Middle East

‘Our mental health is completely destroyed. We are living in constant sadness’

More than 90,000 people, including 30,000 children, have been displaced from their homes since October; 250 of them are living in the Tyre Technical School

Save the Children runs a session on hygiene promotion at the Tyre Technical School, in southern Lebanon. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni

Patrick Freyne In Tyre
Sat Jun 8 2024 - 06:00

At a certain point on the road from Beirut to Tyre the cars thin out a little. Ads featuring Bazooka energy drink and the Nesquik rabbit are replaced by empty hoardings and soon the road is flanked by the yellow flags of Hizbullah. As we get closer to Tyre there are images of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah as well as tributes to dead Hizbullah fighters. One such image is on the back window of a beaten-up car.

Hizbullah, who control the south of Lebanon, have been involved in an artillery war with Israel since October 8th last year when they fired rockets into the country. Israel retaliated. It’s been the most significant escalation of conflict between the two countries since 2006. Twenty-two Israelis have been killed. In Lebanon, 363 people have been killed including 11 children and 24 women.

More than 90,000 people, including 30,000 children, have been displaced from their homes and farms since October (80,000 people have been evacuated in northern Israel). Some 250 of them are living in the Tyre Technical School, one of 18 shelters for internally displaced people in the region. When we arrive, children are in a circle in the courtyard engaged in a Unicef/Save the Children “hygiene promotion” game. It’s hot and dusty. Nearby a laughing toddler is lying on his belly on a skateboard pulling himself along.

With two waves of refugees, and an internal displacement crisis on it's southern border with Israel, Lebanon is facing severe tests after years of turmoil.

Amal Honein and her sister Lena are sitting in a former kitchen. Mattresses are lined against the wall. They’re at a small table with Nawal Mohamad Soror and her daughter Sara. Amal has blonde hair and Lena is dark haired. Nawal and Sara are wearing hijabs. “We are Sunni and they are Shia,” says Amal. “We’re all living together and we don’t have any differences between us.”

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“The only good thing about the war is that we met nice people here,” says Nawal.

Nawal and Sara are from Ayta Ash Shab, a town which has seen the most bombing. Amal and Lena are from Dhayra. Amal used to shop in Ayta Ash Shab. “Furniture, food, doctors, everything you need.”

In 2006 when the Israelis bombed the region, they used megaphones to tell the villagers to evacuate . This time there were no warnings. It took Nawal and her family a few days before they realised it was too dangerous to stay. “I never thought it would really happen and would be like this,” says Sara.

“It was frightening for the younger people,” says Nawal. “Older people had experienced bombs before.” Every few years, she says, “they destroy our houses”.

“We’re walking the Jerusalem Road!” says Amal and they both laugh.

[ Burj al Barajneh refugee camp: ‘It is a continuous tragedy’ ]

Nawal’s family, like Amal’s, are farmers. Nawal also had a shop selling poultry. They worry their land has been ruined by white phosphorous (the American University of Beirut maintains that Israel’s use of white phosphorous has caused more than 134 forest fires). “It’s all burned,” says Amal.

A young woman who has joined us says loudly and passionately: “It’s nothing to what the resistance is doing!”

What do they miss? Amal talks about her cat and her morning routine: having 5am coffee, feeding the hens and going to the fields. Sometimes when she thinks of how her life has changed, she cries but she doesn’t let her sister see. She prefers to make jokes. “Someday we will all die so why not laugh together.”

Another woman sits down. Her name is Hanane Soweid and she’s a chef but can’t currently work because she needs an operation on her hands. She shows us photos of beautiful meals she once prepared for guests. Does she know what happened to her home? “It was a rented house so I don’t care,” she says, which makes everyone laugh.

These women are defiantly, sadly cheerful but they know the bad things that can happen in war. One family went to their village to get their things and were hit by a bomb. Nawal knew another man who stayed behind to feed all the pets in the Ayta Ash Shab. What happened him? “He got killed.”

Outside on the corridor children are playing. There’s a shop set up in what looks like a storage cupboard. A white cat, a stray, darts along the corridor. We walk to another room, knock and walk in. The Unicef rep tells Mostafa Elsayed, who is sitting at a desk at the blackboard, that he looks like a school superintendent. He laughs. Mostafa (54) has a T-shirt with a dragon on it and a home-made tattoo of an eagle on his right bicep that a friend did for him when they were 13.

His younger daughter is colouring in a colouring book on a rug. The room is divided with a makeshift curtain. Ten of his family sleep here. Another five sleep in another room. He also looks after his disabled elderly mother: he showers her, dresses her, holds her when she needs comfort.

Mostafa Elsayed, a Ramyah farmer who has fled with family to the Tyre Technical School, in southern Lebanon. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni

He’s from the town of Beit Lif. He had a farm but also did jobs for people around the region. The neighbours he met here joke that they don’t recognise him without his work-clothes.

After the conflict began in Lebanon on October 8th it came closer and closer to his house until, one day, his wife rang him and he could hear bombs in the background. He said: “Grab some essentials, we’re leaving.”

He is used to war. He remembers 2006. Left to his own devices he would have “stayed and died there”. But little children “cannot deal with the sound of bombing”, he says. Now he’s not sure what there will be to go back for. “Everything is dried out and everything is dying. It might not be possible to replant because of the phosphorous.”

