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| Touristing in Lebanon. | |
TV EYE
My Relatives in Lebanon
I’ve never been in a war before, but I was told this was the worst war that Lebanon has ever been in. People have lost their lives, their homes, their villages. Some of my relatives’ houses have been completely destroyed. We called them and tried to get in touch, but it was hard.
My mum told me one of her relatives had been killed in the war. Him and his family left their house and went to look for shelter. He told his family to wait for him outside because he’d forgotten his cell phone. He went back in to fetch it when the bomb fell down on the house.
One of my uncles is still living in his house with his family and he says he’ll never ever leave his house or his city. But my other uncle brought his family to safety, and then went back to help others. His house has been completely destroyed and his wife and his children are crying and they worry because he won’t come with them. My mum cried every day. We couldn’t reach him, we didn’t know if he was dead or alive. Finally, after all the waiting, he called us and we got to hear his voice again.
Some of my relatives have been missing, and my aunt was stuck in a city with her daughter. She didn’t want to just sit and watch people die, so she decided to try and help where help was needed, and when she was helping out she got interviewed on TV and her relatives in Sweden saw her and knew she was OK.
One of my dad’s cousins had left his town with his family. They went by van and on the road out of the village a bomb landed on the car and everyone died. Another man from that same village is mentally ill and he saw one of the Israeli fighter planes and he went and got an iron pipe and just ran around and looked at the plane through his iron pipe. The people in the plane thought he had some sort of weapon and so they shot him. On TV they’re always showing kids who died and who were completely innocent. I’ll never get those images out of my head. They showed this one woman who had just had a tiny baby. The baby was two hours old. But Israel’s bombs landed where they were and the mum passed away. Another kid who was just born too died in its mum’s arms. Why would you kill little kids who are completely innocent and who have their whole life in front of them? The ones they killed were almost all civilians.
But I have a lot of memories from Lebanon that a bomb can never destroy. I remember how we would always take long walks and look at the great views, we would go down to the beach and lie in the sun and swim. I remember all the relatives I got to meet and how we went to see my granddad’s grave. And once when I was 14, me and my brothers and sister and friends got my dad’s car at four in the morning and we drove around in it, and my sister was at the wheel. I hope I’ll get to do those things again. Those were the best times ever.
EVA “FARAH” HARIRI, 15
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