Tears for Tarshiha Page 6

  In time I realised I would not be getting a scholarship—not because I didn’t deserve one, but because I did not have a waasta or backer. I had assumed that scholarships were awarded solely on the basis of our school reports, but it turned out to be much more political than that. My family were not active members of the PLO and I had only been active in school council activities, and so we had no political connections as such. We were ordinary Palestinians and we were committed to our country, but we were not active in any of the PLO parties.

  Once I realised what the situation was, I was determined my father would not see how bitterly disappointed I was. He was already extremely upset because he could not support my studies. I didn’t want to humiliate him even more by showing how it was affecting me. So, I gave my family many excuses as to why I did not get a scholarship, but inside, I was burning with anger at this injustice, and felt deeply distressed that a movement I supported was based on such unfair principles. I remembered the joy I had experienced at my opportunity to vote in the student elections and the exhilaration of having elected a student body that was representative and democratic. But after seeing how scholarship selections were made, I felt as if the PLO leaders had betrayed all of us who had supported and believed in them.

  With medicine off the radar, I turned my ambitions towards nursing and, with the help of some Palestinian doctors at Haifa hospital who I knew in Burj Barajneh camp, was admitted to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Nursing School, based at Aka hospital, located on the edge of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut. I started my three-year general nursing training in October 1979 with a three-month block of nursing theory, before moving to Gaza hospital, which also overlooked the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

  Frances Moore, the wife of the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Lebanon, was our main teacher but there were local teachers as well. I respected Mrs Moore—who was a volunteer with Unipal (Universities’ Trust for Educational Exchange with Palestinians)—a great deal and, as my English was good and she could not speak Arabic, I translated for her in class. When we went to do practical experience in the hospital, we had to complete work plans. Later, Mrs Moore and I would sit together while I translated the other students’ work for her. When translating in class, I had to listen very closely, so I actually learnt my lessons twice. I particularly loved doing my nursing experience in the hospital, often working well after my shift had finished. The more experience I had, the more I enjoyed, and knew for sure that I was in the right career.

  One day in July 1980, Mahmoud Agha, the head nurse at Gaza hospital, came to the surgical ward where I was working and asked me to follow him to the second floor. I was curious, as I knew that floor was normally used as a storage area. Following him into one of the big rooms, I was astonished to see it full of young men in hospital beds with serious leg, arm and head wounds. There was no fighting near our area at that time, but we knew the Christian groups were fighting each other.

  ‘What is this? Who are all these wounded men?’ I asked.

  He was evasive. ‘I want you to help me and be responsible for the care of these men,’ he said.

  I was in my first year of nursing but by then had had a lot of experience, and I was open-minded about many things. I quickly discovered they were not Palestinians but from one of the Lebanese right-wing groups. Most of the time the predominantly Christian right-wing paramilitary groups fought for territory and control over areas of Beirut and Lebanon against the leftist LNM. But from time to time, in what appeared totally senseless to all of us, these Christian militia—the Kata’eb, dominated by the Gemayel family, or Chamoun’s militia, the Al Ahrar—fought each other.

  So, it was on this day and for whatever political reason, Arafat had ordered the wounded members of the Al Ahrar militia be brought to the hospital where I worked. But, I remember thinking, these were members of the militias that had murdered my countrymen in Tel al-Za’atar; to have them there in the hospital filled me with anger. Agha could sense my rage and tried to calm me. ‘I know you respect people as human beings, irrespective of their religion.’

  ‘Yes, I do’, I replied. ‘But you know also that to bring them here endangers their lives. What if some Palestinians hear that they’re here and come and attack them. Why was this decision taken?’

  ‘It is not my decision,’ Agha told me, ‘but Arafat’s and his brother Fathe’s, as head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). They gave the order to admit them to the hospital and I have to obey orders. So now I want you to work here with them.’

  I remember those soldiers and that day, clearly. They were all young boys in their late teens or early twenties, initially eight or nine of them. Later, more were brought in. Several doctors were with me and another nurse. The young men were very soiled, bloodied and wounded so we cleaned their wounds, covered them and then helped them to wash. We also offered them food, but they said they had eaten. In the evening we offered them food again, and again, they said no.

  So I asked, ‘At lunch you did not eat and now it is night and you are still not eating. Is there a problem?’

  ‘There is no problem, we are just not hungry,’ one of them replied.

  It was then I realised they did not trust us.

  ‘I’ll show you that the food is safe. Choose any tray of food that you like, and I’ll eat from that tray,’ I said to them.

  They looked at each other and, after apologising, started to eat. And they were indeed very hungry. While they ate, we started to talk. One of them said to me, ‘We want to see Palestinians’.

  ‘You have been seeing Palestinians all day long! What’s wrong with you? I am Palestinian, Dr Khalid, Dr Abid and all the bodyguards who are protecting you are Palestinians—all except Dr Yarno—he is from Canada.’

  ‘No, no,’ they said, ‘We want to see real Palestinians.’

  I laughed and said, ‘We are real Palestinians,’ and I brought my refugee papers to show them. They were all looking at my card and then at me.

