Lebanon Diary Part VI

Saide Chaar and 22 other Liberians and Lebanese-Liberians have been seeking a way out of Beirut for more than two weeks. They are among about 50 Liberians trapped in the besieged city. Liberia has no embassy in Lebanon to evacuate them. Chaar, 25, and his family were evicted from the one-bedroom apartment they were staying in because the landlord said there were too many people staying there. They have found another one-bedroom flat but the landlord there is also urging them to move on. IRIN has been documenting the plight of Chaar and his family through daily phone conversations that are published in narrative form. IRIN spoke with Chaar’s fiancé, Marcelle Bedran, 19, on Sunday and compiled Part 6 of an ongoing diary of life in besieged Beirut. 30 July 2006 – We’re just stressed out today. The situation, we don’t know what to think anymore. Things are getting worse by the hour. Today we got news that protesters in Beirut broke into the UN office. And the air strike in Qana this morning where the civilians died – it was disgusting. The most surprising thing is even the ones in the basement underground got killed and most of them were women and children. It was so heartbreaking to see them taking the babies out, the little children. It was sickening. Right now everybody is so tense in the house. Everybody is arguing. Some people want to go back home but the city is not safe. The roads are risky. You just see the war tanks. It’s just strange when you live in a city and all of a sudden you see war tanks going by, soldiers passing by. And the guns in their hands look so scary, even if they’re not talking to you. Israel is so full of surprises; you never know what is going to happen next. It’s like we’re just sitting on eggs waiting for them to crack or waiting for them to hatch. The city is dead. The only area you can see civilians is where we are now in the eastern side of the city. Everybody left their houses in a rush and we didn’t get our clothes and things. We tried to get back to the houses but we couldn’t make it. We just turned around and came back. The road was terrifying. Because we are foreigners they will just see you and pick on you. If you appear Lebanese they won’t do anything to you. But if they see a little bit of colour they try to take advantage of you. First of all they’ll ask you for your documents. They’ll just try to find any little mistake. They’ll just waste your time and ask you one and a million questions - stupid questions that don’t have stupid answers even. Sometimes they’ll ask you to come down to the station to verify your documents. Then you have to wait for hours and you’ll see 30 to 40 people just waiting and then they’ll just tell you, you can leave. The landlord came last night. He asked when we are leaving, why we had not left yet. We told him that it was because we had not found anywhere to go yet and that he should please be patient with us. He’s being very impatient and being very aggressive, especially because we are not Lebanese. What he’s doing then this week is he’s cutting the water. (Then) we cannot wash dishes, we cannot take a shower, we have to take buckets through other people’s houses to take water. I am in university. I paid around 1,800 dollars, a whole down-payment, for the whole summer. That’s all gone in vain. That is my biggest loss right now. I feel very bad about it because we had been attending for three weeks only and then this war broke out. The universities are going to take a very long time to open. Everybody is leaving the country. They won’t have enough students to start. I was doing social work, psychology and sociology. (Tomorrow) as soon as we get up, like 6, we have to go look for help somewhere. We have to get up and be on our feet to see what we can do. We don’t know what to do. Because they closed the border between Lebanon and Syria our only chance is by ship. We’re going to try and keep praying that God opens our way. cs/ccr