Alhawiat

AMALIA AND FARAH. AL QAA, NORD LIBAN

Painful reminiscence in the quiet streets of Al Qaa, small christian village in northern Lebanon, situated 5 kilometres away from the Syrian border. On the 28th of June 1978, the Syrian regime kidnapped fifteen men of the village, and shoot them with 20 violent bullets, still echoing in today’s memories.

On the 27th of June 2016, the eve of the commemoration of Al Qaa’s massacre, a series of 8 suicide-attacks marked the return to horror. A first explosion gathered the inhabitants worried by the detonation, followed by seven more in front of Mar Elias’ church. The toll is heavy: five villagers are dead, 28 are wounded.

Al Qaa

No man's

land

Syrian

border

Masharih

camp

This recent context came to threaten the fragile equilibrium between the Syrian refugees of the neighbouring Masharih Camp and the inhabitants. The geographic position of the village doesn’t allow to ignore the dangers weighting on this corner of the Bekaa, isolated from the rest of the country. At the feet of the Anti-Lebanon mountains acting as a porous border with Syria, Qaa is stuck between Hermel at the east - one of the declared strongholds of the Shia Hizbollah - and Ersal at the west, a Sunni locality condensing various tensions.

Qaa’s inhabitants found themselves on the front line, dancing between rockets launches arriving by mistakes in their fields and now terrorist attacks or military offensives. Welcomed by their Syrian neighbours during the 2006 outbursts of the Israeli bombers, they are now faltering between resilience and a desire of revenge exacerbated by Daesh, implanted since four years upstream of the village in the nearby mountains

Two men look at the Syrian border and mountains that Daesh are occupying since four years. © Chloe Sharrock

A sense of resistance and fearless struggle is however felt when meeting the women of Qaa. The ones that lost a husband or a son. The ones that have to continue despite the recent grief, young children to take care of, or psychological and physical consequences compelled since the events. Behind it, a humble ambition wonders around at the sound of their voices: to give substance to a collective memory clearing itself from institutional truths. It is their testimonies that, beyond the imposing diatribes of the men of the village, insist on the martyrs of Qaa and transmit to the following generations a genuine ode to the heroes that fell for Qaa.

AMALIA

" It was on a quiet night, and like every other family, we were sleeping. We saw a vivid light, and heard an explosion. My husband woke up and ran outside to help the victims. Over there, someone took him in his arms.. it was a second terrorist , that blew himself up while embracing him..

Here is my story, his death opened a whole new chapter in our life.

When it is dark, I look at what surrounds me, and I feel sorry for my children that don’t have a father anymore to support them. We remember him in every sunset, every wind breeze.

Don’t be surprised if I cry. This is who I am now. "

Amalia and her son Elias with the weapons he got to "protect" his family. © Chloe Sharrock

Amalia recounts laconically the night of the events whose date is “engraved in the heart of the inhabitants of Qaa and Lebanon”.

She shows us her husaband's broken mobile and wallet, only relic left of that day. But if the objects remain, the bodies vanish. Amalia also lost a father to her three children. When her own words aren’t enough, a saying comes to replace the unspeakable: “ If a mother is softness, a father is security”. She expresses the enormity of the responsibilities incumbent on her now and her heavy solitude since the loss of the man that was “the three-quarters of her life”

In the living room, a picture of her and her husband can be seen. She is extremely feminine, with make-up and curly hair. She tells us about her physical deterioration, her severe weight loss from 120Kg to 85kg, and the total loss of femininity since the death of her soulmate, and therefore since “there is no one left waiting for you, and for whom to get beautiful”. Behind this legitimate complain, Amalia still hasn’t given up. Once again, among her discourse, some kind of resilience emerges, like a permanent state of eventuality that allows her to draw strength from deep inside her: “ I feel now that I have to assure protection and security to my children. I therefore enjoy observing what other men do, how they make money, or how they communicate with their children. It’s important to learn from other’s experience”.

The religious routine also participates to the strength deployed to cope with grieving. Amalia goes to the church every week, no matter what happens, “to perdure and maintain the memory of Joseph”. To honour martyrs implies a role within the christian community while pride and remembrance allows to accustom to the life’s tilt.

“My belief in god is now much stronger. I haven’t thought once about leaving the village, whatever happens. I am even more attached to the village than before, especially that Joseph is still here, we can feel his spirit around us. In the name of God, I am a stronger believer and I just want to keep going with my life, draw a new path for it. I want to keep his legacy alive and maintain his memory even if it costs me blood.”

In her house, the last one before the mountains, Amalia ends up by talking about her son Elias, 18 years old, whose windows face where Daesh hides since four years: everyday, he looks out to it with his binoculars. Like many inhabitants, he provided himself weapons, that he now hides under his bed or in his closet, like a way to maintain the figure of his protective father, a parade to reassure his family.

