During the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982, Amal fought alongside the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance and by February 1984 this coalition was able to expel the Lebanese army and Lebanese Forces militia from West Beirut, leaving Amal as the dominant militia in West Beirut and the south. The Palestinians in the Beirut camps were unarmed and defenceless but had no cause to believe Amal would attack them.
On May 18, 1985 I was returning home from Gaza Hospital and as I approached Burj camp I saw it was surrounded by sandbags as if in preparation for an attack. When I got home my mother was greatly relieved.
‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘Amal have put sandbags all around the camp.’
At that time there were no fighters in the camp. My father who with other men, had formed a popular committee to support our community, went to Amal and asked why it was putting up sandbags around the camp. On his return he reassured us of Amal’s good intentions.
‘Amal leaders said that, as tomorrow is the start of Ramadan and often there are clashes at this time, they are expecting an attack by the Lebanese Forces. They are getting ready to protect us in case of this attack.’
In the morning I woke at 6 o’clock as usual and headed off to work. As I walked past the big square in the camp I saw my younger brother Amer, then 17 years. ‘Why are you going to the hospital,’ he asked me. ‘Haven’t you heard the news?’
He told me Gaza Hospital had been occupied by Amal who had killed many of those inside. I was totally shocked. I could not believe Amal would do that; I raced home and tuned into the Lebanese Forces radio station. The first news item detailed the Gaza Hospital occupation and an attack on Sabra and Shatila. The announcer talked about ‘Palestinian terrorists’, and that all Palestinians should be forced out of Lebanon. It was a familiar theme. But we were shocked and surprised by the news of this attack as we all knew there were no fighters in the camps. All of the camps in Beirut were under the political control of Palestinian groups aligned to Syria and of no threat whatsoever to the Lebanese. These Amal fighters were our neighbours; we went to school with them. How could they do this and why? None of us could believe what we heard.
After hearing this news, my mother quickly left the camp to buy bread; we feared the worst, so wanted to stock up. On her return she told us everything appeared normal outside: there were many people walking around, shopping and going about their daily business. Then as she spoke, without warning, heavy shooting erupted on the edge of the camp, with a concentration on our Tarshiha area. Like my mother, many people had been out shopping and were caught by surprise. We had no defence, no weapons and no one to fight for us. Soon after, Amer rushed into the house. When he saw me he said, ‘Why are you sitting here, Olfat, what is wrong with you? Why aren’t you at the hospital?
‘First, you tell me not to go to work, and now you come and say I should be at work. What is the matter with you? Didn’t you hear the news that Gaza Hospital is occupied?’
‘No, no Olfat,’ he said, ‘I am not talking about Gaza Hospital. I’m talking about Haifa Hospital, here in our camp. It is full of dead and wounded.’
I noticed, then, that he was covered in blood.
‘What has happened to you?’
He told me his friend Banil Farise, a neighbour from Tarshiha, had been killed. Banil had taken leave from his work in Saudi Arabia to visit his family during Ramadan and was killed as he was running through the camp when the shooting started. Amer had been with him and had brought him to the hospital.
‘Olfat, it is shocking,’ Amer said. ‘You must go now.’
We both left for the hospital immediately, sprinting through the camp’s narrow alleys. The heavy shooting continued. We were careful when we came to areas where we knew Amal snipers could see us from their vantage points in the tall apartment buildings on the edge of the camp. In a few minutes we had arrived at the hospital. By this time it was 11 o’clock but even before I entered the main entrance hall I could hear the crying and wailing.
Before me was a nightmarish scene. There were bodies and blood everywhere. More than 100 dead and wounded lay there with family members beside them. I had already been through many years of war, but never had I encountered such carnage. There were young boys, children and women, all screaming and crying, blood covering their heads or abdominal wounds. Some had shattered limbs in grotesque positions. Relatives were quietly praying, others were crying out for help. Scattered among the wounded were people who were obviously dead. It was an unbelievable and indescribable scene of human suffering. Struggling, I overcame my numbness and carefully stepped through the bodies to the overflowing emergency room.
On entering, Walid, one of the nurses on duty, said, ‘Thank God, you were here in the camp! Yalla (let’s move). We do not have any other trained nurses; there are only assistant nurses and first-aid workers.’
We faced an immediate critical decision about how to manage this crisis. Haifa was not a hospital; it was only a rehabilitation centre with a few polyclinics. There was no emergency centre or operating theatre and only a small pharmacy with nothing of substance to help us with this catastrophe. The doctors who attended the clinics lived outside the camp and, as it was early, they had not yet arrived; and later, when they tried were turned back. A young doctor recently graduated from Romania was with us, but he was not very experienced in this type of emergency work. Walid, a few of the nurses, Salim, the nurse administrator, and I, had had many years of war experience, but even we were overwhelmed. Naidal, the hospital administrator, and the secretary Khaireyah, were there to help us too.
