Youth in War 2

we moved to our new home under the bullets of snipers that day, leaving our furniture behind in our old apartment at Galerie Semaan... we slept on newly bought mattresses layedon the floor. Two days later, the movers brought our furniture while a cease fire took place. It was an interesting event for me as a youth to see the movers hoisting up our beds, coaches etc... through the balconies because the stairs were too narow to be used... fascinating to see these men hoisting all of these furniture that I couldn't even move on the floor...

The cease fire didn't last long and the house that my dad bought next to the presidential palace turned to be a strategic mistake. The building was built recently by a Palestinian Muslim and being in the middle of a Christian area he had to sell his apartment which ended up to be bought by my dad.

I said the location was a strategic mistake... well that night that we were supposed to finally sleep in our bed turned to be one of the most memorable night of the conflict... A Muslim officer who defected to the Arab Lebanese Army made of all Muslim soldiers that left the main Lebanese army was highly trained by the US army in the art of artillery and that night under his command the Palace was bombarded and the story is that he bombarded every room in the palace to kill the president at that time, who by constitution is a Maronite Christian...

The next day the president had evacuated the palace heading north... the madness continued and the kidnapping continued... I remember behind our building there was a farm. I was playing on our balcony and I saw an ambulance driving into the farm behind us escorted by a four wheel drive jeep from the National Police ( Gendarmerie Nationale). All of sudden, I hear a woman screaming and crying on top of her lungs running towards the parked ambulance outside her shack.... a body inside a bag was taken from the ambulance and delivered to the family... it was the body of her husband a father of young children decapitated by the Muslims and their Palestinian allies because he was Christian and his unfortunate luck made stop at a check point manned by above mentioned factions...
In our areas they were doing the same... I remember one day, the crowd was cheering outside when handcuffed and blind folded Muslim Lebanese/Palestinians were paraded by our Christian militias and people were hitting them, spitting on them while passing in front of them... a woman came to one of them with a knife and started slashing his clothe and blood started staining his shirt screaming at him, you mother f... you decapitated my son, the other saying the same about her husband... the next day the same kidnapped guys were paraded but this time dead and pulled by their feet from the back of the militias cars and the same crowd was cheering.... it was a lot for a five year to handle... I started waking up in the night, sweating and screaming.... My parents were concerned for our mental health and starting looking for ways to move us away from Beirut...

My father owned a private school and couple of days later, we got news that one of his school buses was stolen and one of the drivers was kidnapped by the Palestinian factions... he was trying to reach some of his connections on the other side trying to rescue the driver, he never thought that a Muslim driver Muhammad who grew up in our house since he was five years old would be kidnapped by the Muslims...he was released finally but un-recognizable from the beating that he suffered... his eyes were swollen, bruises all over his body, and even worst they extinguished cigarette buds on his body... he told us his ordeal, when they stopped the bus that the school name was written on it. Being located in Hadath a Christian area, they started searching the bus, he had no ID's on him because he was from the most northern border area of Lebanon bordering Syria and he belonged to a bedouin tribe that they had no nationality... my dad kind of adopted him since he was young from his father who used to work for us as well.... they found the names of the student roster that the bus used to transport. The names were all Christians... they didn't believe him that he was Muslim... they asked him to recite a Muslim prayer but poor Muhammad grew up in our house and all he knew was " In the name of the Father..."

At that point my mother called her brother who lived up North in Naccache and drove us all their to escape from this madness... I was excited, because were my uncle lived was still virgin at that time plenty of forest and his older son Joseph had children my age... all I was thinking about was how much playing I will be having, after all some of the five year old childishness was still alive in me... After settling in Naccache, my father and older brother stayed in Baabda to take care of the school and the house.... one day my older cousin Joseph who became a commander of the Military Police of the main Christian party came home from the front escorted by some of his soldiers... for me he was the essential coolness... tall, body built plenty of strength and handsome.. I wanted to grow up and become like him... to fight the war and get ride of our enemies... that night me and his son George we started fighting who was going to sleep with the machine gun of his father an M-16... to make us both happy, he dismantled the gun in two pieces I got the barrel and his son the shoulder piece... hey better than nothing...

The next day, my cousin Joseph drove us north towards the beach to a resort called Tabarja Beach.. on the highway just across from the famous " Casino du Liban", there was a beautiful bridge and people were lined up with there cars parked on the highway... we all stepped out from the car and walked towards the crowd to see what they were looking at... when we got there and as soon as I peeked over the siding of the bridge, I saw corpses burning of the kidnapped people, me and my two sisters turned and started running scared and with tears in our eyes...
what kind of madness are we living my two sisters were sobbing .....