenty-two days. It gave us a glimmer of hope that perhaps we could prepare for a normal holiday. In Lebanon, Easter is the biggest holiday of the year for Christians, as big as Christmas is for Christians in the West. Mama was sewing me a velvet dress for the holiday—actually, modifying one of hers to fit me. As I stood in front of the mirror, trying it on so Mama could see where to adjust it, all I could think about was what Chuck would think when he saw me wearing it. Chuck and I had become very close. I was seventeen years old and he was twenty-two. We cared about each other a great deal. It wasn’t love with goose bumps, but the kind of feelings that made me think about him all the time and worry about his safety. I would constantly pray for him. He looked out for me and cared about my parents.
In this year when normalcy seemed to be returning, I was able to be deeply involved with the church and again sing in the choir. We practiced every day for a whole month before the holidays. After choir practice we would hang out with the priests and the nuns. We teenagers would eat, joke around, bake cakes, and prepare gifts for the needy. Chuck was Greek Orthodox, and he also sang in his church choir. After his practice, he would meet me at my Maronite church, and then we would walk home together.
The week before the holiday, everything felt different. Since we hadn’t been shelled for twenty-two days, we started getting used to living normally. We felt free and happy to be alive, appreciating every minute of those days of calm. I don’t know what it was. Maybe because spring was in the air. Maybe it was something about being seventeen. Maybe it had something to do with my special friendship with Chuck.
Chuck and I met every day that week, without arranging it. It had become a routine. He would walk with me to my church up the hill about fifteen minutes away, and we would talk and laugh—he had a great sense of humor. He would pick flowers from the side of the road and give them to me. We weren’t in love, exactly, but we knew that there was something deeper that we couldn’t explain. We liked flirting with each other, knowing it was safe. We knew we cared a lot about each other and that we wouldn’t do something stupid that would mess up our relationship. As we walked back every night, we would talk about school and our dreams, what our plans for the future would be if we stayed alive. It’s funny—we always included the possibility of death in our plans. Death was a part of our lives. Chuck would talk about how he would like to finish college if he stayed alive, and I would tell him about how I wanted to become a doctor if I survived the war. This type of conversation seemed very normal to us.
I had sung a solo at Saturday’s midnight mass. Afterward, Chuck came over to praise me for my singing. I noticed he wore a blue-and-yellow-striped Christian Dior sweater and brand-new pair of Pierre Cardin pants. I complimented him on his appearance. He kindly thanked me and told me how much he was looking forward to seeing me the next day all dolled up for Easter.
With a newfound sense of self-confidence I told him that he was going to like the way I looked. Chuck took my hands, looked deep into my eyes, and told me that his church service would be finished by twelve o’clock, and invited me to eat lunch at his house. I convinced him that we should be with my parents, since I was an only child. He accepted, and left with a big grin on his face, saying, “Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow."
"Me too,” I replied.
The next day was beautiful—the perfect Easter Sunday. I woke up at seven o’clock. Mama and Papa were already in the family room having their coffee and milk for breakfast. I kissed them and wished them a happy holiday. They hugged me. That morning, I think, I was the happiest girl in the world. I drank my milk really fast because I wanted to get dressed and go to the church for an early rehearsal. My parents were going to follow an hour later.
I put on my dress. As I stood in front of the long mirror, fixing my hair, a
few rays of sunshine made their way through the curtain and shone straight on my face. The dress showed my figure very well. It fit tight across my breasts, and highlighted my thin waist and beautiful legs. My long black hair fell down my back, stopping at my hips. I felt beautiful, perhaps for the first time in my life. All I could think of was Chuck. I imagined the look on his face when he saw me in this dress. I knew he would ask to kiss me. I just knew it. I could feel it. Chuck would want me to know that he was falling in love with me. I could just tell, especially after all that had been happening between us for the last week. I looked in the mirror for the final approval and left for church after kissing my parents good-bye.
The church filled up very quickly. Everyone wore new clothes. Fresh flowers were in abundance. The altar was beautifully decorated. The mass was perfect. But toward the end of the service, I noticed that a lot of men were talking to each other and then leaving the church in groups. I thought, Oh my God, here it comes. We are going to be put on alert. I thought the shelling was going to start again, but the priest didn’t say anything. He usually interrupted mass to inform people of an alert to give us time to run to shelter.
When the service ended at twelve o’clock, everyone stood around the front of the church talking. I went out hoping that Chuck had finished at his Greek Orthodox service early and would be in the crowd waiting for me. He would know what was going on. I looked for him, but he wasn’t there. While I was going back inside the church to see if he was looking for me there, I overheard a couple of people standing by the door talking about the terrible explosion at the border of town.
"What explosion?” I asked. They told me that Group 8—Chuck’s group—had received a tip that the Palestinians, knowing that this was a holiday, were trying to sneak into the back of town to attack. So the young men had left church, got into their tank, and headed over to the edge of town to see what was going on. The tank had gone over a land mine planted on the side of the road, and the mine had exploded. Three of the group were killed immediately and four others were wounded. My heart stopped.
I tried to control myself as I asked if they knew the names of the men who died. They said, “We heard Eli and Bassam were killed.” Eli and Bassam were Chuck’s best friends, the ones who helped him free my family when we were trapped in our bomb shelter. “And,” they added, “also Chuck . . . but nobody really knows for sure who’s dead and who’s alive."
