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interviews: we would imagine rockets falling on us
Date: October 22, 2006
Interviewer: Mahmoud Zeidan
Ali Mahmoud al Akhras
Age: 82 years
Place of origin: Aitaroun Village
Present address: Saida, old Justice Palace
Q:Tell me your story?
A: We left the vocational training center. Before we were staying with people, but Israel kept bombing around the college. We woke up in the morning and didn’t find anybody there. Everyone who had a car had fled. Only the elders remained. I couldn’t walk. I started to creep, and I crept on my hands and knees all the way out of the village… We slept one night in Bint Jbail and then two nights in a deserted house in Koneen…
I couldn’t stand. On the way, the planes started bombing in Beit Yahoun. They started targeting their bombs on us. The shrapnel scattered around us. I was injured and my brothers died. They were the first to die in the village. They had come from Canada to attend a wedding: the house was demolished over their heads and they were buried under the rubble…
I couldn’t walk. Someone brought me a wheelbarrow from Tibneen – it was like a cleaners’ carriage. There was no way for me to go otherwise, what can an elder do? When the shelling got harder, my wife used to hold me up so that the planes would see we were elders. Then when the planes went, we would sit back.
[His wife continued] I put him in a carriage and pushed him all the way, but at some point I couldn’t carry on. I went into a house to borrow a donkey, but when its owner went to get it, we discovered it wasn’t there. It had run away from the shelling or perhaps some one took it. I told the man, I would leave my husband there and while I went to see if I could find another way for us to move. Suddenly the telephone rang. I asked him if I could make a telephone call. The owner of the house said his son worked for the Red Cross and he would call his son to come and pick us with the injured. So his son came and took us to Tibneen hospital, and from there we went to Tyre. There was shelling there also, so we went to Saida and then on to Qmatieh.
Akeeleh Dawi
Age: 55 years
Place of origin: Aitaroun Village
We left Aitaroun under the bombs and went to Ein Ibel, a Christian village. We thought it probably wouldn’t be bombed. We stayed there for seven days. Then we went to Tibneen hospital and stayed there for three days also. However, two rockets fell near the hospital and a car was burnt, so we ran away from there also…
On the way we hung white flags. We hung even our white shirts, and it turned out to be lucky for us because the white flag didn’t protect others. We were 15 persons in the car. Then we arrived in Saida. On the way we saw two cars from our village that had been bombed and we almost fainted from fear. To be frank, we never thought we would be safe. My sons were in Beirut and I didn’t know anything about what had happened to them.
After the Israeli stopped bombing we went back. However, there was no water, nor electricity. The Israelis were still in some houses. They are disgusting. They also caught some people and started to provoke and intimidate them.
Libnan Ibrahim Ali
Age: 25 years
Place of origin: Aitaroun Village
We were staying in a garage. A radar plane was coming to take photos, and then the military planes would come to bomb the village. The Israelis committed a massacre, the ambulance would come to collect pieces of people, bury them and leave. There were two massacres like this in our village. The Awada family and the al-Akhras family. Each family lost 13 people. The rockets hit their houses. The other day a one and a half year old baby was thrown by the pressure of the rockets and later found in the rubble.
We couldn’t sleep; we would imagine rockets falling on us; it was like a horror movie. Then we left the village and went to Ein Ibel.
Zahra Ali
Age: 36 years
Place of origin: Aitaroun Village
Q: How would you recognize [the bombs]?
A: When the big rocket would fall, it would pop like a pressure; it gives this sound ‘poppp’. Then we would hit the wall from the shock of it.
The land rocket would soak up sound and give this voice, ‘vvooooo’. It keeps making a sound like this until it hits the ground. They dropped one on us while we were on the road. We hid our eyes and thought we died.
Hezbollah’s rocket would drag, as if some one is dragging something on the floor. It gives this sound, ’shoooooo’. This is how we could identify them.
Name of child: Hussein Mohamad Ali
Age: One year and a half
Place of origin: Aitaroun Village
During the war, he was sleeping on a piece of carton. There were no mattresses. And now as we are here in rooms and we have mattresses, when it’s his time to sleep, he instinctively brings a piece of carton and sleeps on it.
Raghib Kashmar
Age: 21 years
Place of origin: Dahyeh (Beirut’s southern suburb)
When I arrived, I couldn’t recognize our building. It had disappeared. I was in Saudi Arabia when it happened. When I searched in the rubble of the building, I found things from my home. For instance, this is the magazine I got on my last flight. This is the key to my room. Take a photo of this 1000 Lebanese pound note. There are holes in it now. And these are some of my drawings when I was a student, I am a graphic designer.
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