Shock & Horror by "Israeli" massacre in Lebanese Qana today- nine years ago, relived

Source: Daily Star, 18-4-2006
Nine years ago to commemorate the first anniversary of the Qana massacre, The Daily Star published an article by correspondent Nicholas Blanford in which survivors told what happened on April 18, 1996. To mark the 10th anniversary of the slaughter, Blanford returns to South Lebanon to trace those same survivors.
"The room was full of smoke and I could see nothing ... It was only minutes later that I realized my children were dead and my husband as well. I was on my own." - Fatmeh Balhas, 1997
The hot wind hisses through the gnarled olive trees and stirs the silky knee-high grass in the flower-speckled meadows behind Fatmeh Balhas` home on a hillside outside the village of Jabal Botm. Of all the terrible stories told by the survivors of the "Israeli" artillery bombardment of Qana, that of Fatmeh Balhas has to rank among the most tragic. She lost her husband Kassem, 28, her brother Abdel-Karim, 16, her son Hussein, 3, another son Hassan, 2, and her 17-day-old child Mohammed. Baby Mohammed was decapitated by shrapnel while lying in Fatmeh`s arms.
Fatmeh, 34, pours tiny cups of coffee for her visitors and gives a wan smile as she assesses her life 10 years after the massacre.
"I will never forget. I try but I can`t. We are always talking about it. It is not something we can ever forget," she said.
Fatmeh has since remarried and has three children - Hussein, 5, Nadia, 4, and Nadine, 9 months - all of them a little older than the three she lost at Qana. Hussein and Nadia are cheerful healthy children, shyly shaking the hands of the strangers and scampering around the backyard. But tragedy has struck Fatmeh once again. Nadine is dying from liver disease, her frail and listless body yellow with jaundice. Fatmeh`s husband is Egyptian, which means her children are also Egyptian nationals and therefore not eligible for government financial support.
"The doctors say that they cannot operate until she`s a year old. But she`s losing weight and I don`t think she will survive to one year, even if we could afford the operation," Fatmeh said. "It`s true that I remarried, but my life has not improved. What can I do? It is the will of God."
"... a piece of shrapnel slashed my husband`s throat open and the last sound I heard him make was the rush of air emptying from his lungs as he collapsed." - Mounira Taki, 1997
The blast that killed Mounira Taki`s husband also severely injured her daughter Lina, then six years old. Lina was pulled from beneath a pile of corpses and pronounced dead until someone saw her foot moving. Lina suffered brain damage, was crippled in her right arm, unable to speak for the first year and had regular epileptic fits. Some fragments of shrapnel remain lodged in her brain. Last November, after years of improvement, Lina collapsed in a seizure and was flown to London for treatment. She returned last month and today is much like any other 16-year-old girl from south Lebanon.
"I don`t remember anything of that day," she says, smiling shyly. "At first I couldn`t even remember my mother and sisters."
Like the other survivors, Mounira and her family have learned to cope with the ghosts of the past through the remarkable fortitude possessed by the southern Lebanese, stoicism rooted in an unquestioning acceptance of fate and shaped by the gritty realities of life among these stony hills and wadis.
"We always talk about it. It`s a scene that I can never take out of my mind," Mounira said. "Remembering helps us."
"I look outside and see the spring flowers and remember that the last time I saw them my family were all here and alive." - Hameeda Deeb, 1997
Mounira Taki may take comfort from remembering, but Hameeda Deeb is trying to forget. Hameeda lost a leg and arm in the shelling and today relies on artificial limbs. Now aged 37, she lives with her family quietly, shut away from the public gaze.
Fatmeh Berji, Hameeda`s mother, said that her daughter has gained some independence, cooking for herself and driving a specially adapted car. But unlike the other survivors, she has bottled up her memories, resolutely attempting to put the past behind her.
"Hameeda doesn`t talk about what happened to anyone. She just wants to forget," says one of Hameeda`s sisters.
"... There was nothing left but meat. I could not even identify my children because there was nothing left of them." - Saadallah Balhas, 1997
It is the beginning of the tobacco season in the south and Saadallah Balhas is engaged in the back-breaking task of planting hundreds of small green seedlings in the dry stony soil of a wind-buffeted hilltop outside Aitit. The noon sun is merciless and Saadallah wipes his wrinkled brow with a thick calloused hand. At 66, he is a little gaunter and more grizzled than nine years ago, but his face still bears the scars, literal and metaphorical, of the disaster that decimated his family on April 18, 1996. He lost his wife and nine of his 14 children. In all, 32 members of his extended family died at Qana.
"We men have to be strong and keep a brave face and never cry in front of the children," he said.
The shell blast also took Saadallah`s right eye and today he wears a glass substitute which, with the creases etched on his weather-beaten face, gives him a permanent look of forlorn melancholy.
"My sons tried to marry me off again, but I refused," he said. "No one can replace my wife, my partner in life."
Like other survivors, Saadallah will make the pilgrimage to the cemetery at Qana on Tuesday to commemorate the massacre. He has little patience for the official fanfare that is likely to accompany the commemoration.
"If they make a big show of it, I`ll say my prayer and leave," he said. Of more importance, he said, is the state of disrepair at the cemetery itself.
Saadallah`s complaint is well-founded. The cemetery at Qana is in pitiful, shameful, condition. The long rows of marble-topped tombs are chipped and cracked, weeds grow between the tiles on the ground, cinder blocks and building materials lie scattered around the site. The so-called Qana museum beside the cemetery is closed, apparently permanently. A pile of white plastic chairs bars the locked entrance. It`s not entirely certain there`s anything to see inside anyway.
A few meters from the cemetery is the ruined Fijian officers mess where more than half the victims died. The ruins were preserved as a memorial to the massacre and it is still possible to see the rusted tin cans from which some of the victims ate their last meal minutes before the bombardment began. The small crater left by the 155mm artillery shell that struck the center of the room is hidden beneath a thick clump of weeds.
A few families have moved into the abandoned Fijian headquarters, setting up homes in the buildings that still bear shrapnel marks from the bombardment. The pre-fabricated conference room where Hameeda Deeb lost her leg and arm was turned by the Fijian peacekeepers into an underground bomb shelter. The site is smothered in weeds and grass and there is no indication that dozens of people were dismembered and immolated 10 years ago on that very spot.
Indeed, perhaps the most striking example of the neglect that has overtaken the massacre site and the adjoining cemetery is the complete lack of any permanent sign, billboard or marker explaining what happened here. Bereft of formal tribute, the massacre at Qana 10 years on lingers only in the memories of the survivors.