“My son Elias, he keeps all his sadness inside. He acts tough, he imitates his father, but he’s broken inside.”

A commemorative board in front of the church where the attacks occured. © Chloe Sharrock

FARAH

" Before that day, we lived in peace. We were untroubled and our life was reassuring in every aspect of it. It was wonderful, completely flawless.

Then, the attacks took place. And since, everything is different, we suffer too much..

I don’t even manage to take care of my children anymore.. I still wake up in the morning and turn to my husband, but reality quickly catches me back, and I don’t find anyone next to me in the bed..

I do feel strong, because I am responsible for everything now. The more I bear, the stronger I get.

But there are so much responsibilities when you have to take care of young children. Even if you feel powerful, you get weak at some points "

Farah's daughter, holding on to the bear her father gave her a few weeks before his death. © Chloe Sharrock

Farah, as for her, can’t go back to the place of the attack, neither at the church. With a very quiet voice, she relates her story.

As if sharing the same mechanism of resilience than Amalia, the notion of martyr is omnipresent in her discourse. The frontage of her modest house on the outskirt of the village displays a portrait of her deceased husband, recalling the numerous ones that can typically be found in the Shia neighbourhoods of the country depicting portraits of Hezbollah martyrs.

Waken up by the explosions sounds, Farah’s husband thought at first that it was malevolent kids throwing firecrackers. He took the ambulance of which he is the driver, and hurried to the place of the intriguing sounds. Farah confides about her immense pain:

“My husband’s sister took me to its family late that night. When I arrived, it was a complete shock. I found martyrs and wounded. I was told everything that happened, which left me in total state of shock for three days.

We buried him during the night. I was extremely afflicted, but also very angry, I had a crisis.

We buried the martyrs.

I was in such lethargy that I had the impression that I swallowed my tongue. Even when I sleep now, I wake up in the middle of the night feeling like suffocating, like swallowing my tongue again It’s a reaction to the shock I had.”

But despite the darkness of her outfit and these painful night jolts when she seeks for her husband, Farah slowly conducts her story towards a more optimistic direction through the prism of faith and parenthood: “Sometimes I feel confident and capable of facing almost anything. Before, I didn’t have to take care of anything, nor to sustain to our home or anything that happened outside of it. Now, I handle every aspect of it, and it’s a tremendous responsibility, especially with three young children.”

In July 2017, the Hezbollah, backed up by the Lebanese forces, decided to clean the border region from the islamists groups implanted in the mountains. After a week of intense battle, the territories above the locality of Ersal are liberated.

A few weeks after, it is the uphills of Qaa that will be cleansed by the Lebanese forces on one side of the border, and the Syrian army and the Hezbollah on the other.

After a short battle, the so-called Islamic State is defeated and sent back to Syria.

I know that the army started bombing a few days ago the nearby mountains, but this is my home, only God can judge me, as He is my Creator. Even if a war erupted, and even if ISIS came here, we would stay in our home. Like my husband who got martyred here for Al Qaa and Lebanon, I am ready, so are my kids, to die with dignity and honour.

We will never leave our home.

- Amalia

Now that there is the war, I wonder what will happen. The other day, there was very powerful strikes against Daesh, and my daughter came to me. She told me: “Mum, please tell Dad to be careful and to stay away from the bombs..”

But it isn't a barrier to my faith, what happened strengthened it, especially given that my husband died as a martyr. I can feel that he went to heaven, and it reassures my belief and makes it stronger.

- Farah

For Amalia or Farah, as for all the inhabitants of this small christian village stuck at the Syrian border, religion has become a way to affirm their conviction and overcome the trauma of the painful events that shook the region these last decades. Faith has become a genuine ciment for the whole community, reinforced by the geographic isolation of the village that endured more than one conflict in the last decades, and appears as a vector of strengh and resilience.

But if the resistance of the villagers might seem to shed a bright light on the country's tragic history, it is still hard to ignore the paradoxal downside of religion in the particularly fragile stability between the nineteen different communities of the country. With a growing hostility towards the 1,8 millions Syrian refugees, that adds to the 80 000 Palestinian implanted since 60 years, and the tensed relations between the Future Movement and the Hezbollah -to recite nobody else but them- Lebanon is more than ever the playground of a dangerous game of power.

In November 2017, the country showed once again how influenced and wrought by external powers it is when PM Saad Hariri unexpectedly resigned while in Saudi Arabia, plunging the nation into a new political crisis.

Article: Chloe Sharrock

Translation from Arabic: Kenza Chaouni and Jameel Karaki