From Beirut to Jerusalem 4 Return To Beirut Summer 1985

 

PART IV 

Return To Beirut 

Summer 1985 

   

Chapter 17  

Spring came late to Britain in 1985. I was working as Senior Orthopaedic Registrar in a hospital called Dryburn, in beautiful, ancient Durham City, in North East England. I was beginning to leave the nightmares of Sabra and Shatila behind me, mentally putting away all the atrocities in the museum of my mind, reliving them only on special occasions, like the anniversaries of the camp massacres, when we mourn and commemorate. And, like everyone else who had survived 1982, I had to pick up the threads of my own life, and get on.  

Milad had gone to school in Cyprus, having quite recently left Britain. He had lots of catching up to do on school lessons he had missed in Lebanon; and he had to grab whatever childhood he had left, before the years passed him by. Mouna, Nabil, Huda and Ali had all been able to travel from the camps of Beirut to visit him in Cyprus. I could feel the war wounds – like Milad’s foot – slowly healing. For the first time since 1982, I had room in my mind to start a research project into the treatment of fractures, something which I could not have done if I were not mentally rehabilitated.  

I had not been back to visit the people in Sabra and Shatila, but I knew that children had grown up in those three years; young people had married and babies were born. Shattered homes had been rebuilt and new ones had risen on top of those bulldozed flat. Separated from sons, fathers and husbands by the evacuation and arrests, women had picked up the pieces of their lives. The Palestine Red Crescent Society had fully restored Gaza and Akka hospitals. MAP had just offered some money to help reconstruct the sewage system in Sabra camp. There was always the threat of a new massacre, but the camp folks continued to rebuild their shattered homes, brick by brick, corner by corner, street by street, once again, with the same resilience they had always displayed.  

In May that year, the trees started to blossom in full splendour. Because the winter was especially long and harsh, the glory of spring was out of this world. I was walking to Dryburn Hospital in Durham, along my favourite path. Beautiful clouds of pink and white lined the walk, while the tender green grass was as soft as velvet. In this happy state, I heard my long range bleep go off – long pips one after another. That meant an emergency. I ran towards the hospital, and picked up the nearest telephone.  

‘Miss Ang,’ said the switchboard, ‘long-distance call from Beirut.’ What a relief, I thought, glad that it was not a surgical emergency.  

A voice came on the line, ‘Swee, they have attacked our camps again. They have taken over Gaza Hospital, shot our nurses and patients and burnt our medical supplies stores. We are very desperate.’  

I was stunned. I had feared this would happen. In four months’ time it would be three years since the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres, but now we had a new massacre. I did not yet know who the attackers were, but the right of the Palestinians to be in exile and their right to life were once again challenged. For nearly four decades, these camp people, deprived of their right to a homeland, had lived in exile. They had been threatened repeatedly with massacres, with bombs, with shells, with deportation. Many of them had been kidnapped and had vanished from the face of the earth. Yet they continued to labour against all odds to preserve their identity, and struggle to regain their lost birthright, their right to a home.  

Each time it looked as though the old wounds were about to heal, new wounds were inflicted. How much persecution and pain could a people endure? How long would they be able to be strong?  

The next day, my friend phoned again from Beirut. ‘Swee,’ she said, ‘our women have gone back into the hospital and fought the attackers and we have now regained 

Gaza.’  

But this triumph was short-lived. My friend never phoned back, but I learnt from the newspapers that Sabra camp’s Gaza Hospital was lost once more. Most of the women who fought to retake Gaza Hospital were killed. Sabra and Shatila camps, and Milad’s home, Bourj el-Brajneh camp, were surrounded by enemy tanks and shelled incessantly throughout May, the Muslim month of Ramadan. Just like the massacres of 1982, the siege on the camps was complete, and no one, not even the International Red Cross, was allowed to enter the camps to evacuate the wounded.  

So after nearly three years of silence, the camps once again hit the international headlines! Lots of media commentators and experts on the Middle East deliberated on the situation. Was it a repeat of Tripoli, where the Palestinians were split and fighting each other? Or were there other explanations? The newspaper editorials went on and on.  

But two facts emerged from the verbiage. The camps were resisting, and the resistance was united. Unlike the massacres of 1982, there was return fire. Unlike the ‘Battle of Tripoli’ in 19&3, the Palestinians were not fighting each other. Along with terrible news of the dead, the wounded, the children dying of infectious diseases and lack of food, we heard that Palestinians risking death were saying, ‘When I die, I do not want to be remembered as a member of this or that Palestinian faction, but just as a Palestinian of Sabra and Shatila.’  

There were reports of teenage girls loading themselves with explosives and running into the enemy tanks. The newspapers called them ‘suicide bombers’: the camp people called them martyrs. The camps had dug in, to defend themselves to the last man, woman and child. Palestinian fighters were outnumbered twenty to one, and ill-equipped. They only had light arms and grenades with which to defend their camps against the tanks, shells and mortars of the attackers. A new chapter of Palestinian history was being written by the camps – the chapter of the resurrection of Palestinian resistance. To set the record straight, I too wrote an ‘editorial’, giving my version of the situation:  

Sabra-Shatila: Symbol for the Palestinian Struggle  

The Palestinian movement, born out of years of suffering, has two important pillars:  

1) The will to resist.  

2) The ability to unite.  

In Beirut 1982, the Palestinians were united, but had much of their infrastructure destroyed. First, the families were split up by the evacuation of the men, then the women and children were massacred, the camp homes destroyed and bulldozed over. This was designed to eliminate all traces of Palestinian existence in Sabra-Shatila, Beirut.  

Morale for the will to resist was therefore severely battered. This weakened one of the two pillars and hence distorted the strength of the Palestinian struggle. The will to unite was therefore also weakened, as demonstrated in Tripoli, Lebanon, 1983.  

From 1982 onwards, the Palestinian struggle saw what would happen if they had neither 1) the will to resist nor 2) the ability to unite.  

Sabra-Shatila 1985 has demonstrated to the whole world the resilience of the Palestinian people. They have regained the will to resist.  

Therefore, when the enemies of the Palestinian people sought to repeat a Sabra-Shatila 1982 massacre, they encountered fierce resistance. In addition, the courageous resistance of the camp folks inspired all Palestinians and revived the unity of the Palestinian movement.  

In 1982, Sabra-Shatila was massacred without resistance. In 1985, Sabra-Shatila presents a united Palestinian people – united and steadfast in their resistance.  

Sabra-Shatila may be physically destroyed in this battle. But the people will rebuild it once more. They have set the heroic standards to the rest of the world of unity, resistance, tenacity and courage. And that spirit of SabraShatila will live on in every Palestinian and in people all over the world fighting for justice and liberation!  2 June 1985, UK  

But after writing these optimistic words, I became very, very desperate. I feared that despite their heroism, Sabra and Shatila might be overrun, and the camp people massacred and deported. Palestinian history was full of heroic chapters – the 1968 battle of Karameh in Jordan, the 1976 siege of Tel alZaatar, heroic resistance struggles which were now the heritage not only of the Palestinian people, but of oppressed people all over the world. What should a doctor like myself do under the circumstances? I realised how precious Sabra and Shatila were to me. The Palestinians had been in exile and struggle from the year of my birth, 1948. Yet they remained completely human, under the most inhuman circumstances.  

Tomorrow Sabra and Shatila might no longer exist, but for us – non-Palestinians honoured to be their friends – our duty was to respond in solidarity, before it was too late.  

At the height of the 1982 siege of Beirut, there were nearly a hundred medical volunteers from all over the world working with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, looking after the injured in Lebanon. During the massacres of Sabra and Shatila, there were twenty-two foreign volunteer doctors and nurses in Gaza Hospital. We treated the wounded, and some of us spoke up to urge the world not to forget the camps.  

  

The Palestine Red Crescent Society is a humanitarian organisation with staff from various political factions. 

Now the Palestinians were under attack once again. From three thousand miles away, we could feel their pain and suffering. We wanted to go back to the camps.  

But circumstances were different. The eyes of the world had shifted to the famine in Ethiopia. There was no longer a Gaza Hospital to return to: the hospital of Sabra camp had been burnt, looted and occupied by the new attackers. Akka Hospital was also surrounded by the militia, and although not burnt, could not function as a hospital. With these two hospitals out of action, the treatment of wounded people would be most difficult, if not impossible.  

West Beirut – and Lebanon generally – had now become risky for foreigners. Westerners were particularly vulnerable to kidnapping. Beirut International Airport was embroiled in a hijacking incident involving a TWA airliner, and was generally no go for outsiders. Most flights out of Beirut were packed with foreigners fleeing Lebanon.  

The camps were surrounded by tanks and gunmen, making it impossible even for the International Red Cross to evacuate wounded children. What chance was there for a doctor or nurse to get into the camps?  

Our charity met to discuss how best to help. Someone suggested advertising for volunteer doctors and nurses to go back to the camps. Other members of MAP were astounded at this suggestion, because all of us were fully aware of the dangers, and someone else asked the woman who suggested advertising if she would like to go personally. That naturally created a bit of embarrassment, but we did conclude that we probably should look for volunteers from among ourselves to go first. I volunteered to go back to the camps, since I had been there before, and had a duty to respond now. I was also fully aware what kind of shambles the camps must have been reduced to, and would probably be able to cope. As a surgeon, I had performed operations in partially-destroyed buildings without water and electricity, and would probably be able to do the same again. Even if Sabra and Shatila were destroyed by the time I got there, I still had to visit the camp people to reassure them that we remembered them and had come back to see them. This was the least I could do as a friend.  

We knew sending a team to the camps was a high-risk exercise which few British charities would be prepared to take on. Our charity was less than a year old, and most of us were very worried that we would be seen as being reckless and irresponsible. We spent hours arguing, and in the end decided to vote on it. Nine members were against my going back, and two were in favour. The two in favour were me and Francis, whom I bullied into toeing the line against his better judgement. My colleagues were very concerned for my safety, and that was why they voted against my going.  

But in the end they changed their minds, and did all they could to support me in going back to the camps. We made a public appeal for volunteers, and were moved when dozens of doctors, nurses and technicians rallied round to offer help. They were prepared to come to Lebanon despite being warned of the dangers.  

Within four weeks, MAP had mobilised a team of six medical volunteers and half a ton of medical equipment, and we were ready to leave for Beirut in early July. The medical equipment was for Haifa Hospital, in a camp just south of Shatila: Bourj el-Brajneh. Till this attack on the camps, Haifa Hospital had been a rehabilitation centre for paraplegics. During the siege, many people in Bourj el-Brajneh had died because there were no medical facilities in the camp itself and the sick and wounded could not leave the camp. So the PRCS planned to convert Haifa Hospital into a general hospital with operating theatres and an Accident and Emergency Department. Besides medical equipment, the British public also donated funds for us to buy an ambulance to serve as a mobile clinic. I told Dryburn Hospital that I was going on my summer vacation, and took my six weeks annual leave.  

