interviews: testimonies from residents of Ein B’aal & Qleileh villages

date: October 22, 2006

Context: Ein B’aal is a small village on the road to Qana. During the war, this community was subject to heavy shelling, and many people fled. We met several people in Ein B’aal including two shepherds who stayed to look after their flocks, and were able to describe what had taken place in their communities.

Ismail Nasir

I’ve got 85 goats here, so I decided to stay and take care of them. While I was here, a number of people from the village were killed. Some of them were shelled on the road, and died as they tried to flee. When I found the corpses on the road, I carried them away, since dogs had started to eat them. No one was coming to the village at that time, and as shepherds we were also suffering from the dogs, which had started to attack our sheep and goats. During the war, while I was here, I lived with my goats and from them. I drank their milk and ate from them. Around half my herd was killed during an Israeli airstrike – probably around 40 goats. I took a picture of the corpses so that I would be able to get compensation from the authorities for my loss, since they said they needed proof.

I remember one day, when I was grazing them in the pastures here, an Israeli helicopter started shooting at me and the goats from above. So I was thinking, “ are they Hizbollah too? Are my goats responsible for firing raad 1 or 2 [Hizbollah’s rockets]?” I was asking myself, why are my goats being targeted?

Ibrahim Kiki

They fired a rocket on my barn and five sheep, a cow and a horse died. I felt that after that I could not leave the rest of my animals without protection. Although they are my property these sheep also have soul, and I knew that if I left them they would also die. They are souls and it would be a shame to leave them without food. Lots of people left their animals and when they returned to the village, found them dead. I have around 500 sheep, and I continued to graze them even under the shelling. One time when we were in the pastures, a plane flew over us, very low – perhaps around 30 meters above the ground only. The animals were terrified by this. Another time, I found the corpse of a woman who had been killed in her car, and a dog was eating her… But I couldn’t leave. I spent 10 years working for other people in order to save up the money to buy these animals. I worked in orchards, and as a builder. The horse that died cost me $1700, and I lost 100 sheep also.

Hussein Amar

During the war I and my family fled to Ayn Hilweh camp [a Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Sidon]. They welcomed us and we had a good time there. Now that I have come back to my village, I feel that I am not happy. I miss the friends that I made in Ayn Hilweh, and I am seriously thinking to return there. I feel that I need to go back there, and now that my home has been demolished here, I have no where to stay here.

Context: Qleileh is a small village on the road between Naqoura and Rashidiyye which was badly hit in early August.

Katya Skeiki

This is a picture of my dog, and you can take me with my dog. His name is BUSH. I like my dog a lot, and it was very hard we were displaced, because my mother would not allow me to take BUSH with me. It made me so upset to leave him in the house alone. He was born in the house, like me. When we were in Ayn Hilweh, I was always begging my father to go and get the dog, and bring it, but he refused. When we returned we found that BUSH had lost his tail. I think he ate it from hunger.

Im Hisham, Katya’s mother: I didn’t want to take the dog with us because I felt it was already an imposition to be living and eating from our hosts in the camp, and it was too much to ask them to feed a dog. I would have been ashamed to take the dog with me, and was worried how they would look at us if we had a dog.

Hisham Skeiki

Before I went to Ayn Hilweh camp during the war, I must confess that I had a very different idea of what Palestinians were like. But after living in the camp, and making friends there, the image that I had was turned upside down. I made very good friends there and they grew to love me and I love them. I have visited them six or seven times since I returned to Qleileh. In the beginning when my family and I arrived we were bored and depressed, but the Palestinians that we met there filled our time and since then we have called each other every day.

Mohammed Azzam

[a Palestinian from Ayn Hilweh visiting the Skeiki family in their home in Qleileh]

Hisham and I became friends since I was a volunteer in the camp, working with the displaced people who came from the south. I was always in the school that Hisham and his family were staying, and one day Hisham came and asked me where he could buy a phone. So I took him around the camp, though I remember he didn’t like the prices! After that I invited him for lunch with my family, and from that day we became friends. During the time that Hisham was in the camp, I was barely at home or in the internet shop where I work, and we were always together. My family started to be angry with me as I was being lazy and not fulfilling my duties in the internet shop where I worked, so I invited Hisham to come to spend his days in the shop with me – I worked and he played on the internet…I have come to visit him in Qleileh to apologize for not having come to see him before now. His house and the town are beautiful, but I find that it is boring in comparison with Ayn Hilweh, because there are so many people and we have friends. I like to visit him to see him, but I prefer it when we are together in Ayn Hilweh.

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