2024-12-17 09:57:00
Credit, Joel Gunter
Photo caption, Rihab shows a photo of her daughters, Tia and Naya, taken during a walk in Beirut
- Author, Joel Gunter
- Role, From BBC News in Beirut
- December 17, 2024, 06:42 -03
Updated 54 minutes ago
Rihab Faour has left his home behind. Then she ran away again. And a third time. And a quarter. For the fourth time, a year after the first, she had fled Israeli bombs for so long that nowhere in Lebanon seemed safe.
His journey began in October 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. This prompted Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and militant group, to fire rockets into Israeli territory and Israel to retaliate by bombing southern Lebanon.
Israeli bombs fell so close to the village of Rihab that this 33-year-old mother and her husband Saeed, an employee of the municipal water company, took their daughters – Tia, eight, and Naya, six – and fled at their home. . of Rihab’s parents in Dahieh, a suburb of the capital Beirut.
In Dahieh, life went almost normally for a while, except that Naya and Tia missed their friends, their beds, the toys and clothes they had to leave behind.
Above all, they missed school, which was replaced by online learning. They were excited when, in August, Rihab enrolled them in a school in Beirut and took them shopping for new uniforms.
Credit, Joel Gunter
Photo caption, Rihab lost her husband and daughters in an Israeli air strike
But before the first day of school arrived, Israel expanded its bombing of Lebanon to include parts of Beirut, particularly the suburb of Dahieh, which was now the family’s home.
Israel assassinated high-ranking Hezbollah members in the suburbs, but used bombs capable of destroying a residential building. In some attacks, Israel launched dozens of these bombs at once and leveled entire city blocks.
So, the Faour family packed their bags and fled again, this time to a rented house in another Beirut neighborhood, Jnah.
After a heavy air raid on Jnah, they moved to Saeed’s parents’ house in the Barbour neighborhood. There they lived crowded together with 17 other people under the same roof.
However, for Tia and Naya, now nine and seven, it was a rare pleasure to be surrounded day and night by their cousins. So much so that, even when Rihab’s father, a retired Lebanese army sergeant, found an apartment to rent in the Basta neighborhood just for the four of them, the girls didn’t want to leave.
Credit, Joel Gunter
Photo caption, The Basta neighborhood in Beirut. A message written in the dust on the car praises slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
“Naya begged us to stay there with the whole family,” recalls Rihab.
“We told her we would only sleep one night in the new house, and then we would go straight back to our family and all the kids.”
The mother made a deal with the girls: we’ll go to the new apartment and you can choose dinner. So, on their way home, they stopped to buy roast chicken and other delicacies at the market and, around 7.30pm, with the streets still full of people, the family arrived at their new home, a dilapidated building in Basta. , in the center of Beirut.
In 2006, during the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah, bombings were limited to some areas of Lebanon: the south, Dahieh and some infrastructure targets. This time, as Hezbollah members spread across the country, Israel bombed them wherever they went.
This brought bombs to locations previously considered safe, including parts of central Beirut.
Credit, Joel Gunter
Photo caption, On Rihab’s bedside table is a framed photo of her husband, Saeed, and daughters, Naya and Tia.
None of this fazed Tia and Naya, as the family left their belongings in the new apartment. For now the girls were more concerned with getting back to their cousins as soon as possible.
Unlike Saeed’s parents’ house, the new apartment in Basta had running water and an electricity generator. The girls were happy when they saw that the family finally had their own space. Rihab and Saeed relaxed a little. There was probably an Israeli drone flying overhead, but the sound had become so common in Beirut that it was possible to ignore it.
Rihab placed the food and treats on the table.
“We sat down to eat and were laughing and talking,” he said.
“And that’s it, my last memory of them.”
Credit, Joel Gunter
Photo caption, The crater left the morning after the destruction of the building in Basta that killed Rihab’s family
Deadly bombing
The bomb was a Jdam, produced in the United States. It hit the building on October 10, around 8pm, half an hour after the family arrived. The explosion leveled all three floors of the building and destroyed parts of adjacent buildings and cars, killing 22 men, women and children, making it the deadliest attack in central Beirut since fighting began a year before.
The Israeli army did not issue any warnings before the attack, so the building was full of people. Israel reportedly targeted Wafiq Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s coordination and articulation unit, but Safa was never registered among the dead. Either he survived or he wasn’t there. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the attack or the lack of warning.