While we were making these preparations, we received word that a ceasefire had been called. After forty days of attacks and siege, the camps had refused to surrender. The illequipped and outnumbered camp people had fought back so bravely that one thousand of the militiamen who attacked the camps were wounded. Palestinian casualties were high, with six hundred and eighty dead, two thousand wounded, and one and a half thousand missing. The camps had been shelled and attacked with rockets for forty days and were reduced to rubble. Thirty thousand Palestinians had been made homeless. But the morale in the camps was high.  

  

Sabra and Shatila camps after Israeli air raids, seen from Gaza Hospital. The view is of Rue Sabra, during the ceasefire in September 

1982 

Our medical team included one British staff nurse, who 

was also a midwife – Alison Haworth; a trained nurse with a lot of rescue experience – John Thorndike; an anaesthetic technician – John Croft; a Lebanese friend from the days of 1982 – Immad; and good old ‘Big Ben’ – Ben Alofs, the Dutch nurse. Ben was fluent in spoken Arabic, and we all liked him very much. He flew in from Amsterdam to join us when he heard the terrible news about the camps. 

   

Chapter 18  

In 1982 the flight Out had been packed with holiday-makers. This time the plane was largely empty, but then it was flying all the way to Beirut. We were able to land there after all. The airline had agreed to fly our medical and surgical equipment free.  

As the plane landed, we could see the recently hijacked TWA jet parked beside the runway. The airport security was relatively slack: I did not even have my luggage checked. We were met by representatives of the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC), an organisation we would be working with. NORWAC was well respected in Lebanon. They had been working here since the first civil war, and from the outset had been non-sectarian, rendering aid to all the parties in the conflict. This was difficult to do in Lebanon, as the country was very fragmented, but the Norwegians had managed to remain above the politics of the place.  

The Norwegian co-ordinator, Synne, was the driver of the ambulance which was our transport. Fair, good-looking and in her early thirties, she was very dynamic and efficient. We were taken from the airport to the camps in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Bourj el-Brajneh was the first camp on that route. Although I had never worked there before, I remembered it as a camp with a large Lebanese population as well as Palestinians. In fact, it was the largest camp in Beirut now, after the destruction of Sabra and Shatila.  

But as we passed the entrance of Bourj el-Brajneh camp, a quick glimpse from the outside showed us an unreal scene: the apartments within looked like a series of open, irregular honeycombs. We could see that the camp was devastated: buildings were without walls, and collapsing. The camp entrance was guarded by a number of soldiers, armed with machine guns and rocket launchers. Synne told us that if we wanted to go into the camp now, it would take ages just to have all our luggage searched through, and as it was getting late, we should press on to see Um Walid, the PRCS Director in Lebanon.  

Um Walid was known for her strength and for her ability to keep herself together under very difficult circumstances. In fact, I had never seen her become ruffled or lose control at any time, except the once – when she wept on her way out of the field hospital after the 1982 massacre. But this time the Um Walid who greeted us was very different from the Um Walid I remembered. The camp war must have taken its toll on the Palestinian woman. Although her first remark after we embraced was, ‘Swee, are you still strong?’ I could see that she had really been through a lot. She had been in Lebanon all these years. She had lost weight, and there were dark rings around her eyes, and her face had a sad look. Nevertheless, she had the air of one who refused to be defeated. She looked like a lighthouse that had taken a battering from the waves, but was still standing, and I was reassured to meet her.  

‘Yes, Um Walid, still strong,’ I replied without thinking, though I could feel myself fighting back tears.  

‘We have lost Gaza Hospital,’ said Um Walid. ‘They burnt it, and none of us are allowed to go there any more. But you must not be too upset about that. All our efforts must be concentrated on building Haifa Hospital. Look, did we not raise Gaza Hospital from the ground? In the same way, we will open Haifa Hospital.’  

With her words ringing in our ears, we wished her goodnight, and continued to the Mayflower Hotel, where we were staying the night. The Mayflower Hotel used to be quite a place in 1982. It was the overflow hotel for journalists, once the Commodore Hotel was full. Many volunteers and officials from non-governmental organisations and aid agencies also hung out there. I used to go to the Mayflower Hotel in 1982 to look for various people, including those from the various European commissions of enquiry into the Israeli invasion. The delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the coordinators of various health and relief agencies, used to spend time in the bar then. It was always so crowded that it was almost impossible to get a seat in the bar.  

But now the Mayflower Hotel looked totally deserted. The six members of our British team, two Norwegians and four other foreigners made up the total complement of residents of the hotel. The hotel staff were the same, however – Abu George at the bar, all by himself this time; Moustapha at the reception. It was like old friends meeting again, but the circumstances were weird. The rest of the team had gone out for dinner, but I wanted to be alone, and stayed behind. The dining room was large and empty. I sat in the corner, alone. I asked for an omelette, and was told that the hotel had no eggs. This was not the Mayflower Hotel I remembered.  

Abu George and Moustapha were not prepared to discuss the political situation with me, although I dearly wanted to know why the camps were being attacked, especially by the Amal, a Lebanese Muslim group which had once been an ally of the Palestinians. One of the hotel employees had recently been kidnapped, and so there was an atmosphere of unease. There was machine-gun fire outside, sounding like only a few streets away.  

‘No problem, Dr Swee,’ they told me: ‘The Druse and Amal are fighting each other. They’ll stop soon.’ 

Right enough, after three-quarters of an hour or so the shooting ceased. Amal was a Lebanese party and so was the Progressive Socialist Party (Walid Jumblatt’s Druse party). Political parties in Lebanon owned guns and tanks and rocket launchers, and instead of resorting to debate, they resorted to shoot-outs. In Beirut at that time, when a person signed up to join a political party, he was also given the option of belonging to the party’s militia group. That meant he would be given a machine gun and a revolver, and probably some grenades too for good measure!  

The word ‘amal’ meant ‘hope’ and Amal had originally been founded by the Emam Moussa Sadr, who had mysteriously disappeared. Moussa Sadr had founded the Amal movement as a movement to give the Lebanese Shi’ites, who were the majority of the Muslims in Lebanon, a chance to develop their higher human potentials, and the founder’s aims were very noble indeed. During Amal’s formative years, the Palestinians had helped and trained them. It was impossible for most of us to understand how part of Amal was now attacking the Palestinians.  

The Shi’ites were themselves very deprived people, most of whom had known much suffering. Fortunately, not all of them were against the Palestinians. There were one million Shi’ites in Lebanon, and if they had all been against the camps, the situation would have been very much worse. The Palestinians were bitter about the Amal militia who attacked them, and who chose the holy Muslim month of Ramadan to do so, but they had no enmity against the majority of the 

Shi’ites, who had nothing to do with the attacks on the camps.  

The next day was 5 July. We started early, because we were all desperate to see the camps. Sabra camp was mostly demolished, and had been turned into an Amal stronghold. Therefore the Sabra entrance was not a safe place to get into Shatila camp. The other entrance of Shatila, opposite Akka Hospital on the airport road, was a bit safer, since besides Amal militiamen, there were also official Lebanese Army positions. The Lebanese Army’s presence was part of the ceasefire agreement. But there were still a few Amal checkpoints at which we had to stop. Because of the resistance from the Palestinians within, Amal had failed to overrun the camp, and were limited to controlling the entrance. The siege continued, even though there was a ceasefire.  

The destruction in Shatila camp was appalling. Every single building had been damaged by the attacks. Some had one or more large shell holes. Some had several smaller ones. Some had bullet-riddled walls. Some had all of these. And there were heaps of rubble. Shatila mosque, untouched during the 1982 invasion, was destroyed beyond recognition – even its dome had been blown apart. There was a stench in the air – a mixture of dead bodies and garbage. The wounded and the dead were not allowed to leave the camp, and some of the bodies had to be buried in Shatila mosque. Flies hovered round garbage heaps. There were wounded people everywhere.  

The NORWAC ambulance stopped beside a broken-down building which was to be the site of the Norwegian Clinic. While Synne and another Norwegian nurse were sorting out some structural plans for the clinic, including where to put the door, there being a choice of three large shell holes, my eyes wandered to the other side of the narrow camp road. A little figure emerged from the pile of rubble and garbage. Thin and small, probably no more than ten years old, wearing a white tee-shirt, and black pants. He waved at us, and smiled broadly. I did not remember him from 1982 – but he would only have been about seven then. Today this young ‘man’ was carrying a gun. He sure looked proud of himself and was going about with a strong sense of purpose. A bigger boy then appeared from behind him, also armed, and both of them disappeared in the direction of Shatila mosque. So these were the fighters who defeated Amal. These kids were the new Palestinian resistance fighters which Amal and their mighty tanks were trying to destroy. 

Later that day, we arrived at Bourj el-Brajneh, the largest of all the Beirut camps. The road leading into the camp was partially paved with tar. The entrance was controlled by the Lebanese Sixth Brigade, a Shi’ite Brigade which again was part of the ceasefire agreement. A short way in, there was an Amal militia checkpoint. The road then forked, one path leading into the Lebanese part of the camp, and the other into the Palestinian part of Bourj el-Brajneh.  

Further inside the Palestinian part of the camp, a checkpoint was manned by Palestinians. By this time, I was getting used to the idea of Palestinians carrying arms. After all, why not? Everyone else in Lebanon had arms, so why not the Palestinians? The ugly truth was that, without guns in the camp, a massacre at least as horrific as in 1982 would take place. Further on inside the camp, it was muddy and filled with puddles of sewage water.  

Bourj el-Brajneh was very densely populated. The Palestinian part of the camp, about four square kilometres, contained a population of twenty-five thousand people. Buildings were close to each other, and many of them were two or three floors high. The blocks of houses were separated by narrow alleys, which in most places permitted the comfortable passage of one person, and would let two people by so long as they walked sideways. Open drains, rubble and a maze of water pipes followed the narrow alleys. The peripheral buildings of this camp were just as badly shelled as in Shatila, but as one got deeper into the camp, many of the structures were relatively intact.  

Some way into the camp, next to a shell-damaged building opposite Haifa Hospital, we saw a group of people hovering round a large table. At the sight of new faces, they said to us in English, ‘Welcome, what is your name? Come, look – a small present from our Amal brothers.’ On the table was a display of bits of mortar, shell casings and bomb fragments, all in a large heap. These were samples of things lobbed into the camp by the Amal over the previous forty days. People had withstood the forty days of shelling and blockade, and morale was now very high. Feeling proud and victorious, the camp folks were lively and garrulous.  

Haifa Hospital was partly destroyed, but by now my immediate reaction was to calculate what repairs were necessary to turn the rehabilitation centre into a functioning hospital. I could see that, although a fair amount of work was needed, Haifa Hospital was not beyond repair. There were three floors above ground and two floors underground. The top two floors were full of shell holes, and would need a lot of repair work. The first underground floor was to be converted to an operating theatre, with the casualty ward just across the corridor. The floor beneath that was to stay as a bomb shelter. The hospital staff was cleaning the building, and construction and reconstruction had begun. Our surgical equipment and anaesthetic machine had arrived, and for the rest of the day Alison, the two Johns and myself were busy with stocktaking. There was still nowhere in the hospital for us to sleep, and so we returned to the Mayflower Hotel, tired but satisfied, having spent a good and useful day. 