  Then one of them, a young boy, said, ‘But we were told that you are not like human beings. We were told that you are not civilised, that you are like monsters in a way, with long nails.’

  I looked at him, appalled: ‘Who told you this? We are human beings like everyone else. We have pale-skinned people and we have very dark Palestinians, and some of our people are rich while others are very poor. We have Christians and Muslims too. We are a nation like all nations, just like everyone else. Look at Lebanon, you too have Bedouin who have green marks on their faces. You, too, have people with different accents—look at the accent from Balbek. You, too, have people who are very dark, and you have Christians and Muslims. Why is it that Lebanese only think of themselves as Christian or Muslim instead of a nation with different religions and different-coloured people?’

  This boy looked at me and said, ‘You are right.’

  ‘Yes, this is the problem we Palestinians have had in our lives. You look at us as if we are not human beings when we are just like you,’ I replied, shocked by what he had said. Yet his beliefs explained so much of our experience as refugees in this country that had never accepted us as citizens or as having rights of any kind.

  Another nurse and I worked in that place for more than a week. These young men wanted to see Sabra and Shatila, as they had heard a lot about the camp. We were on the second floor of the hospital and when we took them to the balcony they could see over the camp. They were only young boys and they regretted being involved in war. Like all of us, they wanted a normal, peaceful life. One day their leader, Chamoun, came to the hospital to see them. Protected by the PLO guards, Chamoun gave the boys money and asked them if they were happy. He thanked us for looking after them and then left. I felt angry inside, as he had given the orders to slaughter our people so brutally in Tel al-Za’atar. But at this particular moment in their fight against the Kata’eb, Chamoun was being support
ed and protected by the Lebanese left-wing groups and the PLO. It seemed to me that a kind of madness reigned in Lebanon. Nothing made sense. By contrast our own struggle was based on a clear and simple premise, the liberation of Palestine, and we were united in this one objective.

  A few months after these young men had left the hospital, I met one of them at Aka Hospital. He told me he’d left Chamoun’s militia and was working in a local shop. He said that many of the boys had left and some had left Lebanon altogether. I felt I had played a role in these decisions by showing them that people are the same regardless of where we come from. I was so happy to have made the decision to become a nurse—I felt I was playing a very important role for our cause in more ways than one.

  7

  ENCIRCLED

  From 1979 to the middle of 1981, we were relatively safe and free from war with the LNM and Syrian troops controlling West Beirut. There was conflict on the Green Line and clashes between the various Christian Lebanese Forces’ groups, but these did not involve us. But while the times were relatively peaceful, there was still no peace. We knew Israel wanted the PLO destroyed, and even though the ceasefire held along the South Lebanese border, we were waiting and preparing for more war.

  Events in Lebanon as well as in the region were certainly pointing to more conflict. In the south of the country and in the southern suburbs of West Beirut—in the area where my camp was—some of the impoverished Shi’a Lebanese community were beginning to mobilise around a nationalist secular resistance movement called Amal, headed by Nabih Berri. Many of the Shi’a living in the city had been displaced from South Lebanon. While they initially supported the PLO and the LNM in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, they turned against both movements when the price of their support was the loss of their homes and villages. During March 1980, there were clashes between Amal and the PLO and the LNM in West Beirut, but the latter forces were too strong militarily. At the same time there were serious clashes in East Beirut between various groups that formed the Christian Lebanese Forces alliance. Bashir Gemayel eliminated Chamoun’s militia, Al Ahrar, from East Beirut. The Christian Kata’eb was now the dominant military and political group within the Lebanese forces, backed and armed by Israel. Regional and international interests again fuelled Lebanon’s internal struggle for power.

  At the regional level, in September 1980, Iraq, supported by the US and other western countries, invaded Iran at the start of a disastrous eight-year war. The PLO, a long-time supporter of Iraq, was asked by Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to support the predominantly Shi’a Iran. When the PLO refused, PLO relations with the Shi’a community in Lebanon soured considerably. Then in March 1981, Syria, supported by the Soviet Union, placed several SAM-6 missile batteries in strategic locations in the Beqaa Valley. Israel objected to this move and the US was called in to mediate even though it was Israel’s major arms supplier and backer. Three months later in July, Israel bombed West Beirut for the first time since 1974, and supported Gemayel in his run for the position of Lebanon’s president. In the south, the Shi’a began to turn against the PLO and started to co-operate with the South Lebanon Army in the Israeli-controlled buffer zone. Lebanon was awash with intrigue and counter-intrigue in a deadly game of international, regional and local power play. Palestinians in the camps, including my family and I, naturally feared the worst.

  The bombing of West Beirut by the Israelis in 1981 hailed the end of our short respite from war. There was heavy bombing around Aka Hospital near the Sabra and Shatila camps and Christian Lebanese Forces positioned nearby on the Green Line also attacked us. We were expecting a serious war with Israel, and Arafat called students home from overseas to help the PLO. Many returned from Russia, Bulgaria and the Gulf to undertake military training. Fighting between the PLO with its supporters in the south, and Israel continued, but Israel had a bolder mission in mind and, with its Christian allies, was preparing for a full-scale assault on West Beirut.