Several members of the camp’s popular committee had arrived at the same time as I had, so together we planned what to do. First, we dispatched people to find out what resources we actually had in the hospital; and to call for volunteers and for people to bring first-aid materials they might have in their homes. Then, while one of the committee members tried desperately to contact the Red Cross to help us, Walid and I started to triage the wounded and confirm the dead.
We quickly identified those we thought might survive with the help of our meagre resources and the nurses set to making them comfortable. The small number of beds available and were quickly filled so we covered the floor with mattresses for the rest.
It took until 4 p.m. to open a large room and put all the fatally wounded on mattresses in that room. Though we felt sickened and overwhelmed, we knew there was nothing we could do for them having no access to medical supplies that could help, no doctors, and no operating room or resuscitation equipment. I struggled inwardly as we helped these poor people and their families into this relatively quiet space so they could die with a semblance of dignity.
Having identified the dead, we opened another large room as a temporary mortuary. We covered the bodies with lime, hoping we could eventually make arrangements for them to be buried but this was difficult, too, as no one could go to the nearby cemetery due to the heavy fighting. People were crying and grieving, while we tried desperately to calm them.
I cannot explain how I felt that day. It felt as if a part of me died in that moment. Never before had I been faced with such a shocking dilemma. I felt terribly guilty; who was I to decide these critical matters as to who we should treat first; who we should save. It was sickening making such life and death decisions knowing that every moment counted. I had dealt with many things, but I had always been able to help the wounded, to do something. And now for the first time in my life, there was nothing I could do for my people. I knew when we put the critically wounded in that large room, that they would die; and it was heartbreaking knowing these people would have survived if we’d had some facilities and trained doctors. I struggled to control my own emotions in the midst of all of these grieving relatives and their loss. At the end of the day I was exhausted; but the fighting continued, unrelentingly. I was filled with despair, with great sadness and sick with worry about my family and all the camp residents
.
One victim that day was a young boy with a severe head injury. The only thing we had for emergency respiration was a manual air bag. We showed his mother how to use it. As she worked the bag she prayed over her dying child. She laboured for about eight hours before he died. Many people died that day who only needed a small operation, but we had no anaesthetics, no doctors, nothing.
Through the camp walkie-talkie we contacted the PRCS in Mar Elias camp. The PRCS called the Red Cross but nobody came; the Amal militia would not allow them to enter the camp, even to take our wounded. For me, this was a doubly traumatic time, not only because of the number of casualties on that first day but because all the people who were brought in wounded or dead were my neighbours and friends. They were from the Tarshiha area of the camp, people I knew very well. I was expecting at any moment to see my mother, my sisters or my brothers brought in wounded and bleeding or dead. Nabil Faris, our neighbour’s only able son, was dead when I went to the hospital. Another neighbour, Dogman, the only boy in the family—recently married, his wife pregnant—was brought in dead. Muhammad Ara, who had carried Dogman to the hospital in the hope he could be saved, was later brought back himself, shot dead. Neighbour after neighbour, every few minutes. I fought down a rising sense of panic as yet another wounded person arrived. I could not bear it. Inside, I cried for all of them.
To make things worse, we had no leaders in the camp. The PLO—its fighters and the leadership—had left Beirut in 1982. The only community leaders we had were older men such as my father. There were no guns, no fighters, nothing with which we could protect ourselves. In the first few hours of fighting more than 10 young people with no military experience were killed and many wounded as they tried helplessly to defend the camp. The older men were not military leaders but felt they needed to try and save the camp. One of these men, who back in 1967 had been involved in al-Fatah, happened to be in the camp visiting relatives for Ramadan. He was also from Tarshiha. When he heard about the attack, he immediately went to the mosque and, via the loudspeaker normally used to call people to prayer, told the camp residents to stay in their homes and take shelter. He then called all the young men together to organise a self-defence system with a plan to protect the camp’s perimeter as he realised this was no one-day attack.
Before the Israeli invasion of 1982, the PLO had a maintenance department that cleaned and serviced weapons. Three men who worked in that department were still in the camp, so they were charged with making weapons to protect the camp with whatever was to hand. Women collected cans and nails and brought petrol to the team of men from which small bombs could be made that could be thrown by hand. Women also made sandbags using blankets and sheets that they filled with soil.
Initially, many of the young men protecting the camp entrances suffered serious head, neck and chest wounds, as there were only the sandbags to protect them. Also, as they stood to throw the hand-made bombs they could be hit. Later, when Amal realised that they could not enter the camp with impunity, they attacked with tanks and artillery. By then we were a little more prepared. The underground shelters had been cleaned and people were hiding in the lower storeys of their houses. Usually the shelling would die down around 3 a.m. after which, I deemed it reasonably safe to go home from the hospital to shower and change my clothes. Still, at this late hour, I would find my mother, my grandmother and my aunt sitting on the floor with their faces in their hands, waiting, terrified that one of their own would be killed or wounded. My aunt and my grandmother had left their houses to come and stay with my family. My aunt’s house was on the border of the camp and while our house was also close to the border, it was marginally safer. With my aunt’s family, my grandmother, my brother’s family-in-law and all of my family, there were 28 people living in two small rooms. We could not use the upstairs rooms because they had been severely damaged, but also, that section of the house was very exposed to artillery fire.
