Victory in Lebanon
That evening I sat on the deserted beach in Tyre with a group of doctors from the hospital. They were all against Hezbollah and laughed because all the nurses in the hospital supported Hezbollah. The picnic was a chance to let off steam. There was beer and pizza, the surf lapped against the Roman ruins, and above us Venus hung low and bright. Someone remarked that Hezbollah was capitalizing on its victory. A surgeon took umbrage: ‘This is a victory? How can I believe I am victorious? I am sure Israel won this war: Every piece of infrastructure is destroyed in Lebanon. They lost one hundred and twenty-four soldiers. We lost more than one thousand two hundred, and only ten per cent of these, maybe, were soldiers, the rest civilians — we lost everything in this war. The Israelis nothing.’
In the morning one of the Shaito aunts called me from Beirut. Amin was alive! They had all feared the worst, but he was alive. He had a dislocated shoulder; a rocket had landed nearby and catapulted a stone into him. I learned that they would bury Haidar and Hiba’s father and grandmother the following day in Tiri.
The funeral cortège, two ambulances and a line of dusty cars, arrived at Tiri in the beating-hot noon. The medics, wearing surgical masks against the stench, unloaded the coffins as the villagers came down the road to the cemetery. Three sisters injured in the minivan were helped down the road, white bandages peeking out from the sleeves of their black hijab robes.
Haidar threw his arms around two of his father’s sisters. Then his anger rose and he scrabbled down the rocky track, lashing out at the wing mirror of a car with his fist, smashing it. His cousins and uncles tried to calm him. He kicked at the dust and rubble with his feet; he could not be held, broke free of them and stalked downwards towards the cemetery.
Haidar’s widowed mother had retrieved her husband’s medicine bag from the wreck of the minivan. She held up the clear plastic zip-bag and waved it. ‘I have his medicine, oh! He does not need his medicine now!’
The men stood in lines and prayed by the coffins. The clutch of villagers passed around bottles of water and murmured condolence.
‘We thank God. God chose them as martyrs, the noblest people on earth.’
‘We are from God and we return to God.’
‘Don’t cry. Your tears will burn the dead. They have been chosen by God almighty.’
Women cried, one man staggered off and was sick. The dust rose.
At the grave site, holes had been clawed in the rock red earth with a mechanical digger. The coffins were manhandled into position and sealed with concrete slabs. The digger puffed black smoke like a funerary dragon. There was no ceremony, just dirt and clots of people holding each other and weeping. Hiba cried on Jamil’s shoulder and he reached up his bandaged arm to tenderly pat the back of her chador’s neck. She watched them lower her father into the earth and she called out, ‘Be careful of his head!’
We stood in a small patch of resinous pine shade, listening to a passing Israeli drone.
‘It’s dangerous here. What will happen? Tomorrow is the fourth day of the ceasefire. What will happen if the Lebanese army doesn’t come? It will begin again?’
An old woman rocked a baby. A burnt uncle wept tears down his piebald face. An aunt hugged me and said, ‘Mohammed, now every day he is in Tiri, not just at the weekend. Now every day he is in the place he loves the best.’ Amin wiped his tears on the collar of his shirt. The grave diggers rested their hands on top of their spades and then resumed shovelling. Haidar stood alone, rebuffing comfort, watching the final movements as they filled in the grave of his father.
Later, after the wake, Haidar walked me back to the car past a cache of captured Israeli supplies, oil drums and cans of chicken supreme kept near the mosque. He thanked me for coming. Then he offered me an Israeli cigarette and a terrible epigraph: ‘Without this faith, all fighting would be suicide.’