I met Tony one night when he was working behind the front-desk of a dorm.  We talked about U2.  At the time, he was the only person I had met who actually cared to know more useless information about that band than I did.  Over time we became good friends, and I got to learn a little something about where he came from.  Tony was born and spent his early years in Lebanon.  The youngest son of a Christian family, Tony’s original name was “Wael” – a name chosen because it spoke to both Muslim and Christian sensibilities.  Prior to coming to the US, Wael and his family lived in downtown Beirut during the war years of the early 80s.  I remembered seeing images on television of that war when I was a child and at night, before bed, praying for the people who I saw.  I understood little then, only that there was pain and that when I saw the images I was afraid.  I recognize now that I was praying for people like Tony, people not bound by religious or political affiliation, but rather, people who desired peace and an opportunity to flourish.  Anyway, I received a message about something that was posted by Tony on Facebook the other day.  When I read it I asked him if I could show it around.  I took out the opening and the closing of the letter, but I kept most of it in tact to preserve his voice.   I am posting it here, not because I am trying to take a side in any particular war, but because I want to offer a reflection about all war.  Thanks for the taking the time to read it.

It’s not often that I talk of my experiences growing up during the civil war in Lebanon. Mostly it’s because friends do not ask me about it and I don’t want to divulge information that many may find upsetting. Sometimes it’s because the memories I live with still haunt me to this day and some are too painful to dwell on; it is those memories that have guided my conscience, my understanding of the world, and the path I have dedicated myself to professionally. Allow me to share some of my memories, not to glorify what I went through, but to try and give insight into what so many are living, and dying through as you read this.

We spent so much time in hallways and stairwells. Days and weeks would go by with no running water, no electricity, and no phones. My extended family lived on the other side of the Green Line during the war, on the Christian side of Beirut. When the fighting would start we had no communication with them and wouldn’t know if they were okay until after the fighting stopped. Sometimes, the fighting would start while my father was at work in the hospital and we would have little or no contact with him for days. As a result, everyone in our building in Beirut cared for each other as family, regardless of religion or political affiliation. We stayed mostly in the stairwells between the 3rd and 4th floors though my family lived in an apartment on the 7th floor of 8. Stay in the basement and if a rocket hit the building and it collapsed around you, you’d have no chance of being dug out if you managed to survive the blast. Stay in the stairwells higher in the building and you risk stray bullets and rocket propelled grenades. I used to collect the bullets we would find in our pock marked apartment; it was once set on fire during the Israeli invasion of 1982 from stray RPG shells.

While sitting in the stairwells, we would sing songs, play cards, and try to listen to the old radio my dad kept by him for news of an end to the fighting and a resumption of “normal” life. The bombs kept falling, day and night, and the gunfire was constant. In the early days of the war, the bombs would make a high-pitched whistle as they fell. A feeling of dread would creep over me as I wondered where the bomb would fall when the whistling stopped. If the building shook and my body reverberated from the concussion, a feeling of relief would totally overwhelm me. As the war went on and newer bombs were used, I wouldn’t hear anything. I simply felt one bomb land after another. Slowly, the realization that you wouldn’t hear death coming drives you to the brink of insanity. I would get jumpy and anxious through these battles and every moment lived through was a moment won. Those euphoric feelings were short lived, not just because the bombs kept falling but because I would begin to remember that since the bomb didn’t land on me, it landed somewhere else. And the likelihood always was that someone was under it when it hit.

I used to play a game with my neighbor where we would try to pick out how many different types of guns were being fired through the cacophony of sounds. I remember as a child that these games kept my mind busy and helped me cope with the paralyzing fear. There was always a constant worry, the horror of realizing that any and all of us could die at any moment and there was nothing we could do about it. At night, I would cry myself to sleep under blankets and covers. Sometimes, I would crawl under whatever furniture I could find and sob until my tears dried up and the emotional exhaustion would put me to sleep. Many nights, someone would hold me tight and gently stroke my forehead until I was calm enough to sleep. I remember it being so hard to rest at all. In the lulls of gunfire and explosions, I would sometimes hear people screaming in the night. Calling for loved ones, calling for help. Of all the things I experienced in those years, perhaps that is what has stayed with me. Hearing people call for help and knowing there is nothing I can do for them. Knowing there is nothing anyone can do for them.

When the immediate fighting would stop and we could resume our lives, I remember walking through the streets of downtown Beirut and seeing dead and bloodied bodies. My mother would try her best to shield me from witnessing this but there was only so much she could do in a war zone. My father is a physician and when my mother and I would go to the hospital to see him we would pass women in the street who had lost everything (including limbs and appendages) and would beg me, a five year old child, for money and mercy. Sometimes the women would be carrying dead babies; refusing to accept that their child is gone they would sway back and forth sobbing, holding the corpse in one hand, the other outstretched to passers by. I remember passing men with crude bandages around missing limbs, blood flowing from their wounds onto the street and mixing with the dirt and grime of the city. They would stare at me with vacant eyes. The kind of soulless stare I never thought a living thing could muster. Literally broken and defeated, these people would simply gaze out into the crowds, many not even bothering to beg.

If the schools were open, I would go and live as normal a childhood as was possible given the circumstances. School was canceled because of the fighting on a regular basis. There were tragedies. One my best friend’s uncle was killed while driving his ambulance to the hospital filled with wounded civilians. He was always so nice to us and once let us climb into the ambulance and play in it. After he died, I remember seeing the ambulance in the lower level of the hospital garage, bloodstained and full of bullet holes.

It never ceased to amaze me how much more damage the city would take after every battle. Buildings became unrecognizable with parts of them completely hollowed out and riddled with bullet holes. Most times I would see families living on the different floors of those hollowed out buildings, trying to go about their daily routines as if a wall wasn’t missing from their living room leaving them exposed for all to see. It was all so surreal that if you stood in one spot staring long enough, you’d almost think you were watching a television show. I often wondered how these people survived day in and day out. What did they do to keep warm at night? How did they cook their food? How did they deal with a constant lack of running water and electricity? At least we would only endure that for a few weeks at a time.

When he was still very young, Tony and his family left Lebanon and came to the US.  He grew up in South Dakota, where he went to a regular school and lived in an average neighborhood.  He experienced peace and quiet in a way that he never had before.  He has been back to Lebanon since, and his family is proud of him for what he accomplished when he came to the US.  At the same time, to this day, he still feels a sense of guilt because he grew up “safe” (because he was one of the people who did not die or get maimed).  What amazes me about this is not the lingering effect that surviving a war can have on the psyche of a human being, but that he mentions a sense of guilt for living in a way that most of us think is our birth right.  How often have I heard it said that “those people will always be at war?”  I wonder if there will ever be a way for all of us to recognize ourselves in the faces of a different “type” of people.  I am not sure.  But I continue to pray for places in the world where there is war, where families die and boys become soldiers.  I also pray for places where ideology, prejudice and apathy blind some human beings to the plight of others, whether it be on the other side of some imaginary line, or in another part of the world.  May God help us all.

Photo: “ain’t gonna study war no more?” by ratterrell from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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