Reaffirmation - One Week Later

By Ashley Westerman

cross posted from http://ashleysu.wordpress.com

I know this is a bit late; but it took me about a week to get up the courage to write it out – better late than never.

Few people have seen misery.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying many people don’t experience misery, but I think the lucky ones who don’t have to experience it, do not often see it. Misery, some could say, may be a harsh vocabulary but I have contemplated long and hard and this is how I have chosen to describe what I saw yesterday. 

Today our group visited what few in the US will ever get to experience: Palestinian refugee camps.

We visited two camps: Bourj al-Barajneh and Sabra and Chatila, the latter being the largest refugee camp in Beirut.

The night before I was hesitant to go to sleep for I did not know what the next day would bring. I have heard horror stories about the refugee camps and knew I needed to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to experience. I have been to the slums of the Philippines, both in the city and in the countryside. But this was a whole different situation – at least in my eyes. Before I put my head down on the pillow to succumb to the night, I decided that I was going to approach the next day as a quiet observer. Not necessarily a journalist, but instead an outside observer whose only goal in being there was to experience. I decided that I would write down everything I saw in great detail and listen to all conversations had with as much effort as I could but I knew regardless of the walls I attempted to fortify the night before: tomorrow would be emotional for me.

As I sit here in my new favorite café in Beirut, my eyes tear as I write this. I firmly believe that everyone has times in their lives that they can remember as clearly as if they were still in the moment. This is what the camp was like for me, this is what seeing those people did to me.

At first glance, Bourj al-Barajneh looked much like the Filipino slums I had dredged through before when I was younger. But as mentioned previously, I see this camp and the Palestinian situation much different. In the Philippines I was emotional because those were my people and I was very sad that the majority of them were in dire poverty. It also made me sad because I knew that I could have been any of those children running down the filthy streets with no shoes.

But this was different.

The first thing that struck me was the wall that was built around the refugee camps. Walls, though simple in thought, are very imposing forces – both physically and psychologically. The wall outside of the camp reminded me of the piece of ghetto wall in Holocaust Museum in Washington DC that was brought from overseas. The houses looming above the wall were hollow; made of concrete and plaster. From the outside looking in, one must force themselves to believe that there is life within.

The camp was filthy, the sidewalks uneven and unkempt. Lining the thin walkways was dirt, rock and trash; crushed bottles and bits of paper lay everywhere. Some of the walls of the houses inside were plastered with posters of Palestinian – and even Hezbollah – heroes; the men who would lead these people back to their homeland. Above our heads was a labyrinth of electrical wires, like giant spider webs casting shadows on the filthy street below. Mazes of pipes of all shapes and sizes crawl up and down the walls of the buildings – some leading to drains and others seemingly leading to nowhere. The refugee camps do not receive any government services – no water and no electricity. They must find ways to obtain even the most basic of human needs.

The people in the refugee camp looked worn; even the small children looked older than they should be. Most of the women we saw were elderly and conservative, veiling to move about their prison. Teenagers were sitting about, smoking and gawking at the Americans who had dared to come see their living conditions. As we passed by the open doors and windows of houses, I noticed many of them were dark and very small; but I think it was the cry of infants lying on hard concrete floors was what got to me the most. Since it is summer time, some of the older yet still very small children were everywhere running around and playing, as if so used to their situation that they didn’t even notice they were playing tag among piles of trash.

As we made our way through the small alleyways, I noticed a mural drawn on the side of a house: a colorful picture of Jerusalem with the words “When are we going to return?” spray painted in Arabic. Graffiti like this is everywhere in the camp.

Our first stop was at a small grocery and supply store tucked away deep into one of the alleyways. The shop owner, Abdullah Shahidi, said he was forced from his home in Palestine in 1948 and had lived in this very refugee camp since 1953. Before he was driven out of his home, Shahidi was working on a degree in Diesel Mechanics, but since Palestinian refugees are not allowed to work in Lebanon, he could not get a job in that field. He said he had 6 sons (2 of which are currently in Sweden), 2 daughters (both reside in the camp) and over 30 grandchildren all together. His shop was simple, almost too simple with meager supplies inside and not-so-great vegetables sitting in plastic crates on the street outside. Shahidi said he has only had the shop for one year but does not believe it will stay open for long. He said the children who come to get ice cream every day is why he fights to keep the shop open.

When asked who he supported in the Palestine Liberation movement, Shahidi said he supports all of their causes but not one specific organization. He said that he foresees a 3^rd war between Palestine and Israel where all the liberation organizations will come together, defeat Israel and reclaim Palestine. As the old man said this, his body tense and his fists shaking, I could see that he truly believed that their liberation would come. He had passion in his eyes, regardless of the hopelessness that has surrounded him for over 50 years.

