The turbulent march of history past Beirut woman’s window
Agence France Presse — English
July 27, 2006 Thursday 6:48 AM GMT
By Haro Chakmakjian
>From the evacuation of Yasser Arafat in 1982 to the current foreign
exodus, Makrouhie Yerganian has seen the troubled history of Lebanon
unscroll in front of her eyes at her vantage point in front of Beirut
port.
Just last week, two truck drivers having coffee were killed when
their parked and apparently empty vehicles were blown apart in an
Israeli air strike on the edge of the port, just 50 metres (yards)
away from her modest home in a three-storey apartment block.
"It was a very strange noise that rattled our nerves. We thought we
had heard all sorts of explosions but this was something new even for
us," says the Lebanese Armenian schoolteacher who has lived in the
Mar Mikhael area for more than half a century.
Her 85-year-old mother was just about to water the flowers on the
window ledge, until Yerganian changed her mind. Many of the windows
in her building were shattered, but the women escaped unharmed from
Israel’s latest salvo in its war on Hezbollah.
"I believe it is written on your forehead. If it is written, you can
die wherever you are. But that day, the Lord protected us," says the
60-year-old woman from her sitting room where sheets cover the
furniture, as the shutters slam from the sea breeze.
A vivid memory still stencilled into her head came in 1976 when
militiamen massacred Shiites, Druze and Palestinian refugees in the
nearby Karantina camp, now closed.
"A boy whose voice had not even broken kept pleading: ‘Don’t kill
me’. They dragged him off to the corner of the street and shot him,"
she says. "I can still hear his voice in my head, begging for his
life, as they dragged him off."
Two years later, in another of the multiple wars within a war which
devastated Lebanon between 1975 and 1990, the Phalange, a Christian
militia, battled Syrian forces.
"The Syrians were parked right in front of our windows, and the
Phalange behind. They started fighting and we were caught bang in the
middle," she says.
During the brief deployment of the Multinational Forces sent to
oversee the Palestinian evacuation after Israel’s invasion and
supposedly to protect the refugees, they had new neighbours in the
shape of American, French and Italian troops.
"They were all clean, except the Israelis. The Americans and the
others used metal shacks and they would burn their waste," she says.
"We would be hanging the washing and they (Israeli troops) would be
doing their dirty business or relieving themselves in full public
view. We had to move away for a while," says a grimacing Yerganian.
"The Italians were friendly and we even learnt a few words of
Italian. The Americans and the French would hand out chocolates to
the neighbourhood kids," she says. "People would come from far to see
them from our house. We had a lot of guests in those days."
But things went sour yet again. President-elect Bashir Gemayel was
assassinated and "the radios tried to reassure the people by saying
he had survived the bomb blast", Makrouhie recalls.
"At midnight, we heard the marching of boots. We looked out of the
window and saw the Jewish soldiers heading toward west Beirut", on
the eve of the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra
and Shatila by Phalangist militiamen.
Before the massacres, French soldiers had been posted with huge guns
on the rooftops, including Yerganian’s, to protect the evacuation of
late Palestinian leader Arafat and his PLO fighters in 1982.
In 1984, west Beirut fell to Muslim militias and the US and European
troops withdrew through the port after their barracks were blown up
by suicide bombers at a cost of some 300 lives.
The Lebanese army posted heavy artillery outside the house to bombard
the mostly Muslim western sector, opening up with 55-mm rounds that
rocked the building to its very foundations.
"I was going mad, with pillows on each ear to muffle the horrific
noise. I was going to go out and tell them to stop, please, please.
My mother told me: ‘Don’t worry, this will pass too’," says
Yerganian.
Despite everything, "I love Lebanon. I was born here and this is my
country. Anything that happens to our poor Lebanon, it breaks our
heart.
"We were so happy seeing the new bridges and the revival of the
downtown thanks to Hariri after the civil war, but they won’t allow
us to have any joy," she says, referring to the 2005 murder of former
premier and architect of Lebanon’s revival, Rafiq Hariri.
While the tens of thousands of foreigners were fleeing the Israeli
air strikes across from her window, "at least we had hopes for a
little calm in our area. But after the last US evacuations (on
Wednesday), we fear the worst for Lebanon", she says.