   

Chapter 19 

The next day, we visited Haifa Hospital again. The place was already looking different. The hospital was full of visitors from the camp. Beds had been put into the first-floor rooms, and they were starting to look like wards. One room had even been cleared and beds put in so that the British medical team could stay there. Palestinian women had brought us clean white sheets and had swept the room clean, and they had brought in tea and drinking water for us. It was ridiculously luxurious compared to the shambles of the camp outside. On the first basement floor, the Accident and Emergency room was packed full of patients, and two Palestinian doctors were already very busy working.  

In the midst of all this bustle, Um Walid arrived. She had come to oversee the construction of the new operating theatre, and to pay the staff and construction workers. She went round the building floor by floor, giving plenty of instructions in Arabic, which, unfortunately, I still could not follow. Then she left for Akka Hospital.  

Building work on the operating theatre began at once. On the basement floor, the builders – all from within the camp – started to knock down a wall to make space for an operating theatre. The din was incredible, and it was all made worse by an unannounced visit by journalists from the Associated Press, eager to cover the story of Haifa Hospital’s opening. The reporter from the Associated Press was a bit surprised at first to find a Chinese woman leading the British medical team, but we got on quite well, and soon she went off to talk to all the team members, and some of the Palestinians as well.  

The staff at Haifa Hospital were just as impressive as the staff at Gaza had been back in 1982, although there were less of them. Nidal, the hospital administrator of Haifa, reminded me in many ways of Azziza, except that she was about ten years older – in her late thirties or early forties. She worked incessantly and selflessly, and earned the respect of everyone. (She was to be killed by a large shell which fell on her home in Bourj el-Brajneh in May 1986. Her funeral was attended by over five thousand people in Beirut, but for many of us Nidal will never die. In our memories, her selfless devotion and courage will live forever.) She was well-loved by all. Hers was no easy job, having to cope not only with the day-to-day running of the hospital, but also with the added problem of opening an Accident and Emergency service.  

She had to cope with the staff as well, and keep them working in harmony. The 1982 invasion and massacre had been followed by fighting in Tripoli in 1983. Medical staff had developed loyalties to different factions of the PLO. It was an eye-opener to see doctors from different factions working together harmoniously in a PRCS hospital. There was much talk of unity among the hospital staff, and three Palestinian doctors from three different factions invited me to take a picture of them standing together, shoulder to shoulder. They understood little English, and I understand even less Arabic, but they wanted the photo taken to tell me that they were united as Palestinians.  

Dr Reda was the medical director of the hospital – young, enthusiastic, competent, hardworking and entirely devoted to his people. He was always in five places at once, as active and dynamic as Dr Rio Spirugi, but with none of Rio’s quick temper. Along with Reda, Haifa had five other young Palestinian doctors, and between them, they ran the casualty department, the out-patient clinics and the wards. I could see that they would become inundated with work once Haifa Hospital became fully functional. The camp population was swelling to nearly thirty thousand now with the influx of returning refugees.  

By midday, when most of the patients had been treated and had gone home, the hospital staff sat down to lunch together. It was nearly three years since I had first eaten camp food, and I really loved it. When I was back in London, I had unsuccessfully spent many hours experimenting on foods, trying to cook them the way the Gaza Hospital cook did them. Camp food was something very special to me. The camp people had the ability to make any food delicious, even ordinary legumes and beans.  

More precious to me than the camp food itself was the way everyone in the PRCS hospitals gathered together to share food, director and cleaner alike. It was so different from some NHS hospitals in Britain, where people were allocated eating places according to their social status and occupation. In one of the London hospitals I had worked in, there were at least six different dining rooms – one for hospital consultants and senior administrators, one for junior doctors, one for technicians, one for nurses, one for manual workers and one for members of the public! 

During lunch in Haifa Hospital, we exchanged information and greetings from friends. I found out that the professor of surgery from Gaza Hospital, many of my favourite nurses and many other colleagues from Gaza Hospital were still alive, some not very well, but alive. In the 

Middle East, people greeted each other with the greeting: ‘AlHamdullelah!’, which meant ‘Praise be to God!’ Sometimes, a person could literally be on his death bed, and it was still ‘AlHamdullelah!’ Life itself was a gift, and a blessing from God. We could be sitting on a pile of garbage, but the fact that we were alive and with each other was a reason to praise God. Abu Ali, the theatre superintendent of Gaza Hospital, was still working, and he was going to come to Haifa Hospital the following day to help set up the operating theatre. I rejoiced to hear that he was alive, and eagerly looked forward to seeing him the next day.  

The afternoon was devoted to more stocktaking and organising. There was a fair bit of chaos, since pieces of equipment salvaged from Gaza Hospital before it was burnt out had all been thrown together. Orthopaedic sets had stainless steel and vitallium screws all mixed up. The anaesthetic machine from Gaza Hospital had bits missing, and it was difficult to find spare parts in the post-siege confusion.  

The next morning I went to the Mayflower Hotel to give an interview to Visnews, a television network. This was a hilarious experience, as the interviewer did not understand English, I could not understand French – and there was no translator. The interviewer spoke a sentence or so, which I presumed to be a question, and I answered for as long as I liked on what I guessed he might have asked me. It turned out well, as I said what I wanted to say, which really amounted to two points.  

Firstly, the British public had contributed their savings and efforts to help Haifa Hospital get established, because they wanted to support a health institution which treated all people in need. Through my years of association with the PRCS, I knew that it always operated under that philosophy, treating friends and enemies alike, without asking for payment, and hence I had no hesitation supporting them. Secondly, I was in Beirut during the difficult times of 1982, but I had seen then the best in humanity displayed by the Lebanese and Palestinians, working together to resist the Israeli onslaught and providing assistance to war victims. There was a fantastic unity between the Lebanese and Palestinians, in Beirut and South Lebanon. Why had all that fallen apart in 1985? 

Last night, there were at least four battles going on simultaneously in Beirut – the Amal fought the Palestinians in Bourj el-Brajneh over some checkpoint problems; the Druse and the Amal were fighting in the streets of Hamra; while the Christians and Muslims were shooting at each other across the Green Line; and trails of missiles projected their tracks from various mountain positions. While the Lebanese fought among themselves and against the Palestinians, all was quiet in the southern border area, where the Israelis still occupied Lebanese soil.  

Perhaps since people were not in a position to take on the Israelis, I said, they had resorted to getting at each other – what the locals called ‘brotherly fighting’. I was sure the French reporter did not understand what I said, but he seemed delighted with the interview, and offered to drive me back to Bourj el-Brajneh camp. He drove like most Lebanese, and must have stayed in Lebanon for a long time to acquire the art of driving that way. He was fast, reckless and impatient, but his manner was entirely civil and charming.  

When I arrived back at Haifa Hospital, I found that Dr Reda had already organised a whole convoy of orthopaedic patients to see me. Most of the wounded were now young, unlike in 1982, and had sustained their injuries defending the camp. They were mostly young men and boys, and some young women. The most common orthopaedic injuries were caused by high-velocity gunshot wounds, in other words, injuries from M16 rifle bullets. Compound fractures with damage to nerves and blood vessels were the rule when a limb was hit by an M16 bullet. Most of those with isolated limb injuries would have had their limb amputated by the time they got to see me. As the artificial limb centre in Akka Hospital had been put out of action by the attacks, the hundred and sixty-seven amputees from all three Beirut camps had to wait indefinitely till something was sorted out. The real difficulty was to get these wounded out of the camps. Most of them had fought to defend the camps, and were therefore wanted by the Amal militia, who still controlled the checkpoints and most of West Beirut.  

At the beginning of the camp war, the International Red Cross had negotiated for a group of people to leave the camp for further medical treatment. They were captured as soon as they left the camp. Some of them were shot while they were being treated in Lebanese hospitals elsewhere in Beirut. For most of the wounded, the real hope was to have hospitals built inside the camps, so they could be treated without having to risk being abducted outside the camp. For the wounded in Bourj el-Brajneh, the setting up of Haifa Hospital was their hope of getting surgical attention.  

The construction of the hospital was proceeding with gusto. I laughed and said to Dr Reda, ‘At this rate the operating theatre will probably be complete within a week or less. In London, we’d probably only manage to draw up the plans in the same amount of time.’  

‘Ah, but this is PRCS construction, you see,’ said Dr Reda seriously. ‘We’ve had lots of experience building and rebuilding structures over the years.’  

I had not forgotten how Gaza Hospital and Akka Hospital had been destroyed and restored so often in the space of a few months in 1982. The Palestinians had learnt to put together houses and buildings as fast as bombs and shells could demolish them. This was an experience acquired over the years.  

Around lunchtime, Abu Au turned up. I cannot describe how I felt on meeting this old friend: he had not changed one bit over the three years. He had just come from Akka Hospital, and had brought us some ‘goodies’. From his two polythene carrier bags, he poured out a set of surgical instruments for major abdominal surgery, and then of all things a set of microsurgical instruments.  

‘Where on earth did you get that from?’ I asked, completely amazed.  

‘From Gaza,’ he said. ‘They stole it at first, but now it is unstolen.’ God alone knew how he had managed to ‘unsteal’ those instruments! He laid them out on a table, and started going through them: counting them out and looking at each pair of forceps, each needle holder and each retractor – most of the paired retractors had one of the partners missing by now – as though they were long-lost friends.  

When he had finished packing all the instruments, I said, ‘Come and see something – something very special.’ I took him to the surgical storeroom which was now quite full of instruments and equipment from London. The theatre superintendent’s delighted reaction to those instruments made all our efforts getting them out entirely worthwhile.  

That afternoon, Abu All was busy fixing plugs to the plaster saw, labelling instruments and organising surgical packs. Later on he brought in Nuha, a very competent and soft-spoken Palestinian theatre nurse who had graduated from the PRCS Nursing School in Lebanon. Nuha immediately set about organising the hospital staff to make dressings, surgical bandages and laparotomy packs. Since I was relatively free, Nuha gave me a needle and some white thread, and showed me how to sew an abdominal pack. I had been a surgeon for ten years, and this was the first time I had seen abdominal packs sewn by hand. The hospital sewing machines had been looted by the people who attacked the camps. (When I went back to Britain, I told the nurses of Dryburn Hospital about these ‘hand-sewn abdominal packs’, and they chipped in to buy a sewing machine for the Haifa Hospital.) 

   

Chapter 20 

The next morning, a car from the British Consul in West Beirut arrived to take us to the Consulate to await the arrival of Sir David Miers, the British Ambassador, who was crossing from East to West Beirut to see us. The Consulate was situated near the coast, away from the camps.  