Our last stop in Bourj al-Barajneh was inside the house of Ishmel Abdul Ahmed, 74, who had been a resident inside the refugee camp since 1948. Ahmed’s house was a bit “nicer” than most of the other houses we had passed in the camp, but the living conditions were still meager at best. The house was 3 floors, each built as Ahmed’s family grew and as he obtained more building materials throughout his many, many years in the refugee camp. The old man was worn, you could see the years in his eyes, on his hands, on his face. He had not lived an easy life.

Ahmed and his wife, who was also present during our visit, have 6 sons, 3 daughters and 9 grandchildren. Two of his sons are in Sweden, two are in Denmark and the other two are in the United Arab Emirates. Ahmed said that most of his sons left during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 but that he still hears from them by phone every single day. When asked about his daily life in the refugee camp, Ahmed says that he works for the daily and social life of all the people in the camp, getting them water, electricity and building materials. He says that he has lots of friends because of the work he does.

Ahmed says that only has 20% hope that the bill that will allow Palestinian refugees to work in Lebanon will pass in the legislature but still has hope to return to Palestine. He came from a family of farmers, he said, and once owned 100’s of acres of land. Ahmed said that he returned to his home in occupied Palestine in 1973 via a Jordanian visa. When he got to where his home used to be, he said he prayed and cried for hours because it had been taken over by Israeli occupation.

When asked if he would ever return to Palestine, Ahmed said: “Anything is better than living in Lebanon.”

We left the old couple then and headed back to the entrance of, the camp, along the way passing more children and other adults going about their day inside their prison. As we left, we passed a group of elderly, veiled women who smiled at us.

I quietly whispered, “Merhaba” as we passed them. These women made me wonder how people who had lived in such conditions for such a long time could still be so friendly to outsiders – especially to people who were blatantly American.

The van ride to Sabre and Chatila was short and as soon as we arrived, my eyes lay upon another imposing wall; built to keep people in, built to keep people out. We did not actually step foot inside of the largest refugee camp in all of Beirut because of safety issues but we walked far enough into the market that lay right outside of t to get the gist of the type of atmosphere inside. Our guide told us that in all actuality, few Palestinians lived in this refugee camp. Instead it was mostly other foreigners such as Syrians, Iranians and Jordanians who had been uprooted from their homes with nowhere else to go.

Less than a hundred yards into the market; we took a right into what appeared to be a fenced-in, vacant lot. The lot was mostly completely empty, except for some trash that had accumulated near the surround fence and to the right stood two billboards. And finally, directly across from the entrance of the lot on the far side, stood a large granite memorial: the memorial for the Sabra and Chatila Massacre of 1982.

After reading the billboards more closely and as our guide began to talk in a quiet, somber voice, I realized that I was literally standing on the mass grave of about 3,000 Palestinian refugees. Our guide told us that half who died in the massacre were children, 300 of them were Lebanese and 90% of those murdered by forces that day were women and children. He got down on his knees and spread out his hands, to show us that the dead were buried in more than 10 rows.

Our guide took us over to the far side of the lot to see the billboards more closely. They were splashed with giant pictures of murdered children being pulled from the piles of dead bodies one by one. The boards also noted the Qana Massacre of 2006.

As we gazed up at the boards, one my classmates asked: “Why did they do this?”

Our guide simply answered that that is what people have been asking for years, yet it keeps on happening. He then proceeded to tell us one of the most horrific stories I have ever been told in my entire life. He said that during the 1982 massacre of Sabre and Chatila, a woman was being chased into her house by Israeli soldiers. When she got to her house, she retrieved her infant child – still nursing – out of its crib and begged the soldiers not to kill her because she had a child. The soldiers shot her anyway, letting the child fall the floor. After the soldiers left, the baby, old enough to make its way to its mother’s still warm body, somehow got to her breasts and proceeded to suckle. An Israeli soldier heard the infant, came in and snatched the child away from its mother. When the baby began to cry, the soldier threw the child against the wall, letting it fall to the ground, still crying – so the soldier took out his gun and finished the infant off.

I cannot believe that these are the chosen people of God; I cannot believe that these crimes against helpless women and children and the crimes of forcing people from their homes into horrendous conditions are all in the name of some country supposedly assigned to someone by God himself. I cannot believe this is right; this is not right, it is not practical and it certainly is not logical. Furthermore, for the United States to support these actions with weaponry and money is wrong; frustratingly wrong. It’s so blatant – I don’t really understand how people don’t see that this is clearly a black and white issue.

I cannot support the Israeli fight for their own country when they are displacing others, refusing to make them citizens and refusing a two state solution. I cannot support the United States in their endeavor to allow these crimes of humanity to continue. Zionism is an inherently racist idea and these refugee camps are living proof of that.

Seeing these camps, talking to these people and standing above the graves of over 3,000 innocent martyrs only reaffirms my opinions that had been recently only shaped by education. Now that I have the element of actual experience, I am confident is saying that this is where I lie on this issue and there is no logical path that will lead me to think otherwise.