Don't Send your Sons...

by Susan Galleymore

Zuhre Dyab lives in a small village outside Tyre, Lebanon. She dresses in the strict all-black fashion of Shite women: only her faces shows and, at first, it is shy and sad.

She holds up a photo of her son with Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and says, "I am proud that my son is a martyr for our freedom. My family and I hold up our heads because of this."

Thirty-seven-year-old Mohammed, husband and father of four young children, died in the fierce fighting in this village last summer when Israel retaliated to Hizbullahs kidnapping of two Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers by bombing southern Lebanon. Hizbullah supports Mohammed's family now.

Zuhre Dyabs advice to American mothers: dont send your sons to the Middle East where they will be killed.

This is a common sentiment here. Anyone actually listening to ordinary mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, and children (some of them displaced Palestinian who escaped the stultifying camps where theyve been relegated for over two generations) in Lebanon indeed, the entire Middle East -- quickly understands how deeply the region is steeped in resistance to Israel and its ally, the U.S.

Roads throughout Lebanons rural and deprived Bekaa Valley sport billboards depicting Condi Rice tutoring politicians or shaking her index finger at a class full of silhouetted students. More common, though, are billboards illustrating the six varieties of cluster bombs dropped by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) in the last few days of the summer war: over one million bomblets scattered in a country with less than four million people, most dropped south of Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley. Every week young shepherds herding sheep over rocky terrain or old men pruning in placid olive groves lose life or limb to these devices. Here people mourn their dead and get on with life.

Amazingly, they still say, Americans are good people but they are ruled by bad governments.

Listening to stories in the village of Qana I wonder, how much longer can this generous view continue? The site of a massacre in April, 1996 when 106 Lebanese civilians were killed and 116 wounded including Fijian UNIFIL soldiers during IDF's Operation Grapes of Wrath, Qana was struck again last summer. Maryam Abdul Karem lost eleven members of her family after hunkering down in the basement of their family home for 18 days of aerial bombing. It was midnight and 53 people were sleeping on the floor children in one corner for added safety when the missiles came, first from one direction and then right into the corner where the children slept.

It was very dark in that basement even brief candlelight would invite more bombs - and terrified survivors shouted out names to learn who was alright, who was wounded, and who didnt answer. Hala was bleeding from a head wound and her left arm was pinned by debris. Her sister, Zainab, helped Hala retrieve her 5-year-old daughter from the rubble and clear her airways of dirt and dust but the child was already dead.

While I listened to Maryam Abdul Karems story one of her surviving daughters brought me newspaper cuttings of the massacre and whispered, Dont let my mother see it as there are pictures of my fathers body and the torn, dust-covered bodies of her grandchildren. But Maryam did see the cuttings. For the first time since last summer, she held evidence in her hands that someone if only a reporter showed interest in what had happened here.

There has been almost no money from the government to rebuild although Qatar, Hizbullah, and Iran donate funds. She points out the collage on the wall portraying the dead family members: Maryam Mehsin, Hussain, Ibrahim, Ali, Jaafer, Mahdi, Abbas, Fatemah, Ruqayya smile from the pictures sunset background. Maryan Abdul Karen misses Ibrahim Ahmed, her husband of over forty years. Hala mourns her husband and daughter. The memorial to the dead outside is one of the few new constructions in Qana. Hizbullahs yellow and Amals green flags flutter alongside a red sun-faded banner expressing condolences sent by Korea. There are no visible signs of condolence sent from the good people of America or their bad government.

I visited Bint Jbail at dusk. The ambulance that was carrying wounded civilians when it was stuck by IDF missiles last summer is still parked on a main street.

The missiles entered the front window right below one of the bright red crosses marking the white vehicle as a medical conveyance; the back windows are completely blown out. In the residential section of town what used to be large family homes are now rubble; a twisted red sofa pokes out of the shattered stones piled on the roadside.

I recall how Zuhre and her daughter laughed when Zuhres words, "Don't send your sons" were translated into English and I repeated them. Then we laughed at the rational, simple humanity of this solution. Their laughter was sincere and free. My impression of Zuhre as shy and sad when I first met her was, I realized, my projection as a mother upon a situation that I was personalizing. Zuhre is satisfied with the contributions she can make towards peace and understanding in this part of the world and is thus free to enjoy laughter.

I added, But it takes education for Americans to understand what really goes on in war more than that, it takes a will to know -- and too many Americans are too busy living their lives to want to know. Zuhres other son (she has six sons no, five now - and four daughters remaining) told me, Next time you come here my mother will be holding a photo of me as a martyr.

When I protested he said, What else can I do about the situation? I know that if we sacrifice now future generations can be free. I saw my best friend badly burned in a bomb attack during the summer and I took him away from the fighting on my motorcycle.

I asked, Did he survive?

The young man answered, Actually he was mostly dead when I took him away. His skin was black from burns and it was falling off his body in strips. I removed him so that the dogs wouldnt eat his body. Mothers and the good people of America, lets not send our children to die or to kill in these lands.