Distant bombing can sometimes be heard here and, at times, Israeli drones attack vehicles in Tyre itself. Recently a car of Hizbullah members was bombed nearby. They could hear the explosion.

All of Mostafa’s savings are gone. He has borrowed money to feed his family. Last week he secretly asked the shopkeeper to give his son something he wanted and promised he would pay him later. He told his son the man owed him money. “I don’t want them to feel they are poor,” he says. It gives him “a pain in his heart”.

Ten-year-old Hasan joins us. He shows us the spiky collar he’s bought for his dog, Rex. He misses Rex. Hasan loves animals. Whenever he wanted a new one Mostafa would get it for him. He has a dog, a small pony, a goat, a chicken and a duck. What does he think of this place? “It’s fine but not like our village.”

When everything is too much, Mostafa walks to a nearby bench and sits alone. Hasan hides behind some nearby portaloos where nobody can see him. The whole time we are talking, Mostafa’s fingers have been fiddling with something. It’s his house key. He worries he will end up like the Palestinians, he says, left with just their keys.

Ten-year-old Hasan El Sayad hides behind the school’s portaloos. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni

Everyone we meet here asks the Unicef reps if they can get fridges. It’s stiflingly hot. Food goes bad quickly and people get sick. Unicef has installed a solar power system which operates during school hours but otherwise the electricity is unreliable, meaning that the lights and ceiling fans stop working. Families also need money for transportation and healthcare and wifi (it’s costly and many of the children need it for online schooling).

Nehme Hasan Daher (62) is an electrician from Blida, and unlike other more outgoing residents, sticks to himself. He is ex-Lebanese army. He shows me photos of his younger self in uniform. One day he was having breakfast to the sound of distant explosions when his wife started screaming. It hadn’t bothered him in the same way. Then a house across from them was bombed, followed by the house next to them. “I thought okay, maybe my house will be the third so it’s time to move.”

At one point he returned alone for 10 days. He was there when shelling recommenced. He shows me a video shot from the doorway of his house. A nearby house is smouldering, then as he is filming, the house behind it explodes. That’s when he decided to leave again. He sighs. “Our mental health is completely destroyed living here. We are living in constant sadness.”

Nehme watches television all the time. He went into debt to buy one. His wife thinks he should come out of the room more to meet other people. He prefers to stay here. “Some people are for the war and some people are against the war and they talk about it all the time.”

Because he has a military background, he says, he can’t handle “stupid people with their strategies. But if I contradict them it will turn into a clash, so it’s better for me to be by myself.”

Unicef and their partners try to assist families and children here with sustenance, education, nutrition, health, clean water and child protection. This is increasingly difficult. The organisation has experienced funding cuts and the Lebanese state has had a wave of crises: 1.5 million refugees from the Syrian war; one of the worst financial crashes ever; Covid-19; the catastrophic Beirut chemical explosion.

Ettie Higgins, deputy representative of Unicef in Lebanon, is concerned about the psychological impact the conflict is having on the children. “They’re very anxious... They don’t know when they’re going to go home again.”

Going home presents its own problems. Unicef has restarted a programme explaining to children what unexploded bombs look like, she says. “We’ve seen many children who have been killed or injured in recent years because of unexploded ordnance when [they’ve] gone collecting scrap metal.”

In the next classroom, a man in an O’Neill’s Edenderry rugby shirt (he didn’t know it was Irish) shows me the raw and painful psoriasis on his arms. He and two of his children need expensive medication, that they can’t afford.

His name is Hussein Ezzedine. His wife, Wafaa Obeid, is sitting on the floor stirring a pot of yoghurt on a hob connected to a gas canister. They live in this classroom with their four children and their niece. On the blackboard are pinned Shia religious texts and a photo of a young man, a friend killed when his home was destroyed.

Wafaa Obeid makes yoghurt for her family at the Tyre Technical School, in southern Lebanon. Her family has fled their farm in Ramyah. Photograph: Chris Maddaloni

They’re from Ramyah. They’re farmers who had a small food-conserving business. They’re used to turmoil on the border, so when conflict broke out in October they assumed it wouldn’t last. Then a missile exploded nearby, followed by a second, then a third. Wafaa was outside and started running towards the children. “I was calling on them, trying to find them.”

They stayed for a further six days but had no bread or gas. They were scared to make a fire in case it attracted aircraft. Eventually her children said: “We are your responsibility. If you don’t take us away from here, you are risking our lives.” So they came to Tyre by car. As they left, they could see phosphorous bombs falling behind them.

The children are traumatised she says. They flinch when they hear thunder. Hussein brings over a friend’s child and points to white discolourations on his legs. It’s a stress reaction, “because of the bombing”. Rajaa, the boy’s mother, has moved to an apartment in Tyre with her children but has no appliances, no furniture and is worried about the rent. Hizbullah promised to pay but they haven’t done so yet (Hizbullah offers payments to displaced people but this hasn’t been consistent). She didn’t think she’d be here so long.

Wafaa says: “All the women now want to divorce their husbands because they stay all the time together.” Everyone laughs.

Her 16-year-old daughter, Sally, looks at me and says, pointedly, in English (until now, comments have been translated): “It’s so hard just sitting here. We were so happy.”

“When you leave, take us with you,” says Hussein.

Wafaa points towards a fair-haired child. “He looks Italian. You can take him to Italy.”

Patrick Freyne

Patrick Freyne

Patrick Freyne is a features writer with The Irish Times

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