It was a typical hot, sunny, Mediterranean morning. We drove through heavy traffic along crowded streets lined by shops and roadside stalls. In 1982, this half of the city had been full of bombed-out buildings, and the beaches, along with the coast-road, had been fully mined. I was glad to see that it had returned to some kind of ‘normality’. However, the normality was only superficial. There were no longer air raids or shelling, but the security situation was far from satisfactory. There was no shortage of sectarian fighting, kidnappings and the violent settling of old scores.  

The Consulate was a neat building which was heavily guarded by soldiers of the Lebanese Army. We were greeted cordially, after our papers had been checked. Then Sir David telephoned: he had tried to cross the Green Line that morning, but the crossing was closed. According to staff at the Consulate, that was Sir David’s sixth attempt to cross from East to West Beirut in the past few days. Disappointed, we left the British Consulate to return to Bourj el-Brajneh. 

We arrived at Haifa Hospital around 11 AM. Alison went to work in the dressing clinic at once. John, the anaesthetic technician, carried on the nightmare task of sorting out the anaesthetic machine rescued from Gaza Hospital, while the other John and I called at the emergency room, only to find ourselves mobbed by a large gathering of kids who had come forward to ask for pieces of shrapnel to be removed from all over their bodies. The average person in the camp might easily have twenty to thirty pieces of bomb or shell shrapnel lodged in his or her body. If they were small, these were usually best left alone, unless they happened to irritate a nerve or became septic. The larger flying shrapnel caused by an exploding bomb or shell would often amputate a limb or cause a severe internal injury. With the return of relative calm, kids loved to get their shrapnel taken out so that they could compare the metal ‘souvenirs’ from their bodies. I could see that John Thorndike enjoyed this sort of surgery.  ‘There really is a case for starting a proper shrapnel clinic,’ he kept urging me. I knew we could not do this, however, because the operating theatre was nearly ready, and as soon as it was properly established, we would be doing other work.  

Ben Alofs had meanwhile gone off to look at a proposed clinic right at the other end of the camp. It was formerly a school for Palestinian kids, but the Ramadan attacks had reduced the building to a pathetic structure with large holes in the walls and roof, and a crumbling floor. The PRCS hoped to convert it into a clinic to serve the needs of the people living at the far end of the camp, so that the outpatient load of Haifa Hospital could be eased. Besides his normal clinical duties in Haifa Hospital, Ben had also been assigned the job of painterdecorator, to work hand-in-hand with the camp construction team.  

That evening, Alison and myself were going to take our turn sleeping in the hospital, and let the two Johns return to Mayflower for a wash and change of clothing. In the late afternoon, we took a walk around the camp. It was only then that I realised how badly destroyed Bourj el-Brajneh camp was. Although the topmost floors of Haifa Hospital had been blown apart, that was nothing compared to what had happened to people’s homes. Bits of roofs, walls and windows had been blown off by explosives and were lying on the floors of ruined houses. Wooden fencing and furniture were burnt black. There was a mass grave where eighty unidentified mutilated bodies were buried. Buildings were crumbling under the strain of the shell craters. From the scale of the destruction, the attacks must have been vicious.  

Suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by a group of young men and boys. ‘Hello, what is your name?’ they asked. ‘What are you doing here?’  

We explained that we were medical volunteers from Britain working in Haifa Hospital. They were absolutely delighted to discover that people from the rest of the world knew about what was happening to the Palestinians, and volunteered to show us around the rest of the camp. One of the older boys, who wore a wrist splint for his injured hand, explained that he was a medical student from the American University of Beirut, but had not been back to college since the Israeli invasion. He would dearly have loved to continue his medical education but, being young and able-bodied, he believed it more important to stay in the camp to defend his people against attacks and massacres. It was a sacrifice he had chosen to make. He would not leave Bourj el-Brajneh camp, even if he was offered a place in college again, until he was assured his folks would be left in peace.  

He showed us all the destruction and then turned round and asked, ‘Why do people hate us Palestinians? Why do they want to destroy us like this?’ I had no answer.  

I tried to comfort him by comparing the resistance in the camps with the legendary battle of Karameh. The word ‘karameh’ meant ‘dignity’ in Arabic. Karameh was a Palestinian refugee camp near Jericho, where in 1968 four hundred and fifty Palestinians fought the ten-thousand strong invading Israeli troops, and drove their invading tanks away. The Israeli military responded later by sending in their air force and bombing Karameh out of existence. But the Palestinian resistance was spawned and grew from there. The crowd was overjoyed to hear a foreigner talk about Karameh, to be reminded that there were those of us from the rest of the world who had studied and been inspired by the struggle of the Palestinian people.  

We parted company on a triumphant note: these youngsters told me they would make Bourj el-Brajneh camp a fortress and would defend it to the last against any attacker.  That evening, back in the volunteers’ room, for the first time in months – perhaps years – I felt confident and joyful. I got myself organised, and started to write a long letter to my husband in London. No sooner had I started, then I heard someone push open the door very quietly and come into our room. It was a young man in military uniform. He was very embarrassed at first to find Alison and myself, instead of John and Ben. Apparently, he was a member of the ‘Ben Alofs fan club’, which was growing daily. The camp people just adored Ben, but local culture was such that only the boys could visit him, and they frequently sought him out. I thought this young man wanted to listen to Ben’s radio. After a little fidgeting, our friend settled down and accepted a seat. He was very young and small, probably five foot two inches or less. His face was boyish, with light brown, frizzy and curly hair.  

Then Ben came into the room, and looked surprised and delighted. ‘Hey,’ he exclaimed, ‘you didn’t say you were a Fedayeen! Wow!’ Ben beamed all over his face with a big broad smile. Ben’s young friend was in full military uniform – green with brown patches, boots that were covered with camp mud. Slung over his shoulder was an old, rusty Kalashnikov. On seeing Ben, he looked relieved and spat out a mouthful of sunflower seeds so that he could speak.  

He pointed to himself and said, ‘I Makmoud.’ Then he said, ‘Amal very, very bad. Palestinians very, very good.’ At this point, his reserves of English must have come to an end, for he turned to Ben and started talking in Arabic. We learnt that Makmoud was sixteen, that he was Lebanese and Shi’ite, but had been a Palestinian fighter since a young age. His family came from south Lebanon, and his home was destroyed by the Israelis. They fled to Bourj el-Brajneh camp. He considered himself a Palestinian, and would always want to be with the Palestinians. His mother felt the same too, and when his two older brothers joined Amal, little Makmoud and his mother chose to remain with the Palestinians in Bourj elBrajneh.  

  

Paying homage at the graves of those killed trying to get food to the starving people of Bourj el-Brajneh during the 1986-87 siege. 

He told Ben his mother was sniped at and wounded five days before, while trying to go out to get food for the camp. He saw the International Red Cross take his mother away in an ambulance, but was unable to follow her as he would certainly have been killed by the Amal once he was spotted by them. There had been no news about her, and he was very worried. Could Alison and I help him to locate his mother, who was probably taken to the Lebanese Makassad Hospital?  

There was one little catch. For security reasons, he would not give us his family name. All we had to go on was that his eldest brother was Ahmed, and so his mother would be Um Ahmed (Um meant ‘mother of’). He would bring us a picture of her in the morning, and would be grateful if we found out she was still alive. We agreed to do this for him. He immediately relaxed, and started talking and joking with Ben. Suddenly, he decided to impress us with his military prowess. He took off his shirt and showed us all the scars on his chest and arms, pointing to each one, saying, ‘Look, here M16 bullet. Here, here and here as well. All M16 by Amal. But no problem, I am not afraid.’  

I looked into the face of this Lebanese teenager, and suddenly it was transformed into that of a heroic freedom fighter.  

The following day saw Alison and myself doing a floor- by-floor enquiry in the Makassad Hospital, waving the small photograph of Um Ahmed and asking if anyone had seen this lady. Ahmed was a very common name in Lebanon, as common as John in Britain. No one in London would dream of going from ward to ward, department to department in St Thomas’s Hospital, or any large hospital for that matter, asking if anyone had seen John’s mother. The fact that she had been shot five days ago was no help, as loads of people got shot each day in Beirut. Mentioning that she was from Bourj el-Brajneh camp immediately caused people to lose interest. Who in Makassad Hospital bothered to remember a wounded Palestinian woman? In the end, they were so dismissive I decided to bluff them.  

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘this woman might come from a Palestinian refugee camp, but she is Lebanese and has two sons who are Amal fighters, and her family is looking for her.’ At the mention of Amal, the charge nurse of the casualty department perked up, took a long look at her photograph and looked back at his patients’ record book. The Makassad had received and treated this woman six days before, he now told me, but her injuries had not required hospitalisation, and the International Red Cross had transferred her to a Druse hospital to recuperate. The Druse Progressive Socialist Party was sympathetic to the Palestinians, allowed them to use their hospitals and also allowed camp refugees to shelter in their areas.  

Beirut and indeed all of Lebanon were carved up into areas under the control of different political parties and militias. So when the Druse accepted Palestinian refugees into their areas, it gave the refugees some security against hostile militia groups. But it still meant that if the refugees accidentally wandered out of Druse-controlled areas, they ran the risk of being captured by other groups. Um Ahmed was safe for now, at any rate. We went back to report the good news to Makmoud, and return his mother’s photograph to him.  

On our way there, I thought once more of the Palestinians describing the Amal as their brothers, and thought how the camp war was especially painful for the Palestinians because when the Amal attacked them, it was like being attacked by one’s own family. And when I looked at Makmoud’s family, I saw the truth in this. The sons of this Shi’ite family were split into friends and enemies of the Palestinians, and the matriarch was wounded trying to help her Palestinian friends. The Palestinians could ask for no better friends.  

  

Bits of the four hundred shells which his 

Shatila in the course of one night in the 1985 Ramadan war. 

The next few days were hectic days of rushing around between Shatila camp, Akka Hospital and Haifa Hospital. The PRCS was also trying to upgrade the medical services within Shatila camp so that if there was a new siege, the camp would be medically self-sufficient. In the past, the PRCS hospitals had usually been located at the edge of the camps, so that the PRCS could open its medical services to both the Lebanese public and the Palestinians. However, the recent Ramadan war had forced the PRCS to review its policies, as hospitals outside the camp could not look after the wounded trapped by a siege. Moreover hospitals outside the camps were vulnerable to attacks by various militia groups, and Palestinian employees were easily captured. The recent attacks on the camps proved to the Palestinian population that they were able to defend themselves. If there were adequate medical facilities during the siege, there need not be so many deaths.  

Soon the NORWAC clinic in Shatila camp started to function. My Norwegian colleagues had asked me to do two orthopaedic clinics a week in Shatila camp. The NORWAC clinic supplemented the PRCS clinic in Shatila camp. The PRCS doctors and nurses in this clinic fought very hard to save lives during the siege, although there were then no facilities for treating battle casualties. It was hoped that the PRCS clinic could now turn over part of its workload to the NORWAC clinic, while it underwent structural changes to convert it into a hospital.  

