Subhi Mrad, Lebanon "These are all my memories, my life in the rubble"

In the last few hours before a United Nations-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect on Monday morning, Israel heavily bombarded the Haret Hreik neighbourhood in southern Beirut.

Subhi Mrad, a political science university teacher, had lived there before he and his family had to move out when the neighbourhood was first attacked. When he returned on Tuesday, people in the neighbourhood told him that his apartment building was the last to be demolished by air strikes before the ceasefire.

“I used to live on the top floor, the sixth floor of my building in Haret Hreik. Can you believe I had to dig two metres in the rubble to find my neighbour’s door and his driving licence? My own door, I recognised from the burning books. I published my new book days before the beginning of the crisis on 12 July. Do you smell that? These are the 2,000 copies of it burning…

“My balcony is there, almost at ground level. I recognised it by the pot in which my wife had planted a sunflower. I’m not sorry for all I lost, because no one in my family died. I’m grieving for a hunting gun my father left as a family legacy, for my books, and the notes of some conferences I gave.

“My two nephews didn’t see me cry when they told me all they found from my house is a metal table and a narguila [water pipe for smoking tobacco]. My neighbour has five chairs left, good as new. These are all my memories, my life in the rubble.

“I was planning to take my children on vacation to France last month, but most of the money for the trip is buried two metres in the ground, under six floors of cement.

“My wife found the instruction manual of the new camera we bought a month ago. She asked me this morning, before we came here: ‘Shall we take the keys of the house? I don’t think we need them anymore…’

“Tomorrow, I’m taking the keys and leaving [Lebanon]. Perhaps in France my children will be able to go back to school. And if that works out, perhaps, perhaps, I will be back.”

MCF/LS/ED