  Like the other nurses and doctors, throughout the war, I worked day and night in the hospital, rarely going home to rest—I felt deeply that it was my duty to care for my people. Even though I was young and relatively inexperienced in nursing (I was still only in my second year of training), I was often in charge of a whole ward. Student nurses were sent to the various PRCS hospitals in Beirut to get more practical experience. In Gaza Hospital I worked in the surgical and emergency wards. I did not like medical or children’s wards as I found the children’s pain and suffering too distressing. I had some operating-room experience, but in 1980 and 1981 most of my experience was in the surgical ward.

  During the clashes, UNRWA schools were closed and the students were sent to their homes in the camps. On the journey from one of the schools to the camp, several children from one family—the Dabdoubs—were killed and others injured. One of those injured was a 10-year-old girl who had an abdominal wound and needed a laparotomy and a blood transfusion. Her blood group was the very rare B negative. Dr Hala, then a student doctor who’d come back from Russia, and I, decided to travel to nearby military bases to find someone with the correct blood type. With a driver and a blood-testing kit, we left in the afternoon and, under heavy shelling, went to many of the military bases in Beirut and even to the students who had come for military training, explaining the situation to all these people. Some knew their blood group, but we tested many others until we found four people with the right blood type. It was midnight by the time we returned to the hospital with these four donors. The operation was performed on the little girl that night, the doctors removing bullets and shrapnel from her abdomen. She was given a temporary colostomy, and with the necessary blood transfusion, this little girl’s life was saved. I nursed her post-operatively and it was so satisfying to see her make a full recovery. Because she had lost a brother and sister, her parents were deeply grateful for what everyone in the hospital had done for her.

  One day around this same time, during a ceasefire, I went home for a break. It was some distance to our house, so I took a service, a type of communal taxi. Just as I was about to return to work, heavy fighting broke out again.

  My aunt said, ‘Where are you going? You can’t leave now.’

  I replied, ‘Don’t you remember that I am a nurse and I have to be at the hospital.’

  My aunt said in anguish, ‘You can’t get to the hospital. Other nurses there will take your shift.’

  But I said, ‘No, no, I have to go. God will protect me.’

  I left and searched in vain for a service. The streets were deserted, so I decided to walk. The shelling and firing was very heavy. I walked through the narrow, back lanes from my camp to the main road, hugging the sides of the buildings all the way. I could hear the shelling to my right in the Ghobeiry area. I could hear bullets hitting buildings. I was walking under the Ghobeiry Bridge when a man I didn’t know jumped from the corner of the bridge and pushed me to the wall.

  He shouted at me, ‘Are you crazy. Can’t you see that there’s fighting everywhere!’

  I said to him, ‘Why are you here?’

  He replied, ‘Because I am a fighter.’

  ‘But I am a nurse and when you get wounded I will care for you. I have to get to the hospital.’

  ‘Okay, you are a nurse, but I will walk with you.’

  ‘Why?’ I replied. ‘If something happens, two of us will be wounded or killed. No, I can manage by myself. Thank you.’

  So, I walked on alone. Now the fighting was on either side of the road where I was walking. A building near me was hit by a shell and my heart leapt but, somehow, I felt I would be safe ... it was an odd feeling. I was covered with dust and I had no choice but to keep going to the hospital. I was dressed not in my nurse’s uniform but in ordinary clothes. I had make-up on, my hair was done and I was wearing shoes with heels. I had been expecting to travel by service. Whenever I wore heels I would waddle a bit like a duck. When I arrived at the hospital I wa
s covered with dust and could hardly see from the grit in my eyes. The nurses and doctors looked me up and down and said, ‘What! No wounds? No bullets? How come? There’s heavy bombing and shelling and yet you are not injured?’

  No one believed I could walk from the camp to the hospital through all that heavy fighting without getting hurt or killed. One of the nurses with a good sense of humour made a joke that I had survived because instead of walking straight I had waddled from side to side and so every time a soldier had me in his sights I would move to the left or right! With that, we all laughed until we cried.

  It may seem strange, but in situations like this I have never really been afraid. I have always believed I will die when the time is right and that could even be when I’m in a shelter. My real fear has been to lose someone I love rather than being wounded or killed myself.

  Nurses and health workers all over the world have to deal with, at times horrific things, but in a war zone, it is on a daily basis. There was one patient I will never forget. He was a large man in his early twenties, whose face had been badly burned leaving him blind in both eyes. When he had recovered consciousness, we gently told him what had happened, but as his eyes were bandaged, he did not accept that his sight was gone. When the bandages were taken off and he realised he couldn’t see, he became angry, lashing out, and smashing everything around him. I could understand his reaction completely. Apart from losing this most essential faculty, in Lebanon he faced a future that offered little support for people with disabilities.

  On another occasion, a university student was brought to the hospital from the Green Line. This young man was not in a military uniform, so he was not a fighter, but his body had more than 45 bullet holes—it looked like a strainer. I was wrapping him in white sheets ready for the mortuary when one of our X-ray technicians came in.

  ‘Olfat, how can you cope with this? Aren’t you frightened by this sight?’ he asked.