Lebanon Diary, Part I

Up to 50 Liberians are trapped in Beirut. Many sought refuge in Lebanon after fleeing civil war in their own country 12 years ago. Some are married to Lebanese. They have watched thousands of other foreigners being evacuated by their embassies. Liberia has no embassy in Lebanon. The following narrative is based on a daily diary by one Liberian, 25-year-old Saide Chaar, who is holed up in a one-bedroom apartment with 22 other Liberians and Lebanese-Liberians in Beirut's southwestern suburb of Jnah. IRIN spoke to Chaar by phone, and edited the diary it asked him to write. TUESDAY July 25 – Today is another frustrating day. We are four families displaced in a one-bedroom house. We are running out of money and food. This morning we had dry bread and water for breakfast. What we used to buy for a dollar is now five dollars. Everybody is crying. Even the bread we have this morning, we don’t even have the appetite to eat because we are very scared. We have a one year-old kid with us and he is very, very scared as well. Crying and crying. The women, my mom and my sis, all of them are crying, even my grand-mom. They are scared. They don’t know what to do. I just see a huge sort of smoke going up and up, and high speed cars passing with soldiers…We are just sitting and praying to God. We don’t know where the next bomb is going to land. There are other Liberians in the country who are stranded. They are calling us to reach them. They don’t even have food to eat. They don’t have water to drink because they cannot go out. This morning if they do a ceasefire I will take a car and we will try to go and get them to bring them to where we are in our one-bedroom apartment to join us and we will all be together for now. The day before yesterday, the sound of explosives killed a Ghanaian lady who died from a heart attack. All countries are evacuating their citizens. The Ghanaians are leaving tomorrow. There is no chance (to go with them) because they are already on their way. We are trying to get to the UN office but whenever we get to the UN office, we only find Lebanese soldiers or police and they do not let you in. We tell them that we came here from Liberia and we fled the war in Liberia and we came to Lebanon. Our government of Liberia will not be able to send aid for us. We just had a new president and our country is not capable of sending aid for us now. We ask for help from anywhere. We are stranded. We called our foreign ministry to arrange our safe way out of Lebanon. They said they will try to see what they can do. We are only still asking for help and if we can be able to leave this country we will be grateful to God and to whoever will be able to assist us. CS/CB