People were crammed into every corner of the house. We had no electricity and we had to hand collect water when we could. We were only able to wash our bodies with a small jug of water once a week. Of course, no clothes were washed. There was only one small toilet. We ran out of detergent quickly and, one time I came home to see my mother using my best and favourite perfume just to try and erase the smell in the toilet.
As the attack turned into a month-long siege, food became a problem. There were few shops in the camp and no room for vegetable gardens. People soon began to starve. Some lactating women did not have enough food to produce milk, so many babies died during these weeks. Based on her experiences over the years, my mother, however, had a habit of stockpiling dried foods such as rice, bourghul, lentils, onions, oil, and gas for the stove, so that unlike many others, we were able to have one meal a day. While there were no fresh vegetables, we were able to survive on these things.
One time during a ceasefire, my sister Amanie, my young brother Samir, who was only six, my other sister Ghada, and my cousin Wissam, were sitting out in the dar area of the house. Perhaps Amanie had a sixth sense, because suddenly, she urged her siblings to go inside. My two sisters and brother were just inside the door when an RPG grenade hit the stairs where they had been sitting. My aunt started to scream, thinking the children were still on the stairs. When a neighbour ran to the hospital and told me of the attack, I feared something terrible had happened and ran all the way home just to make sure that they were all still alive. With so many relatives living in that small house at one time, I was terrified that a single bomb would wipe out my entire family.
In spite of this hardship, life went on and women still had babies. I had done some midwifery nursing, so I knew a little about how to deliver a baby. But we also had dayas, or traditional midwives, who were very experienced. In the middle of one heavy bombardment, a woman came to the hospital and asked me to come and help her daughter-in-law, A’isha, who was in labour. Normally women would come to the hospital for delivery, but this woman was in too much pain and could not walk to the hospital, and the daya could not be reached. I hurried to A’isha’s house and after examining her thought that she still had a few hours to go. I told her that it would be preferable if we could take her to the hospital when the fighting eased. Later, when it was quieter, I returned and with her relatives we carried her to the hospital where she had a lovely baby girl. This was the first delivery I’d done on my own and I was very happy and excited. When I told her waiting relatives and her husband, they were so happy and very relieved too. In the midst of all this horror and war there were still moments of joy and hope for us all.
One day during a lull in the attacks, A’isha’s mother-in-law invited us to come and have a cup of coffee with the family as a way of saying thank you for the safe delivery. We were very glad of the offer as by then coffee was a luxury. It was a period of quiet, but I came to hate these periods because people would come out of their houses thinking the attacks had ended and then, without warning, the shooting would start again, and many people would be wounded. The day we had the coffee was no exception. Just as we were savouring the warm black sweetness, heavy shelling erupted. We ran back to the hospital as the camp came under attack, and as we arrived, a family was brought in. In the respite from the siege and bombing, the Atoot family had been having breakfast in their dar when the first rocket of the barrage hit their house. One woman had shrapnel wounds; two of her children, aged six and seven, were killed immediately. A daughter had a wound in the femoral artery that spurted blood like a fountain and a son, aged five, had lost a leg and an arm. He was bleeding copiously and was still alive when he came to the hospital but died soon after. His sister also died. In one hit, the Atoot family lost nine people. During these repeated attacks on the camp, I had learned to suppress my emotional response and do what I could to save life. But the loss suffered by this family reflected my own personal fears and later, when I had a quiet moment, I was filled with overwhelming grief at this carnage and broke down and cried.
Throughout the siege, we nurses managed to carry out small operations, once, even saving a life with a cardiac injection—work not normally undertaken by nurses. When we undertook small operations to remove bullets and shrapnel, we had no anaesthetic or pain relief to offer. We would give the patient a wad of cloth to bite on. Sometimes I would joke with the patient saying, ‘This won’t be any worse than the pain of childbirth, so just bite on this and I will soon be done’. It was a cruel experience for the patient and us as well, but we had no choice.
Among the hundreds of wounded I remember, one boy stands out. He was about 10 years old, from the Snono family. He had a lovely round face with beautiful eyes and long eyelashes. His mother, who’d come with him, was beautiful too. He was wounded in the abdomen. Without an operating theatre or surgical instruments, or even a doctor to do surgery, there wasn’t much I could do for him. I tried to settle him as best I could, but he was fully conscious and screaming in severe pain. He kept repeating, ‘Why did they shoot me? I did nothing.’
It seems he got too close to the Amal fighters. There was no clearly marked border around the camp, and the distance between our houses and the Lebanese apartments was less than two metres. He told me he had looked at the fighters and gave them a ‘thumbs up’ sign. Then they shot him. He kept on saying, ‘Why didn’t they just swear back at me?’
Tears for Tarshiha Page 13