Much of my time was now dominated by administrative work, which included running around with my NORWAC colleague Synne trying to organise theatre equipment and instruments, and fixing up meetings. The British medical team was hard-working and dedicated, and overcame the initial problem of adjusting to the situation. For Alison and the two Johns, it was their first trip to Lebanon, and I had nothing but admiration for the way they coped. Administrative responsibilities on top of the usual clinical work made it harder for me to take time off for my cherished walks in the camps, as I did in 1982. But the people of Shatila camp I could see and feel, even through the walls of my clinic room, through the muddle of various bits of invoices. I did not need to speak to them to hear their message; did not need to look at them to understand their unconquerable spirit. I plodded on with my routine, assessing the war-wounded and writing up detailed plans for their proposed management. There were no facilities to treat any complicated injury yet, so one would write reports and recommendations as a substitute, and this helped most patients psychologically; they despaired less, but got impatient with waiting instead. This was probably just as difficult for the medical staff to cope with.  

One hot midday, I arrived at Shatila to see orthopaedic patients in the NORWAC clinic after having done my round in Haifa Hospital. It was weird – the clinic was locked and there was no one in the main camp alley; all the homes were empty too. Then a little girl came along and told me that everyone had gone to Shatila mosque. It was the forty-day ceremony for the fifty Palestinian martyrs who died during the camp war. Tripping over bits of rubble and concrete, I arrived at the ruins of Shatila mosque.  

I stood there stunned: before me was a large crowd of Palestinians – men, women, children; young and old. Countless Palestinian flags were waving. Large pictures of martyrs were carried on poles and waved about. Drums were beating. Palestinian music sounded out. People were dancing and chanting militant slogans. I felt tears streaming down my face. I was crying because there was nothing but ruin and rubble all round, and so many had died, but yet today’s memorial was not a memorial of sorrow, but one of hope and triumph. How could these Palestinians celebrate so triumphantly, I asked myself. Then I realised that only a vision of victory could remove the pain of death, destruction and separation. Today, there was this spirit of victory – in the midst of the broken walls and the rubble of Shatila camp, in the battered old mosque. This glorious sight – of victory, of jubilation, of confidence despite insurmountable difficulties – was something I will always cherish, and want to share with suffering people all over the world.  

Shatila camp had been severely battered. For forty days and forty nights, shells and missiles poured down on this crowded camp of thirty-six thousand square metres. But Shatila had stood firm, and produced her martyrs. Today, the camp people were proud and victorious. They recalled how on one day alone, six hundred bombs, shells and rocket missiles had rained down on their homes, but they did not surrender. They recalled how, on another day, they ran out of ammunition; they put up a brave front and fired blanks, simulated explosive noises to create the illusion of return fire.  

Rather than surrender, four Palestinian girls crossed the checkpoints in disguise and brought back thirty-five thousand rounds of ammunition – and the camp folks fought on. Today, Shatila did not weep over the mass graves of the 1982 massacres, but honoured the memories of those who had given their lives defending their homes.  

After the memorial, I went back to the clinic, where I met Hannah, a nurse from Gaza Hospital I had worked with in 1982. She had got thinner, and her eyes were more melancholy. It was nearly three years, but I still could remember her in the accident room of Gaza Hospital; the expression of panic on her face when she discovered that the nitrous oxide cylinders were wrongly labelled as oxygen. She had stayed in Beirut even after the 1982 massacre for as long as she could, till she was arrested. Upon her release, she had gone abroad.  

She had now left her studies in Belgium because of the attacks on the camps, and despite the risks she had returned. As I embraced the sobbing girl, I could feel how thin she was. ‘Hannah, please, please be strong,’ I said to her. That would usually pull people together.  

But she dried her tears, looked up at me, and said, ‘I try, but for how long?’ I knew the answer, but decided it would be patronising for me to say too much. Fortunately a large crowd of patients had gathered around the clinic, and she immediately shook off her sorrow, and started to carry out her nursing duties.  

Much later that day, when all the patients were gone, I asked Hannah about her close friend, Nahla. I found out that Nahla was wounded, and in hiding.  

‘She was forty days and forty nights fighting, fighting,’ said Hannah. ‘Then the camp had no bullets, and the four women went out to buy bullets. She was one of them. They tied the bullets round their bodies to pass the Amal to get back into the camp. Later the Amal found out, and were very, very angry. They want to kill her. You cannot pass by Nahla’s place, because the Amal will follow you, and kill her.’  

That was insane: Nahla was training to be a nurse in Gaza Hospital. Now she had earned herself a death warrant just by defending her people. Tall, fair and graceful, Nahla was easily one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. The thought of her fighting so bravely filled me with pride. But the realisation that she was wounded and had been hounded all over Beirut by Amal killers angered me. I would not dream of wanting to meet her; just the thought that I was her friend was a great honour. 

The next day, Nahla’s mother called in and asked to see me. Her daughter sent her love and a gift: a cloth tablemat on which was hand-printed the Palestine flag, and the rising sun. Nahla had asked her mother to give that to me. It was from her reading table, and her mother said that Nahla hoped that each time I looked at the colours of the Palestine flag, I would remember her. Then it suddenly occurred to Nahla’s mother that she had not brought me a gift herself. She quickly rummaged through her cane basket, and found a fork and spoon to give me. I gave her a big hug, returned the fork and spoon, and kissed her many times. I now know where Nahla got her generosity and sense of self-sacrifice. 

   

Chapter 21  

The following day, I went to Hamra – the shopping area in West Beirut – and bought a bunch of flowers, intending to place them at the martyrs’ graves in Shatila mosque. But I managed to lose the flowers between Hamra and the mosque. All the same, I went into the mosque to pay my respects. That was the first time I had been inside the ruins of Shatila mosque. As I entered through the door, I noticed how clean and beautiful the inside was. The fifty martyrs were buried in the main hall of the mosque. There were flowers everywhere. Instead of tombstones, photographs and Palestine flags marked the resting spot of each martyr. A quick look at the pictures revealed that all of them were very young. Not only were they young, but many of them were women – women who in the rest of the world would be planning a career, a husband and a family. Beautiful, smiling young people, who had given up their precious youth, their precious life for their people, their country, without reservation.  

  

The forty-day commemoration of fifty martyrs who died defending Shatila in 1985. 

The patients of Shatila were a spirited lot. I often marvelled at their insight into their own condition, the way they knew exactly where each bullet or piece of shrapnel had gone through their body, and which vital structures had been destroyed. More than that, I admired their patience with me. 

Nearly all of them knew that there was no way I could carry out any major operations on them, given the lack of surgical facilities; yet they would keep their appointments to see me, and discuss their conditions with me.  

The Belgian volunteer doctor who worked for NORWAC used to laugh at the way I allowed my Specialist Orthopaedic Clinic to deteriorate into one big social club. I found that letting a dozen patients sit together, listening to each other talk about their injuries, and learning to bandage each other’s wounds and exercise each other’s paralysed limbs, was a great morale booster, and helped to offset any despondency created by the lack of treatment facilities. Soon it reached the stage where patients were removing each other’s plaster-cast before seeing me, bringing along voltage transformers so that the British plaster saw could use the electricity from the camp generator. I had no doubt that, given time, this lot would make excellent orthopaedic technicians, though I had reservations about what the British Orthopaedic Association would think of my unconventional and substandard clinic. But substandard or not, we did manage to function.  

One day I had to remove a bullet from a young 

Palestinian’s hand, which the bullet prevented from closing. It was lodged in the third metacarpal bone. There was no anaesthetic, and I had to operate without gloves, surgical mask or hat, and with a nurse holding a torch.  

Before I started, I warned him, ‘This is going to hurt – we have run out of anaesthetics.’  

He answered in a matter-of-fact way, ‘Doctora, you have forgotten I am a Palestinian.’ What could I say to a patient like that? The operation was done without even a local anaesthetic.  

After that operation, I began to do more and more operations with or without local anaesthetics in people’s homes, on couches in sitting-rooms, or in the kitchen. One of the Palestinian nurses would come with me, and we carried with us a bottle of antiseptic, dressings, a scalpel with blades, sutures, a needle holder, dissecting forceps, and other items to perform minor surgery while visiting people in their partially destroyed homes. It was amazing how soon I learnt to manage with the barest of surgical facilities. But anything serious would have to wait till Shatila had a proper hospital.  

Meanwhile the bomb shelter of Shatila camp was undergoing major renovations. It was being transformed into an operating suite, with theatres, resuscitation cubicles and recovery facilities. It would be annexed to the PRCS clinic, and together they would form the future Shatila Hospital. The camp people wanted to be ready and prepared the next time Amal attacked. John Thorndike, with his extensive experience in Accident and Emergency work, was diverted from Haifa Hospital to Shatila camp to help set up the place.  

  

Swee in Shatila Hospital. On the shelf behind her are the remains of some of the 248 shells which hit the hospital over a six-month period 

One afternoon I decided it was about time I visited Sabra camp, or what was left of it, and Gaza Hospital. I chose to walk back up the same road we had been forced to go down on the morning of 18 September 1982. I wished the rest of that team were with me to retrace our steps, so that the camp people could see that we had returned.  

The pick-up or ‘service’ taxi dropped me at Akka 

Hospital, and after crossing the road, I was at the southern end of Shatila camp, at the beginning of Rue Sabra. The road was punctuated with checkpoints all within a stone’s throw of each other. As I started to walk down the road, a voice cried out, ‘The doctor who went to the Israeli Commission!’  

People started yelling across the street to catch my attention, much to the bewilderment of the soldiers at the checkpoints. It was one big reunion. Oblivious of the bulldozers and the hostile gunmen, we embraced each other and exchanged greetings. The widows came out of their destroyed shelters, the orphans came out, the old men came out, and we were all overjoyed. Then the children lined themselves up once again in front of their bombed-out homes, raised their hands to make a victory sign, and demanded that their pictures be taken, just like the children in 1982. This time the victory sign was made with more resolve and defiance. The smiles were even broader – and the quality of the picture was better as my photographic skills had somewhat improved. I was invited into the camp people’s homes, given coffee and cold drinks, while the rest of the camp folks came up to say hello.  

Outside on Rue Sabra the bulldozers were working with a vengeance, destroying homes, churning up dust, rubble, bits of sewage and water pipes and electrical cables. The camp people told me that the bulldozers had come from Syria. The Syrians were apparently obsessed with the idea that Sabra, Shatila and Bourj el-Brajneh camps were connected by a system of underground tunnels. Since the Palestinians had always denied this allegation, the Syrians had threatened to bulldoze the camps flat to find them.  

Forty Syrian bulldozers and five hundred Syrian construction technicians and engineers were in Beirut: their declared intention was to help rebuild the camps, but the camp people were dubious about this. And the tunnels? It was obvious that so far they had not uncovered them. They had only found sewage systems, water pipes, broken-down homes, heaps of rubble, and of course, a very defiant Palestinian population. Camp women and children would organise themselves to obstruct the bulldozers and try to stop them taking away the last brick and stone of what were once their homes. But as I watched the mess created by clean water and sewage welling up out of burst pipes and flooding the camp roads, I could not help but resent this insane treatment meted out to a people who had committed no wrong. They had just asked for what was every human being’s birthright, a homeland.  

