The sad time

I am very very sad these days. So sad, I haven't been for years.
I am stuck to the TV and to my computer screen to follow the news about Lebanon. I steal from the time I should work and I read and I listen and my heart bleeds from anger, rage and sorrow.
In the news I see the South of Lebanon and I hear the familiar names of the rivers, of the villages, of the cities and they all give life to the memories I picked up there a couple of years ago. I can't believe all those beauties, those amazing people are under the threats of pain and death now. Once we were in a small hotel in a small town. After doing the routines of registering the names and showing the passports, they invited us to an 'Ahlan wa Sahlan Shai', the tea they serve for the welcomed guest. Where are those nice and warm people now? Alive? Dead? Fled? To where? How when the roads are hit, the bridges are hit? The very villages we visited in the South, Litani river which we took a rest beside, the bridge over it which we passed through, all are ruined by bombs and I feel very very sad because of it. Have they bombed Alkhiam concentration camp too? All those solitary confinements which SLA kept the militants for long years in bat-loved small dungeons? The torture chamber is collapsed too? What about the one in the corner where they kept Soha Beshara for 10 years in?

I see Beirut's nights lit with the fire of blasts and I feel paralyzed. The apartments raised high beside the narrow streets are ruined to rubbles. And I see in the pictures, the people are walking hurriedly with sadness and despair in face.

This nation was just about to come out from the ashes of the civil war and long years of occupation when this all resumed. The buildings were still under reconstruction when we visited them, when we walked through the streets. They still had the signs of the previous wars and yet again they are under air raids. How can I believe that all of them are smashed again? How many times a nation can collect her strength and rise up? It's pretty difficult- if not impossible. But I'm sure they would.

Israel -as usual- has taken the whole nation of Lebanon as hostage. Israel wants them to eliminate Hizballah, because Israel doesn't want it to exist any more. So, they are giving lessons to Lebanese people by bomb blasts and air raids:" You will wipe them off, or we will wipe off you all!"

I have been trying to call friends in Beirut. A couple of nights ago I spoke to one of them. They are all ok. But today when I tried once more, I couldn't get any of them. I read in Lebanese blogs that the people are pushing toward north to take refuge in the mountains. I don't know how long those places would be safe. Two nights ago they bombed Tripoli. They may even go farther. Ah, I imagine myself instead of them, the Lebanese people, and I feel that I love to die; Going where? Doing what? How long? And then, to do what?

The thing that horrifies me is the near future. I'm afraid that the fire may extend to other countries, to Syria and to Iran. On BBC news and on CNN, the number of the times they repeat our name and Syrians' is increasing hour by hour. (On an Israeli blog I read that BBC is against Israel!!!) I don't think that would be without any intentions. Israelis have given us a new nickname:" Axis of terror!" I hope they won't forget that Iran is not a small piece of land to be smashed without trouble and our 70 millions of people are not easy to be swallowed up. The situation is really shaky and the mad dog is chewing the chains. And look what Bush does: outrageously applauses and gives courage to IDF to push on and to kill more.

They brag about their Democracy and I want to turn my stomach back. Democracy? How a country can call herself a Democracy when she occupies and steals others' lands? When she suffocates the people's in their cold blood and of starving and diseases? Is this the Democracy they are giving us promises about? They want to prescribe the same for us? We don't want it!