Twenty-three years have elapsed since the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, yet the infamous incursion still roams freely in memory. No sooner than my final exams were graded in mid-May, I was on a plane North Carolina, USA, heading to Lebanon. Once there, my mother, while joyous at my graduation and visit, admonished me for not even waiting two more days for the commencement ceremony. But after three lengthy years of full-time work and full-time study, being home was all that mattered to me.
My excitement for being home was short-lived, nonetheless. On the first Sunday of June the residents of Ain-Anoub, my home village, gathered to wed two sisters to two brothers from a neighboring town. As we sat watching the succession of cars of the grooms’ party descend down the hill, we wondered why they were not honking their horns. Customarily, drivers in weddings or other joyous occasions honk their cars’ horns as a sign of jubilation. On disembarking, however, they were to break the news that the Israeli Army had just begun a new invasion into Lebanon. Of course, that was not the first time Israel had ignored the sovereignty of Lebanon, but knowing that over 100,000 troops were amassed at the borders, we dreaded the inevitable.
Although the Israeli Army was still forty-five miles to the south, beverages and sweets were served hastily and the brides were whisked off unceremoniously. Normally the religious rites would be conducted at an earlier date by a religious judge. In Arabic the word wedding is synonymous with the word “happiness”. I vividly remember that wedding, for it marked the last and largest “happy” gathering in the village until the civil war ended in the late 1980s. Ensuing inter-communal strife forced dozens to flee.
From the onset of the invasion it became clear that the target was Beirut, tragically, Ain-Anoub sat helplessly on a hill overlooking Beirut. By mid-week, and as a prelude to entering Ain-Anoub and the entire region, the Israeli Army unleashed its heavy artillery intermittently on the village for two consecutive days.
At the beginning of the onslaught, while rushing to a basement next door, my mother fell and twisted her ankle when the vacuum created by a near by exploding shell threw her off balance. After each salvo I would slip out of the basement so that mother would not notice my absence, and rush through the alleys to check on relatives and friends. Seeing them was traumatizing as they huddled in the corners of what they hoped to be less vulnerable to attack, waiting for the next devastating barrage of artillery.
Village after village fell under the Israeli might until the entire province succumbed with scarcely any significant resistance. Saleem, my teenage brother, along with a handful of patriots in the village resolved to put up at least some symbolic resistance. They were fully aware that thwarting the Israeli advance was pure fantasy. Nor did they entertain it. But an ambush and then vanishing into the olive groves my slightly soothe our frustration over our national impotency. Some villagers chided their attempt to resist as suicidal and feared deadly reprisals by the invaders.
When the shelling subsided by Thursday noon, people started coming out of their cellars to check the damage and console those who lost loves one and comfort, those who were injured. But all were bewildered, the air was still, hot and stuffy, pungent with the sulfurous smell of deadly explosives. The Israeli aircraft as if masters sneering at their helpless slaves, zoomed over, breaking the sound barrier and relentlessly smashing whatever window glass the earlier shelling had spared. On the ground Israeli columns advanced fast. Saleem and his friends agreed to assemble at a discreet location at the outskirts of the village. At four o’clock mother was cooling off in the backyard, on a chair facing the house with Nahdoo, a close family friend, when she heard a car parking at the front door. Saleem promptly sneaked out of his room into the hallway toward the front door trying to avoid mother.
But mother, like an eagle keeping a vigilant eye on her chicks, sensed Saleem’s abrupt departure. Leaping off her chair with trepidation about her son being matched out of her life forever, she screamed as if that was her final breath: “Saleem! No, you are not going”. Saleem shrugged, but was compelled to slow down. Forgetting that she had a twisted ankle, she staggered toward the nearest sofa in the living room, incessantly pleading with him to stay home. Her health was too frail to withstand the possible loss of Saleem. As she collapsed on the sofa and her body began convulsing, she kept sputtering the same pleas. Her last plea before she lost consciousness was at me not to permit Saleem to leave the house. Saleem came to a stunned halt when she could no longer utter a word. Her swelled neck and face, stiff jaws, cramped legs and arms were more compelling than words. Saleem and I stood motionless. A most difficult choice had to be made. Neither one of us could even more to help mother, nor could we go and rescue the country. Mother thought that since I was the eldest it was my responsibility to persuade Saleem not to go. But how could I urge him to stop what I myself ought to be doing?
Mother’s cry was loud enough that it summoned the entire neighborhood. None needed to inquire about what had happened. Mother lying in convulsion on the sofa and Saleem in combat fatigue clutching his assault rifle, told the whole story. My sisters Raghida and Rudaina sprinkled water on mother’s face, hoping to revive her and assuring her that Saleem would stay at home. Other women rubbed her jaws, arms and legs. Nahdoo, reciting an incantation over a cup of orange blossom water and praying that God would intervene and revive mother, begged Saleem to spare his mother’s life.
Saleem, very young yet an imposing figure, felt like a huge steel tower who became uninvited in an instant. And mother, who reared him not to be a quitter, was pleading with him earnestly to quit! Wajdee, who came to pick up Saleem, kept silent throughout the ordeal. He finally dragged himself to his car, knowing that the last attempt to resist the Israeli advance was faltering.
Finally Saleem, contrite and hamstrung by mother’s risky health, his head sagging over the rest of his body, retreated to his room. Unable to reconcile himself to himself, he collapsed on the bed. Burying his head under the pillow; not tossing or rolling until the following morning, when awakened by the Israeli armor bullying their way to the village. Mother slowly regained her composure and the neighbors quietly dispersed.
It was Friday morning when the Israeli Army pompously marched into Ain-Anoub. They demanded through a bullhorn that we not resist their occupation and offered to hand us lots of carrots if we complied. We helplessly shut ourselves indoors listening to the Israeli armor continuing its march to Beirut. Humans are blessed with the characteristic of forgetting. But there are moments in a nation’s history that ought not to be forgotten, not the agonies and insults of foreign occupations.
— Jihad N. Fakhreddine is the research manager for media and public opinion polls at Pan Arab Research Center (PARC). He is based in the UAE and writes on Arab media and US public diplomacy.
