“I remember the soldiers came from this side, they climbed on the roof and came down. Abu Mahmoud left from the front door and went to the mosque where most men escaped to take shelter,” Umm Mahmoud tells me as we sit in her home in Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp, where decades ago war raged as Israel and its proxies laid siege to Palestinian life in Lebanon.
“I do not know how he was saved. In the War of the Camps, I happened to have had three big bags of flour, each weighing thirty kilos. I made bread with my sister every single day for the fighters and my eight kids until I had none. In times of siege, this is what people do; they share what they have. I had no idea the siege would take so long,” she tells me. “My eldest was eight. He started to starve and it is hard to tell kids there is no food, let alone telling them there is a siege. I looked on top of the closet and saw a big jar with something round. I thought I had some fava beans and was happy, and I promised Osama he would have food, but when I grabbed the jar, all it had were small balls. I had collected them. It was wishful thinking. My kids spent nights crying.” ….more
