Read From CHAPTER ONE

                           Life in the Sabra and Shatila Camps Before the Massacre             

    I was born at 5:45 p.m. on February 20th, 1965, in a small refugee camp called Shatila in Beirut, Lebanon. Shatila camp was built in the early fifties for the Palestinians who left their country, Palestine, after the Israeli occupation in their land in 1948. The houses in my camp are made from concrete except the roof, which is thin sheet metal. It is very loud in my house on the rainy days. I can hear every drop of rain on the roof. Shatila camp is connected to a smaller camp called Sabra—another small Palestinian refugee camp. They are connected by a single street called Elmograbi, which refers to a young lady suicide bomber who blew herself up in South Lebanon in 1978 against the Israeli Army. In my camp, there is one school called Al-Jaleel. I will go to this same school from first grade through high school. There are two hospitals: Gaza and Akka. The population of my camp, Shatila, is around fifteen thousand, and I would say Sabra camp is estimated around thirteen thousand. 

    I grow up living through a very long and painful civil war. The war is between the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which is under the leadership of Yasser Arafat on one side, and the Lebanese groups on the other. Growing up as a small boy is very painful; it is not a childhood at all. The streets are not safe and even toys can be explosive traps. We are warned by the PLO soldiers repeatedly not to touch anything on the streets, and especially anything that looks like a toy. We have to avoid playing at all for fear of losing limbs; I witness children being maimed or killed on the streets often.

Again, the civil war is a turning point in my childhood. I start to see the dead bodies multiply on the streets of the camp from the falling rockets, the people with fewer and fewer limbs. I was very young then, but I remember when this civil war started, in the early seventies. As I remember, my parents warned me not to leave the house, as they are worried for my safety. I stay home most of the time, just like every kid in the camp, but the precaution is a false safety. Everywhere in the tin-roofed camp is dangerous.

Either way death is waiting for us outside.

I live in a one-bedroom house with my mother, father, and seven of my brothers. Actually, it is not that bad—cozy almost. My brothers and I are very close; we are separated only by a little over a year between one another. My mom is a true survivor, as she holds the big family together. Even with very limited or no resources, as far as food and income. There are no jobs in the camps except small street shops. Bread, cigarettes and soft drinks are the main merchandise to be had.

There is one furniture store on the south end of the camp. This furniture store is owned by my best friend’s family. My best friend Abud Alsalam and I are very close, as we go to the same school together throughout all our school years.

In the late seventies he began to drive his dad’s old Nissan pickup that they used for furniture delivery. He and I used to steal the truck after Abud Alsalam’s father was in bed. We would drive to a deserted field called Jalool Land, between Sabra and Shatila camps. Abud Alsalam is of medium build, about five feet eight inches with short black hair always combed straight back. His sharp big brown eyes betray the iron strength of his personality. The loyalty between us has no limit. Growing up we look out for each other, hardly leaving each others side; this has made us the best friends that we are today.

The open field is perfect for driving lessons, my friend took the time to teach me how to drive his stick shift truck. Not long after that I am the one to be spotted behind the wheel all the time.

We take little notice of the dead bodies on the side of the road on our joy rides as death had become part of our daily life. No one can keep up with the rising death toll, excess corpses litter the camp.

We see so many dead people that as we grow older we stop paying attention. The horrifying stench from the exposed bodies chokes in our throats, so strong we can taste it. But again we become used to this as well. There is no escape. In the beginning it makes me sad to see the bodies of my friends and neighbors lying on the narrow streets of the camps, as I cannot help to remember how they had been such a short time ago.

My mind adjusts itself so that dealing with this environment becomes routine.

I ignore all of it.

In the meantime, I am still attending school. Every school day morning, the teacher calmly announces the one, two, or sometimes three newly killed students. This too becomes old news, making little impact.

Most days after school, Abud Alsalam and I go target shooting with a Russian-made AK-47 in an empty field called Asas field, not too far from the camp. We pack our backpacks with live ammo given to us by the friendly PLO soldiers. We select a target, usually a large pine tree.

At age 13 we enjoy the rush of using the semi-automatic weapon that shoots off thirty bullets in seconds.

The AK-47 is our toy, there are plenty of them—they are easily picked off of a dead body who obviously has no further use for it. I’m sure they do not mind.

When there is a cease-fire for a couple days between the PLO and the Christian Lebanese in Eastern Beirut, that is when fighting breaks out between the PLO factions, leaving behind more casualties. The action never stops, I am never bored.

One day we start to experience a new way of killing. People are minding their own business walking down the street and then fall dead instantly. In a single shot to the head, snipers from the East side of Beirut are a change of pace from the rockets we are used to.  The Christian Lebanese begin to use more advanced sniping weapons. When this begins, everyone walking on the street walks in zigzags trying not to give the snipers a clear shot.

For the next two months we avoid leaving home completely except for emergencies. Snipers are the only things that we can never grow used to. In my opinion, that is the scariest thing I have yet to experience.