An intended ten minutes’ walk from Akka Hospital to Gaza Hospital took me two hours, stopping at various homes to greet people. Finally, I set eyes on Gaza Hospital. For the first time, Gaza Hospital did not look like a hospital at all. It looked like a battered fortress. The walls still had soot on them, and the window glasses had been smashed on every single floor. The main door was locked, and the building was guarded by soldiers. The soldiers told me to go away. As I turned to leave, an old friend appeared, and I recognised him instantly as one of the administrative staff of Gaza Hospital. He must have made a convincing case to the soldiers, for they let me into the hospital.  

  

Gaza Hospital, which was burnt out on the first day of the Ramadan war, 1985. 

This floor by floor tour of Gaza Hospital was one of the most upsetting experiences I had ever had, and I was grateful that Azziza and Hadla were not around to see the mess. Floor by floor, glass windows and doors were smashed to tiny bits, mattresses and pillows were ripped apart, wires and electric cables were pulled out and left loose on the floors. All the portable hospital equipment was gone. Things that were heavy and non-portable or of low resale value were smashed up. The walls were covered with thick soot and the floors were heaped with ashes. The soot and ashes got worse higher up.  

On the sixth, seventh and eighth floors, I felt as though I was inside a large kiln that had not been emptied for years. The ninth and tenth floors had large holes punched through their walls – I was told these holes were made and used by the invading gunmen to shoot into the camps. I looked out through one of these holes, and saw that Sabra camp had been entirely flattened. On the floor, I picked up bits of bullets from M16 rifles. Also left behind were empty ammunition boxes, labelled ‘Made in USA’. The attackers of the camps in the 1985 Ramadan war carried American arms.  

My initial anger passed, and I felt freezing – cold with tension.  

‘Doctora, never mind,’ said my Palestinian friend. ‘We will prepare this hospital again. We will wash the walls, bring in medicines and open this hospital again.’ I knew from the tone of his voice that he meant every word he said. I had also heard these words and seen them put into action at least twice before, in August 1982, after the siege of Beirut, and in September 1982, after the massacres. I often wondered where these people got their strength from.  

It was getting late, and I had to leave before it became unsafe to get across the checkpoints. ‘Swee, please, please. My mother wants you to come up for coffee.’ I turned round and looked. It was a young woman. I thought I recognised the face. Of course, it was Mona, Huda’s big sister. She had grown so much. She was much taller and prettier now, but still recognisably Mona. It had been three years since I last saw her and Huda, and I loved being with their family.  

I looked up at the tall block of flats opposite Gaza Hospital, and there on the seventh floor was a Palestinian lady standing on the balcony waving at me. She was wearing a white scarf round her hair. It had been nearly three years since I last visited them. I was so glad to see that their home was still standing. Mona and I ran up the flights of stairs, as the lifts were not working due to power cuts. Most of the flats in this block were deserted, as Palestinian families had fled from the attacks. But there were a good many Lebanese Shi’ite families living in the same block – it was their presence which prevented the entire block from being demolished. We reached the seventh floor, almost collapsing from lack of breath. The door was opened wide – and there to welcome me with warm kisses and an embrace was Mona’s mother.  

The flat was still like it was in 1982 – clean, tidy and well kept. But most of the nicer furnishings were gone, including the beautiful Palestinian embroidery done by Mona’s mother. I could not bring myself to ask about the details of what happened. Mona’s mother brought us Arabic coffee, and then sat down on a chair, looked at me, smiled again and again, and started to say verses of thanksgiving to Allah. I was made to sit on a large armchair. I supposed this was too big to be carted away by looters.  

I remembered Mona’s place as crowded. In 1982, father, mother, two daughters, four sons and two daughters-in-law all stayed in this three-room flat. Even then, it was spacious by refugee camp standards. Today, it looked ridiculously empty – empty of furnishings, and of people. There were only Mona and her parents. The rest were all missing.  

This family had suffered much and given its fair share of martyrs. The two older boys were taken away to the notorious Ansar prison camp by the Israelis in 1982, and had not been heard of since. Initially, the family waited anxiously for their return; but as the days passed into months, and the months became years, they had come to terms with the realisation that the boys would probably never be seen again. It was difficult to have family members disappear. Families who knew that their loved ones were dead grieved, and thus learnt to accept the fact that they were dead. They buried them, and visited the graves, and prayed for their souls. But families would always wonder where the ‘disappeared’ were, and if they were alive. Supposing they were alive, the families would wonder if they were being tortured and suffering; and if they were dead, they would wonder where their bodies were. There would always be a question mark.  

The third son was captured by the Amal on the first day of the camp war in 1985. He was lined up against a wall along with many others to be executed. Probably God was feeling kind, and heard the prayers of his mother. Some non-Amal Shi’ites intervened on his behalf, and pleaded for his release. He was taken to the Beka’a valley instead, and the family received news that he was alive. Mona took out her family album, and showed me their treasured family photographs. Happy pictures of her elder brothers’ weddings, and of her brother who was now in Beka’a. There were also pictures of Huda and Hisham who were now, together with Milad, living in Cyprus with Paul Morris and attending school there. In the very end pages of the album were precious pictures which had turned yellow with time, pictures of her parents when they were young and happy in Palestine. Then her mother, who hitherto had only been sitting quietly, and giving me kind and fond smiles, suddenly spoke.  

Mona said, ‘My mother wants to know why you came 

back to Beirut – what you like about Beirut?’  

There was only one truthful answer. I had not dared give it since arriving back in Beirut. But this time I needed to tell the truth. I said, ‘I came back to see the Palestinians…’ and then could not say any more.  

‘My mother says we love you more than all our Arab brothers.’  

I always knew that: I only wished I were stronger, and able to be of more support to those who were suffering and struggling.  

As I got up to go, Mona’s mother stood up too, and took down a little basket. This she had woven by hand from telephone wires, and it was in the colours of the Palestine flag. There was nothing else of value in their home that she could give me. Everything else of any beauty or worth had been carried away by the soldiers when they came for her son. Though I really should not have accepted a gift from her, there was so much in this little item that I just had to hold it close to my heart. The national colours of Palestine woven with steel wires – that was the message this surviving family of Sabra camp wanted me to take home. It was painful to say goodbye to them. I had a premonition that we would not see each other again, at least not for a long, long time. 

  

Part of the mechanised effort to flatten Sabra nad Shatila, 1985. 

 

   

Chapter 22  

In contrast to Gaza Hospital, Akka had miraculously survived physical destruction. The land on which Akka Hospital was built belonged to a Lebanese Shi’ite, Sheikh Cabalan. His influence had prevented Akka Hospital from being attacked and destroyed by the Amal militiamen who wreaked havoc on Gaza. Therefore the British medical team had the good fortune to see an intact building. Akka Hospital, which I had first seen after it had been reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs in 1982, had now been fully rebuilt. A beautiful building with white floors, three storeys above ground and two underground 

– it was complete with wards, biochemical and haematological laboratories, an X-ray department with imaging facilities, research rooms and libraries, wards, surgical operating theatres and a training school for the nurses run by the PRCS. However, Akka was unable to function as a hospital after the camp wars, because much of its space had been converted into a temporary refugee centre.  

Moreover, hostile militiamen had cut off the hospital’s water supply. It was in Akka Hospital, in the midst of the dislocation and the chaos, that I found a few old friends from 1982 – the staff of Gaza Hospital who had survived the attack, nurses as well as doctors, and old Professor Arnaouti, who was remembered by most of us as ‘Socrates’. 

The professor’s grey hair had turned pure white now, but mentally he was still very alert. I sat down beside him and we talked about Palestine, about Jerusalem. He asked me if I sincerely believed that the Palestinians would really be able to return to Palestine, one day.  I said, ‘Definitely, but I’m not sure whether you and I will be alive to see that day.’  

My answer made him very happy: he was gladdened by my confidence. While I was talking to the old professor, someone came up and told me that Um Walid wanted to see me. I found Um Walid in her office talking to about twentyfour people on different things at the same time. After she had dealt with everyone else and they had left, she turned to Synne and myself. Um Walid wanted to see us to discuss the possibility of setting up some sort of operating theatre in Ain al-Helweh camp in Saida, south Lebanon.  

Things in Ain al-Helweh camp were very tense, with the camp people living in daily fear of an attack and siege. The camp’s seventy thousand Palestinians had no Accident and Emergency, or theatre facilities. If the camp was besieged and pounded with missiles, wounded people would have nowhere to go to, and many would die. The PRCS and the camp committee had already made plans to convert a cave into a hospital. All Um Walid wanted us to do was to transport things to Ain al-Helweh, since our chances of being kidnapped and killed at the various checkpoints would be infinitely less than those of any Palestinian.  

So, once the ambulance was loaded up with chest drains, catheters, surgical instruments, a portable anaesthetic machine, operating lights, a plaster saw, blood transfusion bags and a dismantled treatment table, Synne and I headed south for Saida. The last time I had seen Saida was in 1982 when Ellen and I took a service taxi to the south. My last impression of Ain al-Helweh camp was a large, flat, bombedout wasteland, much as Sabra camp looked in 1985. There was not a single building in Ain al-Helweh more than four feet high then – it was a tragic sight. Today, three years later, the Ain al-Helweh that greeted my eyes was totally different.  

It had been rebuilt. It had neat brick houses, shops, electric cables and offices. The main road of the camp was properly tarred, with motor vehicles and bicycles busy making their way to various destinations. There was minimal dust, and certainly no dirt or garbage. The camp felt clean. The camp people looked well washed and had clean if modest clothes on. I would not have despaired so much in London if only I had known that Ain al-Helweh had been restored in this manner. It was a very happy day for me when I saw this resurrection of Ain al-Helweh town.  

The proposed camp hospital would be in a cave sheltered from attack by hostile forces. Construction work had already begun, with great enthusiasm. There was a sense of urgency among the camp people to complete this hospital, to beat the ‘deadline’, to be ready to cope with massive casualties when the Amal chose to attack them. The hospital needed an X-ray machine, and we were glad that the British public had donated cash to buy a portable X-ray machine.  

Shortly afterwards, I read in the papers that four of Ain alHelweh’s camp leaders had been murdered, and that there was speculation that this was due to problems between pro and anti-Arafat factions within the camp. This speculation proved ill-founded.  

We were taking more medical supplies to Ain al-Helweh camp, and had a chance to speak to the one of the camp leaders who had not been killed. The press got it all wrong, he said. The camp folk had soon managed to arrest the murderers, who admitted to being on the payroll of the Israelis. The camp folks were outraged at the murders, and declared that they would make an even greater effort to achieve unity.  

An Englishwoman who lived near the camp told us what the funeral procession of the murdered leaders was like. It consisted first of the coffin bearers – and the coffins were strewn with flowers and decorated with Palestine flags. These were followed by people with guns, shooting into the air. Then followed the camp people, marching shoulder to shoulder. Leaders from all factions of the PLO formed part of the procession. Everyone was shouting in unison. Though she could not understand what the people were shouting, she said they did so in one voice, and the message of unity was clear. If Ain al-Helweh were ever attacked, the Palestinians of Ain al-Helweh would defend it, with unity and steadfastness.  

