The sounds of fireworks were something one easily got used to in Bourj el-Barajneh, a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut. The World Cup had made for regular cracking noises and excitement. For a whole week the only question I was answering was a combination of “Italia or Brasil?”
But there was something out of the ordinary about the sounds on Wednesday, July 12. They were louder, more powerful. Besides, the World Cup was long over.
I was in the middle of a game of hangman with my morning class when a bearded and burly man entered the classroom. He carried a bag of candies. Holding up two fingers, he told the children something in Arabic I could not understand. Shortly thereafter, he apologized and left the room. I asked my translator what had happened. She explained that Hezbollah had killed three Israeli soldiers and taken two hostage on the Lebanese-Israeli border, an area of southern Lebanon that was their stronghold. The sounds I was hearing were gunshots; the sweets to support the resistance. Following class, an excited and panicked buzz permeated Beirut.
At the time, the consensus was that the whole ordeal would blow over. That night I watched the news with Bilad, a soft spoken clerk I had befriended. While agreeing that another war in the region was inevitable, he didn’t think the pieces were in place just yet.
“Tonight the Israelis will only fly their jets low to break the sound barrier; they will try to scare us, and then they will negotiate,” he said, with a wave of his arm that told me not to worry. This was merely business as usual.
Not so. The next day, July 13, the program of the Canadian NGO I was working with would be canceled as a result of the Israeli response to Hezbollah’s operation in southern Lebanon. Our evacuation would soon follow.
The Israeli response began at 6 a.m. Thursday morning. Its air force began by focusing on Hezbollah-controlled areas in southern Lebanon, the Beqaa valley, and the southern suburbs of Beirut, including the runways at the International Airport and the Hezbollah TV station in the southern suburb of Haret Hreik. As the attacks in south Beirut unfolded, I counted eight sonic booms outside our house in Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camp. The camp itself is located in a southern suburb of Beirut, Bourj el-Barajneh, close to the area of Dahyieh and connected to Haret Hreik, where Hezbollah offices and headquarters are located, therefore making it a military target for the Israeli air force. It is also a few miles from the airport.
That morning I went to my classes, but they had been canceled. The mood in Beirut had also changed. Soldiers in the streets were now wearing their steel helmets, betraying uneasy gazes. Nationalistic marching music blasted in taxis. Children were now asking me “Israel or Hezbollah?”
At about 2 p.m. the NGO team was evacuated from the refugee camp. Bilad came knocking at my door as I napped. Urgency had replaced his normally calm demeanor. We were told to rapidly pack a small bag of our most important belongings, naively thinking we would return. We were sent to a friend’s house in Hamra, a safer area of Beirut, near the American University. Three volunteers in another refugee camp in eastern Lebanon, the Beqaa, were also evacuated with us to Hamra after Israeli jets began pounding roads and infrastructure sites there. A few hours after our arrival in Hamra, Israeli forces dropped flyers over the southern suburbs of Beirut, including the Bourj el-Barajneh area, warning of bombings and advising civilians to evacuate. The situation was escalating at an unpredictable pace. Premature or not, we were leaving Lebanon.
Taking the advice of the many NGOs we worked with, and a variety of other local contacts, we left Lebanon for Syria at about 9 p.m., along the Beirut-Damascus highway. The highway was bombed by the Israeli air force about an hour after we traveled on it. From the front seat of the taxi, my last glimpse of Beirut was watching the flames of a bombed airport fuel tanker rage into the night. Israeli bombing on Thursday alone killed 61 civilians and injured 150 across Lebanon.
We were fortunate to have left when we did. Due to continued Israeli bombing, notably the bombing of a minibus on July 15, where 20 civilians-including 15 children-were killed fleeing their home the price of evacuation has steadily risen. Our own ride cost US$50 a person. The same ride now costs US$2,500. From Syria we headed to Jordan, hoping in vain for a ceasefire. Instead, the media fed a steady dosage of escalating death tolls, images of carnage, and military rhetoric. We were going home.
A flight to Germany, a train ride to the Czech Republic, and a final flight to Canada all passed like a waking dream. The dash for self preservation hardly seemed worth the effort. We left Bourj el-Barajneh without saying goodbye to the families that had housed and fed us. We left Lebanon without saying goodbye to the eager students who everyday waited our lessons. We made it home on the sacrifice of the very people we had come to help. In the end, they helped us.