One day some of my classmates and I are playing a soccer game in Jalool Land when suddenly the players begin falling to the ground one by one. We realize there are snipers targeting us, everyone runs for cover to the nearby Gaza hospital, about two hundred feet away, but only after six of the players lose their lives. As children, we do not know any better than to make such easy targets of ourselves. We stay at the hospital about ten hours, until two the next morning, for fear of snipers waiting for us. Sitting just inside the doors, we are scared, joking nervously and waiting for the right moment to escape. In the darkness of early morning we all make a dash for our homes, exhausted and starving by the time we arrive. I feel lucky to have survived this soccer game. Then again, I am living in one of the most dangerous places on the face of the earth.

My mother has waited and cried for me all night long sitting on the doorsteps, as she’s heard about the six kids who had been shot dead on the soccer field. Not knowing if I am among the living or the dead, she runs towards me as I run down our street, embracing me on her knees while sobbing.

I am thirteen in the summer of 1978 when three of my friends and I have a crazy idea to take the forty-five minute walk to the White Sand, the nearest beach. This area—and even the idea of leaving Shatila—is forbidden. None of us have ever ventured beyond the camp, hearing only stories of the coast. It is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. The sweltering day with no air conditioning or fans to bring relief prompts the four of us to think five minutes in the water worth dying for. We walk about four miles toward the beach, careless and fearless as we joke in fun on the way. Finally arriving, we scale the high rocks and jump fully clothed into the beautiful clear blue water. For the next two hours we have a blast, the most fun we have had in our young lives and a definite change from our normal existence. We of course have not informed our parents of our trip, so we decide to head back, even though it is hard to leave the beach behind.

We are assuring each other of the need to come back often as we leave when an army green British-made Land Rover stops us. We are unsure of what militant group they belong to. Scared, we stand helplessly looking at each other waiting for the unknown. One soldier in particular who is seated next to the driver withdraws his handgun, aiming it an inch or two from my face. He asks calmly, “Where you boys from?”

Not knowing if there is a right answer to the question and seeing his hidden anger, I tell the truth and reply, “From Shatila Camp.” With that said, the other five armed soldiers jump out of the vehicle as if my answer had hit the spot.

They start to beat us on every inch of our bodies. They punch and kick their boots into our faces as we lay on the ground. All of us are bruised, swollen and bleeding profusely from our mouths and noses from the ten minutes of continuous abuse. It would have lasted longer except for an old man passing by who came to the rescue. All he screams is “Leave them alone they are just kids!” This is enough to earn him a blow to the head with the bottom of an M-16 rifle. He falls to the ground from the single hit while the soldiers turn their attention back to us. They drag us together, pile us on top of each other and proceed to urinate on us as they laugh. They say as they leave, “Consider this a warning—Don’t ever come back here again.”

Standing up we laugh at our swollen disfigured selves, we think the whole experience is the funniest thing, as is the blood everywhere.

We feel lucky they did not shoot us. Once again I have cheated death.

The school is the first stop before we go to our homes. We take turns hosing each other off with water to at least rinse the blood and urine from our bodies. We agree not to tell anyone about our adventure, answering my mother’s questions when I got home with “I just got in a fight with some kids.” This is the end of the matter.

Life keeps on this way without a break, I survive on a day by day basis until the big day, June 6, 1982. It is the day the Israeli army moves into South Lebanon. The big invasion. Israel has one thing on their mind, to destroy the PLO and drive them out of Lebanon completely.

Israel has the most advanced army in this part of the world, powered by the best that technology has to offer. Tanks, fighter jets, ground troops and spy satellites give Israel an instant upper hand compared to the impoverished PLO, who are equipped with Russian-made weapons from the Second World War. Without tanks or heavy artillery, the odds are, of course, in favor of the Israeli forces. Once they cross the border in the South, they befriend and receive aide from guerillas who oppose the PLO. With that much military power and internal help—despite the strong PLO resistance effort—it does not take the Israeli army long to reach and encompass Beirut. The city is being surrounded and weakened by the barrage of 960 tons of ammunition dropped mostly from F-16 jet fighters on one side, and rockets banned by international war laws on the other.

The Israeli army surrounded Beirut for almost three months, preventing food and medical supplies from entering the city to reach the hungry and injured civilian inhabitants. Even the water supply is cut.

The siege continues to put pressure on the PLO for a quick surrender and the bombing of Beirut never ceases even as the people perish. The mounting number of wounded have no aid, the people no food or water.

During this time, the F-16 fighters keep bombing the Sabra and Shatila camps all day, every day. The explosion from the rockets is a sound I am unfamiliar with. The power and volume of the impact and explosion are so intense that my ears bleed continually. The rockets themselves leave craters fifty feet in diameter. The increased distress makes me consider my former life as easy compared to this new reality. In addition to the craters, the dead body count on the streets increases dramatically—walking without stepping on the dead people is impossible.