"Everything
In My Life Is Destroyed Now, So I Will Fight Them."
By Dahr Jamail
27 July, 2006
Mother
Jones Website
"I am in Hezbollah because I care," the fighter,
who agreed to the interview on condition of anonymity, told me. "I
care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist
aggression." I jotted furiously in my note pad while sitting in
the back seat of his car. We were parked not far from Dahaya, the district
in southern Beirut which is being bombed by Israeli warplanes as we
talk.
The sounds of bombs echoed
off the buildings of the capital city of Lebanon yesterday afternoon.
Out the window, I watched several people run into the entrance of a
business center, as if that would provide them any safety.
The member of Hezbollah I
was interviewing—let's call him Ahmed—has been shot three
times during previous battles against Israeli forces on the southern
Lebanese border. His brother was killed in one of these battles. It's
been several years since his father was killed by an air strike in a
refugee camp.
"My home now in Dahaya
is pulverized, so Hezbollah gave me a place to stay while this war is
happening," he said, "When this war ends, where am I to go?
What am I to do? Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight
them."
That explains why earlier
in the day, when driving me around, he'd stopped at an apartment to
change into black clothing—a black t-shirt and black combat pants,
along with black combat boots.
A tall, stocky man, Ahmed
seemed always exhausted and angry.
"I didn't have a future,"
he continued while the concussions of bombs continued, "But now,
Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of this country and her people. My family
has lived in Lebanon for 1,500 years, and now we are all with him. He
has given us belief and hope that we can push the Zionists out of Lebanon,
and keep them out forever. He has given me purpose."
"Do you think this is
why so many people now, probably over two million here in Lebanon alone,
follow Nasrallah?" I asked.
"Hezbollah gives you
dignity, it returns your dignity to you," he replied, "Israel
has put all of the Arab so-called leaders under her foot, but Nasrallah
says 'No more.'"
He paused to wipe the sweat
from his forehead. The summer heat in Beirut drips with humidity. During
the afternoon, my primary impulse is to find a fan and curl up for a
nap under its gracious movement of the thick air here.
Earlier he'd driven me to
one of the larger hospitals in Beirut where I photographed civilian
casualties. All of them were tragic cases… but one really grabbed
me-that of a little 8 year-old girl, lying in a large bed. She was on
her side, with a huge gash down the right side of her face and her right
arm wrapped in gauze. She was hiding in the basement of her home with
12 family members when they were bombed by an Israeli fighter jet.
Her father was in a room
downstairs with both of his legs blown off. Her other family members
were all seriously wounded. She lay there whimpering, with tears streaming
down her face.
I think I won Ahmed's trust
after that. I walked out the car, got in and sat down. He asked me where
I wanted to go now.
Ahmed put his hand on my
shoulder and said, "This is what I've been seeing for my entire
life. Nothing but pain and suffering."
A photographer from Holland
who was working with me was able to respond to Ahmed that maybe we could
go have a look at Dahaya.
Ahmed had told me that it
was currently extremely dangerous for a journalist to try to go into
Dahaya. Before, Hezbollah had run tours for people to come see the wreckage
generated by Israeli air strikes. All you had to do was meet under a
particular bridge at 11 a.m., and you had a guided tour from "party
guys" (members of Hezbollah) into what has become a post-apocalyptic
ghost town.
A couple of days ago I went
there, without the "party guy" tour. A friend and I were driven
in by a man we hired for the day to take us around. I was shocked at
the level of destruction—in some places entire city blocks lay
in rubble. At one point we came upon the touring journalists, all scurrying
to their vehicles. Everyone was in a panic.
"What's going on?,"
I asked our driver. "A party guy who is a spotter said he saw Israeli
jets coming," he responded, while spinning the van around and punching
the gas as we sped past the journalists lugging their cameras while
running back to their drivers.
While driving we were passed
by several Hezbollah fighters riding scooters. Each had his M-16 assault
rifle slung across his back and wore green ammunition pouches across
his chest.
Ahmed told me he'd captured
two Israeli spies himself. "One of them is a Lebanese Jewish woman,
and she had a ring she could talk into," he explained as new sweat
beads began to form on his forehead, "Others are posing as journalists
and using this type of paint to mark buildings to be bombed."
I doubt the ring part, and
also wonder about the feasibility of paint used for targeting, but there
are no doubt spies crawling all over Beirut. In Iraq, mercenaries often
pose as journalists, making it even more dangerous than it already was
for us to work there.
Nevertheless, war always
fosters paranoia. Whom can you trust? What if they are a spy? What are
their motives? Why do they want to ask me this question at this time?
These types of questions become constant I my mind, and so many others
in this situation where normal life is now a thing of the past. I think
they are some sort of twisted survival mechanism.
We drove back near my hotel
and parked again. People strolled by on the sidewalks. Ahmed said, "I
will never be a slave to the United States or Israel."
This web log originally posted
on Mother Jones Website