When we got back from the south, we found that Um Walid had actually fallen ill. This was hard to believe at first, because sometimes we forgot that Um Walid, for all her strength, was human. For the first time, Um Walid complained of difficulties. She had always been a tower of strength, and never let obstacles get in the way of her goals. Perhaps it was her high temperature that made her complain now, but it was more likely to be the outcome of a whole cumulative series of events.  

There were just too many destitute Palestinians, especially widows and orphans. That was one thing, and then she could not seem to get a definite go-ahead for the rebuilding of Sabra and Shatila, despite hours of negotiations. Permission had only been given for two hundred homes in the camp to be rebuilt. How could thirty thousand homeless people fit into two hundred homes? Then with Gaza Hospital being destroyed, she had to find money to pay for private treatment for patients who would otherwise be treated free in Gaza Hospital. The out-patients clinic of Akka Hospital was now functional, but the conditions of work for the staff were anything but pleasant.  

She was at Akka Hospital in the morning when trouble broke out at the dental clinic. There was a long queue of patients. Suddenly a man who claimed to be a member of Amal appeared and demanded immediate attention. The Palestinian dentist refused to let him jump the queue, and a row ensued; the dentist threatened to commit suicide if he was pressurised any further. Um Walid had to sort out the situation and persuade the dentist to give this person preferential treatment, thus contravening the policies of the PRCS to treat all patients equally.  

Next, the body of a PRCS nurse, missing for a week, was found in a rubbish dump. She was murdered after being brutally raped by many different men. Then the entire laboratory of Gaza Hospital which the Amal had stolen during the camp war was put on sale, and the PRCS had to buy it back.  

She got home to learn that the family who lived up the road had all been shot dead for no apparent reason. They had never been involved in anything. It was one event after another – nearly all of them unpleasant and nasty, and they had all taken their toll on this brave and strong lady.  

The following day I met Um Walid again and although she was still weak she was in control and back to her usual self again.  

It was nearly time for me to leave Beirut, but before I went I called in at Shatila camp in the hope of seeing Hannah once more to find out if Nahla was all right, and also to say good-bye. By the time I got to the camp, it was getting late, and I had just missed her. But a kind person offered to take me to where he thought Hannah might be. We went past Shatila mosque, through a maze of narrow camp alleys, with rubble and partially destroyed homes on both sides. We finally arrived at one of the camp homes.  

At first I thought this must be Hannah’s home, but later learnt that this was the office of the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW) in Shatila camp. My guide thought Hannah would have been here because one of the members of the GUPW was to have been married that day. However, the wedding celebration had been cancelled by the couple. They had planned this great day many months ago, but now there was no way they would have a ceremonial wedding when so many people from the camp had died, and the wounds were still fresh. I met the young couple and wished them the very best.  

As I was getting ready to go, someone came and said that five Palestinians had been kidnapped by Amal at the checkpoints and that the camp was surrounded and besieged. It would be very dangerous to cross the checkpoints now. It was just as well I could not leave, for that gave me a chance to get to know the women, who invited me to share their dinner. The General Union of Palestinian Women was very active in many ways. During the Ramadan invasion, they had organised themselves to look after the camp, tend to the sick and wounded, feed the camp and support the camp resistance. During peacetime, they ran kindergartens and vocational schools, and helped organise the women to do Palestinian embroidery, which was not only a source of income for the camp, but also preserved the art and culture of their homeland in items like cushions, tablecloths, scarves, dresses, handkerchieves, bookmarks and flags. Wherever there was a piece of cloth, a needle and a piece of thread, the memory of Palestine became transformed into a reality.  

They had diligently compiled lists of people kidnapped and missing since the camp war started. These totalled one and a half thousand from all three West Beirut camps. There was strong evidence that they were taken away to torture centres, and systematically tortured and murdered. Some bodies of those taken away were found, but there were still fifteen hundred who were unaccounted for. They had simply disappeared. At this point, a young woman called in, the wife of a martyr. Then an older woman called in – she was the mother of two martyrs. The meal was unpretentious, consisting of potatoes, unleavened bread, and hummus – a dip made of chickpeas and garlic – but the honour of eating with these women was overwhelming. It was no exaggeration to say that each one of them was a heroine in her own right.  

I suddenly remembered I was on a small mission. Before I left London, the representative of a Miners’ Support Group in Yorkshire had called on me and had given me twenty-four greeting cards, from twenty-four mining families in her village, to take to the people of the camps. The coal-miners of Britain had been out on strike for a year, stretching from 1984 info 1985. Conditions were very difficult throughout the strike, and many mining families had to sell their furniture and possessions to survive. During the strike, the British miners had their equivalent of the General Union of Palestinian Women. The miners’ wives, mothers, sisters and grandmothers organised themselves into Miners’ Support Groups, and these women ran soup kitchens to feed the community, travelled all over Britain on fundraising tours, and kept everyone’s morale up during the darkest moments. Like the Palestinian women, they formed the backbone of the community. The British press scorned the ending of the strike as a ‘defeat’, but my Palestinian friends in Shatila camp called it a victory. Their reasoning was simple: any group who could hold out for a whole year under those conditions won a great victory.  

So while the British commentators talked of the defeat of the miners, the Palestinians of Shatila camp saluted the miners for their heroic and victorious year-long strike. Perhaps the Palestinians knew too well what struggle was about, better than the British press. One of the women told me the Western press had dealt with the Palestinians the same way they had dealt with our miners.  

‘They consistently distorted or refused to publish our case,’ she said. ‘However, even if the newspapers won’t print our story, it will still be written: it will be written with the blood of our martyrs.’  

The notice board of the Women’s Union had been bombed, but they decided to display the greeting cards from Yorkshire on the wall alongside the photographs of their martyrs.  

Haifa Hospital in Bourj al-Brajneh camp had expanded at 

an incredible speed. The operating theatre was fully functional now; the wards were filled with in-patients, the Palestinian medical staff were well-organised – it was another successful chapter of Palestinian construction and reconstruction. I had only one more job left – to find an ambulance for Haifa Hospital. Once the ambulance was put on the road, I would have effectively used up all the money raised in Britain, and would have no more administrative responsibilities. The British people had been extremely generous – and most of the cash raised during the camp war appeal had not come from the wealthy, but from ordinary people. Most of the money sent over from Britain had gone into the purchase of the X-ray machine, and theatre and resuscitative equipment.  

On this, my second visit to Lebanon, I learnt that much had changed. Even as a foreigner, it was easy to see how fragmented a society this had become. It was really very sad. A twenty-one-year-old Lebanese patient died one day, and I could only thank God for ending his suffering. He was from a poor Shi’ite family, and was paraplegic – paralysed from the waist down – because of a wound sustained in the 1982 Israeli invasion. For the last three years Haifa Hospital, which till recently had been a rehabilitation centre, had been his home.  

Unfortunately, during the Ramadan attacks on Bourj elBrajneh camp, he – like many others – contracted severe gastro-enteritis. The camp, under siege for forty days, had been denied water, food or medicines. The constant bombardment meant the camp people had to be crammed into severely overcrowded bomb shelters for days on end. Under these conditions, infectious diseases like gastroenteritis (diarrhoea and vomiting), skin and respiratory tract infections simply ran wild. A normal healthy adult would usually count himself or herself lucky to survive such conditions. For a paraplegic, to contract infectious diarrhoea simply meant death.  

The lower half of his body could not feel what was happening, and he must have sat for hours, perhaps days, in a pool of his own diarrhoea fluid. When the siege was over, he was totally emaciated, and large ulcers had developed on his bottom. He had constant diarrhoea, which meant that the pressure sores could not be kept clean. Gaza Hospital was destroyed, Haifa Hospital was undergoing major renovations, so he was transferred to Akka Hospital. But it was impossible to treat someone like that in Akka Hospital. It was just beginning to sort out the aftermath of the Ramadan war, and worse than that it had no water supply! The logical solution would have been to transfer him to one of the private Lebanese hospitals, which had piped water, facilities for intravenous feeding and enough nurses to look after him.  

Since he was Lebanese, we thought we might approach various Lebanese charitable foundations to sponsor his treatment in one of these hospitals. I found out how difficult it was for the Lebanese poor to get medical care. Charitable foundations for Sunnis, Christians, Druse or Shi’ites would only help their own community – and they usually already had dozens of cases to sponsor. The Shi’ite foundation we approached wanted to know which village he and his family originally came from, as there were Shi’ite villages in south Lebanon, in Beka’a and other parts of the country. When furnished with that information, the foundation advised me to see some Sheikh who came from that area, to see if he would help. The Sheikh politely declined to see me. So the young man continued to suffer, and the nurses of Akka Hospital continued to wash him with bottles of water strictly reserved for drinking.  

We had applied to the Ministry of Health a long time ago – but God alone knew when or if help would be forthcoming. He finally sank into a deep coma, and died – a skeleton covered with broken skin. His death was a deep and sobering lesson for me. The Israelis did inflict the first wound, but he died in such an inhuman way because of all the obstacles in West Beirut. Two days before he died, he pleaded with me to take him back to Haifa Hospital, once the wards were opened. It was impossible to honour his request now.  

My experience in West Beirut during the Israeli invasion of 1982 was that the Lebanese were warm, generous and friendly. They had never discriminated against the Palestinians, nor among themselves on the grounds of religion or sect. But in 1985 they seemed to be obsessed with differences among themselves. Now a Shi’ite taxi would not go into a Sunni area, and vice versa. And to mention the phrase ‘Palestinian refugee camp’ to a service taxi driver meant that one would be put out of the vehicle straight away. As I passed the Lahut – the Near East School of Theology – I recalled how it was converted into a field hospital in 1982 through the joint efforts of the Lebanese and the Palestinian people. Hundreds of lives must have been saved as a result.  

Nobody then was asked if he was Palestinian or Lebanese. Lebanese were not asked whether they were Christian or Muslim. Muslims were not asked whether they were Sunni or Shi’ite. Today, that warmth, generosity and unity seemed to have been replaced by sectarian hostility, cynicism and a sense of helplessness. Money could buy many things now: arms, the loyalty of the various militiamen, favours, medical care, and perhaps even principles.  

Lebanon had made me very sad. This place had seen too many tanks, too many guns, too many wars. Young people, instead of going to school or work, had to carry arms and fight for a living. Instead of money being spent on health and welfare, cash was being diverted into the pockets of arms dealers. In the words of a Lebanese friend: ‘Lebanon has become a battlefield for various outside political forces, and the sons of Lebanon their cannon fodder. Life has become worthless. If a person is shot dead, few will even ask why, or who did it.’  

More disturbing was the way young men and teenagers could only relate to power, often in the form of a gun, and membership of a militia. These thoughts were jostling in my mind as I passed Mayfair Residence, where we stayed in 1982. Suddenly someone called from across the road, ‘Doctora, doctora!’  