By the time they finished their sentence, the blood had stopped pumping into my face. Chuck couldn’t be dead. I ran to the street, where Tony, a friend of ours, just happened to be passing by in his car. I stopped him and asked if he had heard anything about Chuck. I told him what I’d heard and suggested we drive to the Good Fence, the border with Israel, because I had heard that the wounded were being transported to Israel for treatment. I saw Mama before we left and told her what had happened, and that I would be home for lunch. I asked her to wait just another half an hour for me.
I hopped into Tony’s car and we drove to the Good Fence, which was about a ten-minute drive south. When we arrived, the ambulance was in the process of unloading bodies. We got out of the car and walked toward the ambulance. It was horrifying. Blood was everywhere. I was able to recognize the two bodies lying in the ambulance as Eli and Bassam. Eli had lost both of his legs and one arm, and the top of his head was gone. Bassam had lost one leg, two arms, and his stomach area. The four who had been wounded were being taken to the hospital. Chuck wasn’t in the ambulance with the other two bodies, so obviously he wasn’t dead. Thank God, I thought; being wounded is better than dead.
We ran to the doctor to see where Chuck had been sent. The doctor said he was still in the ambulance. We said, “No. Only the dead bodies were there, and Chuck wasn’t there."
The doctor replied, “Yes he is,” and turned his face away.
Tony and I looked at each other, puzzled, and ran back to the ambulance, where soldiers were bringing boxes for the bodies. We looked inside the ambulance after they pulled out Bassam and Eli, but there was nothing left but a big plastic bag. The soldiers pulled a third box up to the ambulance. As they slid the plastic bag into the box, I saw Chuck’s name written on its side. And as they pulled the bag over, a human finger fell from it. Without thinking, I bent down, picked it up, and put it in the box with the rest of him.
And then I began to scream so loudly that it hurt my throat. I was hysterical. Tony had tears in his eyes and held my hand until we got to the car. We drove back home without saying a word.
Tony dropped me off at my parents' house and continued on to Chuck’s house. When I told my parents, they began to cry. As we sat at the table to eat, we looked at the empty dish that was intended for Chuck. Mama had prepared the table before she left for church that morning.
The funeral was set for two thirty that same day, about an hour from the time we got the news. They wanted to bury the dead as fast as possible because in response to the attack, shelling was scheduled to begin at four thirty that afternoon.
The coffins were sealed because the bodies were so badly mangled. The boys' mothers screamed in agony, banging on the coffins, pleading to see their sons one last time.
That beautiful Easter had turned into a day of unbearable sorrow. A few hours before, these three young men had been singing in the choir of the same church where their funeral was now being held. When they had left the church on their mission, they were still in their holiday clothes. They left, died, and within hours came straight back to church for their burial ceremony. The church was still decorated with flowers and white satin cloth, inside and out. People were still dressed in their holiday clothes; little girls, looking like little angels, still wore their traditional white satin Easter dresses.
I stood there in my velvet Easter dress next to Chuck’s coffin for our last good-bye. I told him that I hadn’t realized that morning when I put on my lovely new dress—the dress I couldn’t wait for him to see—that I was dressing for his funeral. I cried bitterly as I leaned over his casket, holding on to it so tightly that I could hardly breathe. The funeral was over by three thirty in the afternoon. Then everyone left for their shelters for what turned out to be the beginning of a week of agony, bombing, and despair.
That night, I sat on my bed in the corner of the shelter, numb, listening to the explosions of the artillery shells and thinking about Chuck. My parents kept talking about how Chuck would always check in on us and look out for us. They recalled how Chuck and his friends had saved our lives. Now all three of our rescuers were dead. “How sad,” I remember Papa telling Mama. “The old people who have lived a long life are still here sitting in a bomb shelter, and the young ones are dead. Why didn’t God take us, and let them live?"
I looked at the flickering dying candle trying to burn just a little longer to maintain whatever small glow and thought how similar we were. I had tried to hold on to hope in those few peaceful weeks we had enjoyed, thinking I had a chance to live, to learn, to become something, and to enjoy life. But when I could touch hope, hope vanished in the midst of hate, violence, death, and intolerance. Just when I thought peace was possible I was robbed of my innocence in the most gruesome way. Hope was dying along with my dying candle.
5.
A LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCE
The war had been raging now for seven years as the Western world watched. No one realized what the Christians in Lebanon were going through except the Israeli Jews. They had been facing this force of hatred ever since their inception. Just when I was about to give up on life, when hope died and despair overcame me, fate stepped in to alter my destiny and give me the drive and reason to fight for the life I wanted, desired, and deserved.
Our militia was so angered by the Easter attack that it launched an all-out retaliation attack against the Muslims and Palestinians and their villages. The Muslims fired back with renewed vigor. That’s the Middle East: revenge upon revenge, and it’s usually the civilians who pay the price.
For the next three m
onths things were very uncertain. The fighting had escalated to an unprecedented point. The Palestinians were getting stronger and more aggressive with their attacks. They would start shooting when we least expected it. They would fire a barrage into town at seven thirty in the morning when kids were riding to school and parents were buying food and running errands.
At the same time the Israeli army had set up an artillery base on the hill across the valley from our town. We knew something was up just by looking at the massive construction and listening to the heavy artillery barrages that the Israelis launched. This artillery base was our main defense against the Muslims and the Palestinians. Israel had brought in 155-millimeter cannons that shook our house when they fired. This was the same type of weapon that the combined forces of Syrians, Muslims, and Palestinians had been using against us for four years. We knew things were not going to get better any time soon.
Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America Page 11