DAY THREE - Wednesday 23 August 2006
The grim scenes of Qana
by Samina Faiz

Yesterday was the kind of experience that you'd never volunteer for, but one you nevertheless remember for the rest of your life.

Having walked through the rubble of south Beirut it wasn't unreasonable to consider myself prepared for scenes of destruction south of Sidon. It turns out that I wasn't. Not for the sheer unrelenting scale of it - house after house after house. People's lives exploded into meaningless mounds of dust and debris.

In Qana we went to the site of the massacre where 15 dead children were pulled out from the remains of a house. The gravediggers had buried them and were now constructing a graveyard around the site, each grave marked by a temporary wooden signs. It reminded me of Srebrenica – just because it was an unnatural graveyard with all the graves carrying the same date of death.

The house itself, at first glance, didn't look any different from the empty bombed out buildings. But then you noticed the clothes and a heap of bedding topped with pillows soaked in dried blood. A small pink flowery T-shirt lay amongst the debris.

More remarkable than the destruction was the juxtaposition – the house next door was intact, its washing line hung with laundry. More clothes, but without tragedy attached. T-shirts drying in the sun, not twisted in the dust. We grew sombre, but I don't think any of us really understood until the woman came by.

As we turned to leave, a man in dusty worn clothes led a woman past us, picking through the rubble in her high heels, heading for the house. Her distress grew visibly as she approached until she lost her composure entirely and cried out on seeing something in the rubble. It was a black dress and she picked it up before collapsing, sobbing, to her knees. Folded upon herself, her grief was raw pain and she wept without control.

The man explained tersely that her sister had died here. Ill at ease, he soon led her away, leaning on his arm keening her loss "nur al ain" I heard her sob - "light of my eyes".

Her grief spoke of the tragedy behind each broken-down house. So many beloved lives lost or torn. In Qana I didn't have to guess anymore.

The desecration of Bint Jbeil

On the way to Bint Jbeil we took the wrong road. Getting lost is not usually a problem, but in south Lebanon, a second week into a fragile ceasefire it's a little scary.

Instead of going north we ended up on the road that winds parallel to the border with Israel, almost touching it at times. By the time we realised that it was only us and the UN armoured vehicles on the road it was too late to turn back – it would just take too long. So reluctantly, nervously we continued through deserted bombed-out villages, past fields of crops torn up by tank tracks, an eerie landscape.

We passed through at least two Christian villages. Apart from the church, the only distinguishing mark was the normality of life and the absence of destruction. They were a relief to encounter in that devastated wilderness.

We reached Bint Jbeil with a feeling of relief, having survived the journey with no mishaps. But when we looked around the town, we realised that everything we'd seen had just been a prelude to this. Bint Jbeil had been blitzed. The violence echoed through even now, when cars were left piled on top of each other as burnt twisted wrecks, and even the dead had not escaped the wrath. An old graveyard lay across the road from a school, huge craters defacing the graves.

The school in Bint Jbeil was eerily silent, the gate and door open, the downstairs classroom a nightmarish mix of brightly coloured children's books and jagged shards of glass. Undersized chairs and tables lay toppled, a gaping hole in the wall letting in the light amongst the dust that covered everything.

Out in the schoolyard I saw a spent missile case, where the children would have come to play. The yard and classroom floors were coated in blackened shards of glass which crunched unnervingly under my feet as I trespassed in the silence. It was horrific, like the scene of a desecration. A cupboard had broken in half, spilling boxes of Scrabble. A poster of a puppy lay on the floor coated in rubble. The phone lay incongruously off the hook, next to a pile of blue registration cards with children's names – Dania, Jamal... How many of these children would be coming back to school?

DAY TWO - Monday 21 August 2006
Beirut: the recovery begins
by Samina Faiz

It has been a day of extreme contrasts. Having travelled almost non-stop from Birmingham to London to Damascus to Beirut to Sidon, the sleep deprivation after 28 hours of travel gave a hallucinatory vibe to much of today.

Parts of Lebanon remain completely untouched by the war. In uptown Beirut people shop at boutiques in the 50% off summer sales (must end soon), and go about their prosperous lives as if the war had happened someplace else.

Driving into south Beirut however, you enter a different world. The destruction here is extreme. Buildings spill their guts all over the road. Rubble lies in huge mounds and dust coats everything, including your lungs. Yet even here amongst the destruction people go about as if it was normal to have to pick your way through demolished homes. Some wear dust masks, adapting to the conditions.

But the rubble is fast being cleared. JCBs clear roads, there’s warning tape wrapped around burnt buildings, bridges are beginning to be rebuilt. People seem to be rolling-up their sleeves and getting on with the job of reconstruction.

Even Abdur Rehman, a 13 year-old boy we meet, selling Pepsi beneath the remains of his home had an unemotional pragmatism. “We will rebuild – it’s sad, but life goes on” he seemed to say. I wonder if perhaps everyone is still in shock.
 
I didn’t expect this spirit – I’m not sure I could be so philosophical about the destruction of my home and everything I own. I find it admirable but strange.

Perhaps it is a Beirut attitude, developed in a city which has resurrected itself after previous wars. You can still see old buildings riddled with bulletholes from previous conflicts. For the people of Beirut, despite the recent years of peace, this must be a familiar cycle. It might be different in the south.

We’re going to be based in Sidon, the capital of the South. Coming into the city I didn’t register very much beyond the bombed out bridges on the road from Beirut, and the odd bit of bombed-out road. Olga thinks she may be suffering from ‘rubble photo fatigue’. I suspect its just fatigue fatigue.

The electricity is intermittent here, it cuts out every 15 minutes so I’d better send this while we still have power.

In the flat we’re renting there is a cockerel in the garden who has no sense of time, and is in a crowing competition with one a few blocks away. The sheep we’ve named Qurbani has a cold and coughs and sneezes through the night like an old man. I’m glad I packed my earplugs.

DAY ONE - Friday 18 August 2006
Preparing to leave for Lebanon
by Samina Faiz

Since the start of the conflict in Lebanon and Palestine I've been writing and reading about its impact on the people from a distance. Now I'll be travelling there to find out for myself how the conflict has changed their lives.

The ceasefire is new and fragile, and few people seem to trust it quite yet. Family and friends here in Birmingham have certainly had doubts about my intended journey. A quizzical look, which I interpret as "I always suspected you were a little crazy", creeps across their faces when I tell them where I'm going.

The consensus seems to be that no-one in their right mind would choose to enter what was so recently a war-zone. But I'm conscious that the Lebanese people who endured 34 days of violence had little choice in the matter.

Those who could, fled. Those who couldn't, endured. Their stories are now beginning to be told - the human experiences behind the politics. And that's what I find interesting, how ordinary people like you or me, survive extraordinary events.

I've been thoroughly briefed by our Emergency Response Team and I'm almost ready to set off. But I wonder if any briefing can prepare you for coming face-to-face with the devastation of war? I guess I'll soon find out.