I did not recognise the man, but he said he knew I was one of the doctors who worked in the Lahut in 1982. He invited me to have coffee with him, and introduced himself as a doctor. He was a member of the Progressive Socialist Party of Syria, a name I did not know at all. He patiently explained his party-political line to me. Most of what he explained was of little concern to me, except that his party was non-sectarian. It was incredible to find a non-sectarian political party in the Beirut of 1985!  

Under the glass top of the doctor’s table lay a picture of a beautiful young woman. I had seen her face on posters stuck up on walls all over Beirut and even in south Lebanon, and I had often wondered who she was. Now the doctor told me that she was the eighteen-year-old woman who drove a suicide mission into the Israeli barracks in the south, the first Lebanese woman to have carried out a suicide attack on the 

Israelis.  

The doctor spoke very fondly of the second woman to go on a suicide mission. He told me how she came to see him one morning and brought him a beautiful bunch of flowers. She told him that she was going somewhere, but could not tell him where. She was going to ‘make something good, something beautiful for Lebanon.’ It was only after the suicide mission that he learnt where she had gone.  

Many westerners dismiss the people who carry out suicide missions as crazy or ‘terrorists’. The more charitable among them just sigh and say, ‘What a pity! What a waste of a life!’  

But to many people in Lebanon, they were heroic martyrs. Like their Palestinian counterparts in Shatila mosque, these two young women were so beautiful. They could have chosen a happy marriage with an adoring husband and pretty children. But they had chosen to give up their lives for the liberation of their people and country. My eyes were brimming with tears, and I had to leave before it became too embarrassing. I felt sorry for my nasty feelings against Lebanon of a few minutes before. These two young women had erased all the ugly sectarianism I had experienced during my stay here. They had not chosen to ‘attack the Palestinians to appease the Israelis’; they had also not put up all sorts of excuses for Lebanon’s troubles. They had chosen to confront their enemy, and they did so with courage and self-sacrifice.  

It was really time for the British medical team to leave. Much publicity and fund-raising work awaited us in Britain. We also saw the need to start a long-term medical programme in Lebanon, and this was something which should be discussed with MAP back in London. For instance, once Haifa and Shatila hospitals were completed, surgeons would be needed to carry out operations on all the wounded who were already waiting. If further attacks on the camps took place, we would have to mobilise further medical support to deal with the victims.  

On the eve of departure, in August 1985, I found out that Immad and Alison had got engaged. I must have been a careless and insensitive team leader not to have known they were in love. But Alison had worked so hard throughout her time in Beirut. If only I had known, I would have tried to persuade them to take some time off together. But the incredible thing was that Alison was now refusing to leave Haifa Hospital, and wanted to stay on to help the camp people. I had always respected her dedication, but what about Immad, who was coming back with the rest of the team to London? She talked Immad into letting her stay on; the hospital needed her help, and he had to respect her wishes. 

She was sniped at and trapped in another camp siege. In the end, she had to be evacuated from the camp and flown back to London, ill from pneumonia and having suffered a severe loss of weight through overwork. That Alison survived was entirely due to the mercy of God. If anything had happened to her, I would probably have had to hold myself responsible for agreeing to let her stay behind. 

   

Chapter 23  

When you read this chapter, you will wonder who Nabila Brier is, and why I suddenly choose to write about her. Like many people who work with Palestinians, I have learnt not to ask too many questions about their personal backgrounds, or take their photographs. Often, I take my Palestinian friends for granted, until suddenly I hear they have been killed. Only then do I begin to appreciate them – too late. Perhaps I must learn to tell those I love and respect of my feelings promptly, while they are still alive and able to hear me. Like Nabila – we always called on her whenever we wanted het help, and yet I hardly thought of her when I started to write this book.  

It was only when she was gone that the part of our lives we shared became a gaping hole, and I began to think about her, quickly trying to make sure her face would not blur over the passage of time. When we are alive and together, we always have too much work to do, and are often too busy to spend time on one another. We always promise that one day we will sit down together and talk about things not related to work, that we will find out about each other. Then suddenly, one of us learns that this is not going to be possible any more. 

.  

Nabila Brier was shot dead on 18 December 1986, in West Beirut. Most of us who knew her were too stunned to think of what actually happened. I remember my first meeting with Nabila ever so clearly. It was some time in July 1985, near the end of the month. The British public had donated some cash towards the purchase of an ambulance for Haifa Hospital in Bourj el-Brajneh camp. For a whole month, I had been trying to get hold of a second-hand ambulance, a nearly impossible task. It was just after the Ramadan war, and there were simply no decent second-hand ambulances to be had in Beirut. We had a few offers of rotten vehicles which broke down just two kilometres down the road. In the end, my 

Norwegian colleague told me to see Nabila Brier, the UNICEF field officer in Beirut.  

Nabila had just returned from the 1985 Nairobi Women’s Conference, where she spoke as UNICEF representative from Beirut. I was told to turn up in her office between 7.45 AM and 8 AM to discuss the ambulance. When I turned up just before eight, Nabila was already waiting for me in her office. She was an attractive Palestinian, in her thirties, with extremely intelligent eyes. Nabila had an ambulance in her custody which had been donated by the people of Denmark to the General Union of Palestinian Women. It was not the rescue type of ambulance, but was suitable for transporting non-ambulant day-patients from one hospital to another. In other words, it was more a minibus than an ambulance. It was for the women to transport children and women patients to and from home, to kindergartens, hospitals and treatment centres.  

It was brand new, from Europe. Because the Lebanese government had put up the vehicle tax to 50,000 Lebanese lira (£2,500 Sterling), the women’s union could not afford to put the ambulance on the road. Moreover, the security situation in West Beirut was so bad, with Palestinian institutions subjected to such open persecution, that the General Union of Palestinian Women had found it almost impossible to function openly, and had gone partially underground. They decided to donate their ambulance to US, SO that we could use the money raised in Britain to pay the vehicle tax. After all, the money we had was not going to be enough to buy an ambulance, hut would be enough for the tax.  

Nabila was brave and courageous, and it was only much later that I realised what tremendous pressure she was under. She had lost many members of her family. She told me, ‘My family have paid our share of their blood debt in Lebanon.’ Strange words to many people, but those familiar with Palestinian history knew that numerous Palestinian families in Lebanon had lost many members.  

The press often asked: ‘Are the Palestinians bitter towards the Amal?’ This question was a loaded one. People wanted to know whether the pain inflicted on the Palestinians by the Amal was the worst. Those who persecute the Palestinians always love to point out that the suffering they mete out is by no means the worst. Thus the Israelis would be quick to point out that the Arabs were equally cruel to the Palestinians.  

The average family in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon would have lost members through attacks by the Israelis and the Arabs. And Nabila’s family was no exception. But she was wrong when she thought that enough of her family’s blood had been spilt – little did she realise that one and a half years later she would be the next to be sacrificed.  

Four gunmen murdered Nabila. What a disgraceful, sick action! Did it take four cowards with machine guns to face this brave Lebanese-Palestinian, who was armed with nothing but courage and truth? With Nabila dead, perhaps her family had poured out enough blood to satisfy these devils. I can only take comfort from the fact that she died instantly, that she was not tortured or raped, that her body was not mutilated, as was the usual practice of such murderers.  

What had Nabila done to deserve to die? She was a Palestinian, and she worked for peace. As a doctor, my dealings with her were limited to organising medical supplies to Lebanon, not only for the Palestinian camps, but also for Lebanese humanitarian groups. Large crates of medicines and relief supplies such as blankets and clothing would arrive from all over the world labelled ‘Mrs Nabila Brier, c/o UNICEF, Beirut’. These would be channelled to people in need – the Palestinians in the refugee camps, the Lebanese Shi’ites from the deprived areas, and people in need of help. There was no commission charged, no tax, no cuts, no bribes – so common among corrupt customs officers in Beirut.  

The death of Nabila was a threat to many relief workers. So, after all, humanitarian and relief work could result in the loss of one’s life. That was probably the aim of these mischief-makers, to scare people off from helping the deprived communities in Lebanon. During the attacks on the camps in 1985, nobody was allowed to speak up. Journalists were threatened if they reported on the situation in the camps. I was threatened for speaking up against the attacks on the camp. Those who murdered Palestinians did not want any witness to speak up against their crimes.  

To make sure that I had all the relevant information regarding the camp war, Nabila came to see me in the Mayflower Hotel on the morning of my departure in 1985. She handed me the UNICEF report on the recent attacks on the camps. Details of the number of Palestinians made homeless, the destruction of the camps, including schools, kindergartens and clinics, were carefully documented in the report. Nabila’s visit to me would have been watched by those who attacked and destroyed the camps. The more she tried to get the truth out, the more she would endanger her own life. But without people like her, the situation would be much worse. Crimes and atrocities would not reach the outside world. If there was anyone who would put her life on the line to get the truth out, it was Nabila.  

They had been after Nabila for some time. In December 1985, her husband was threatened with kidnapping, if the two of them remained any longer in Beirut. They left Beirut, and came to see us in London. Phil, the Irish anaesthetist who worked in Gaza Hospital in 1982, invited all of us to dinner. It was such a lovely little dinner, and it was so good to see Nabila in London. Much of the conversation was about the needs of the camp people – like how to send clothing to those who were homeless, how to make the Lebanese winter slightly more bearable. That dinner was the last time we met. Nabila was soon back in Beirut, continuing her work with UNICEF, despite the threats directed against her.  

The death of Nabila shocked us all. My friend Phil was too numb to react. But after a little while, she burst out: ‘How I wish I never knew anything about Palestinians or Lebanese or Israelis! Not a moment of peace at all!’ Phil broke into large sobs on the other end of the telephone – she was in the middle of her ward round as an anaesthetist in charge of the intensive care unit in a large London hospital. Her colleagues must have thought Phil had gone crazy – she went off to answer the telephone, and came back sobbing. Indeed, the whole situation in Beirut was insane. God Almighty, please give us patience, and give us strength.  

Now, more than ever, I understand what struggle is about. Today we are together, sharing with each other, laughing and crying together; tomorrow, one of us is just taken away from the rest of us forever. Yet we go on, we continue, that is the only way we can honour those who have so generously laid down their lives.  

Next to my bed was a box, containing many photographic slides. These were slides of ornate musical instruments, embroidery, fishermen at sea, jewellery, portraits of dancers, peasants, orchards… They were beautiful slides, colourful and exquisite, of another people and another culture. They were slides of Palestine and her culture. Nabila gave them to me, and wanted me to show them to people all over the world. Her instructions to me are now very painful to repeat. But I remember clearly her concluding remarks: ‘Our friends only know us through our sufferings. But it is also important that they know Palestinian history is not only full of massacres. We have culture too, we appreciate beauty and art like everybody else.’ Perhaps we must remember Nabila in that way: the beautiful, enthusiastic Palestinian woman, articulate, cultured and brave – there is nothing the enemies of the Palestinian people can do to take that away from her and from the rest of us.