Rihab woke up in Beirut’s Zahraa hospital, unable to move. He had suffered serious injuries to his back and arm and would need at least two surgeries. She drifted in and out of consciousness. Everything in her mind, from laughing with her daughters at dinner to waking up in the hospital, was blank.
Credit, Jole Gunter
Photo caption, Rihab’s father, Muhieddine, and his mother, Bassima, in their Beirut apartment. “Rihab suffered immense pain,” Basima said
As he lay there that night, his family visited hospitals in Beirut. At midnight they were informed that Saeed and Tia were dead. DNA tests would be needed to confirm that Naya was also dead, as was another girl her age taken to the same hospital, as her injuries prevented direct identification.
Rihab’s doctors advised her family not to tell her anything. They feared that the news would be too much for her and that she would undergo major surgery. So for two weeks, as she underwent surgery and then recovered, her mother, Basima, made sure Saeed and the girls were treated at different hospitals.
But Rihab felt something was wrong and started insisting on seeing photos and videos of the girls. “He could feel it in his heart,” Basima said.
Eleven days after the attack, DNA testing confirmed that Tia was dead, and on the fifteenth day a hospital psychiatrist told Rihab that Saeed and the girls had left.
Credit, Joel Gunter
Photo caption, Rihab had to undergo surgery to place screws in his spine and wrist due to his injuries.
Crying or sleeping
Six weeks later, Rihab sat in a plastic chair in a Beirut apartment, with dark circles under his eyes and a gaunt face. She was still recovering from surgeries: Eight screws had been inserted into her spine and three more into her arm. She had been lying down for a long time and now tried to sit more and walk a little, even though every movement caused her pain.
Naya’s eighth birthday was four days ago. Rihab spent his time “crying or sleeping,” he said. But I wanted to talk about your family.
“Naya was very fond of me and followed me wherever I went. Auntie loved her grandparents and was happy when I left her with them. They both loved to draw, loved playing with toys and missed going to school. They played at being a teacher and students together for hours.”
Credit, Personal archive / Rihab Faour
Photo caption, Naya and Aunt Faour were seven and nine years old when they were killed by an Israeli airstrike
Most of all, they loved watching TikTok videos together. Rihab and Saeed thought they were still too young to post their videos online, so Rihab filmed them dancing and playing and said he was posting the videos on the app, which seemed to satisfy them for now.
Saeed entered Rihab’s life in 2013. She grew up in Beirut, but her family visited the village of Mays El Jabal in the summer because it was cooler and surrounded by fields. That summer she met Saeed through mutual friends.
Rihab completed his law degree and began studying for a master’s degree, but the couple became engaged and later married, and Tia was soon born, so Rihab took a break from his budding legal career.
Now, in the midst of his loss, he began to tentatively think about studying again. “I’m going to need something to fill my days,” he said.
Credit, Joel Gunter
Photo caption, The temporary grave where Saeed, Naya and Tia were buried. The cemetery was severely damaged by an Israeli airstrike
Tombstones destroyed
Saeed and Tia were buried the day after their deaths, by Rihab’s father and uncles, in temporary wooden coffins in an unmarked grave in Dahieh. Two weeks later, the men of the family again dug a grave in the same place and buried Naya.
Rihab’s uncle placed two branches of artificial cherry blossoms on the grave for the two girls, and later someone else placed a wreath for someone who was buried next to them.
Then an Israeli airstrike hit the building directly adjacent to the cemetery, and the resulting shock wave and debris destroyed the gravestones and raised the earth around them.
Around the same time, another Israeli airstrike hit the family’s home in Dahieh, destroying several items Rihab wanted to keep, including two new school uniforms, which were never used.
Soon after, all this ended. A ceasefire announced late last month has allowed thousands of displaced people to return to their villages in southern Lebanon.
Rihab and Saeed’s village was heavily bombed by the Israelis and the family’s home was destroyed, his uncle said, but Rihab could not return home anyway, because he would need to wear an orthopedic brace for a few more months, and not can. voyage.
As joy spread across Lebanon at the news of the ceasefire, new photos emerged of Wafiq Safa, the alleged target of the bomb that killed Saeed, Tia, Naya and 19 others. Safa had not been seen in public since the attack, but appeared to be alive and well.
*Additional reporting by Joanna Mazjoub. Photographs by Joel Gunter.
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