“During the siege, five of my sons died as martyrs in the camp. When we left Zaatar, I took with me the shirts that belonged to my martyred sons, so I could smell their precious scent… I learned that they dragged my husband: they tied his feet with a rope to separate cars, and then started driving.”
Title card:
Zaynab Umm Ali, age 40, mother of ten.
‘‘Abu Aboud met with me individually. One day, at 11 pm, he knocked on the door. I quickly opened it, and there was Abu Aboud, and George Hazini with him. The first one hit me and the second one shouted. ‘You coward,’ I told him. That’s when my children came out, asking, ‘What do you want with my mother?’ He took me to see Ahmad al-Azuri. Abu Ahmad beat me five times with a whip. I stayed there for eleven hours. I slept on the floor with my hands over my eyes… They kept me in jail with them for three days…
‘‘Then the resistance came and killed the agents. I began working in the young men’s military camp… When the siege of the camp began, a bomb landed, and made a martyr of my sick husband. It also made a martyr of my daughter while she was going to see her father… Suddenly Sobhi Iraqi and Hasan Shahrur came to the shelter and said, ‘We want some young men to fetch the martyr Namr,’ but no one moved. My grown son, who was sixteen, and I went and we removed the martyr Namr. On the way back, my only son was martyred. My son — there was nothing dearer to me than him, except Palestine, because he was my only son among nine daughters.’’
Title card:
Nuzha Hasan al-Duqi, age 65, mother of five sons and grandmother of ten.
“… When the events started, my son Ahmad, who was thirty-eight, returned from a trip. He was carrying a gift from a friend of his to his wife and sons in Jdaide, and he didn’t return. We found his body after three months in a morgue there.
“During the events, my son Jalal was martyred by a bomb. One day my daughter Fatum went to fill the water buckets and didn’t come back, since a bomb struck her and she was martyred instantly.
“When the shelter collapsed, my son Ali was working to remove the rubble. The isolationists aimed a projectile at him and he fell down and died a martyr.
“When the camp fell, my husband and his three sons and my grandsons went out. The isolationists blocked their way at the church, and stood my three sons up against the wall and began beating them with wooden clubs on their backs with all their strength until they fell down. And they killed one of my grandsons. I cried and screamed, but my grandchildren wanted me to be quiet so the gunmen wouldn’t take them… When we arrived at the hostel, they began having fun with us, and once they told us to run up to the third floor with a hail of bullets behind us. We would run and shove each other, hiding behind each other… Finally, they took us out to the street and made us get into trucks. I stood next to my husband, who clung to the truck’s metal railing… The gunmen brought out young men and killed them in groups in front of us. My husband cried; one of the gunmen noticed him and took him down from the truck. They began torturing the young men in front of him, then they killed him, and he fell to the ground. My grandchildren screamed in terror, so they fired bullets at us and we quickly got down from the truck, without thinking. My grandchildren were all lost, so here I am, living alone. I have no one left.”
Title card:
Su’ad Salih, age 42, mother of five sons.
“When the siege began, I had 10 kilograms of flour in my house, so I made dough out of it, baked it, and sent the bread to the fighters. I used to make tea and coffee for them at night. Then the electricity was cut, so we would make candles for the hospital. We got the wax from a nearby warehouse. My son would bring it and we would place it over the fire to melt it, then we would pour it into meat and sardine tins, and put a wick in it. After it hardened, we would cut the can and take the candle out. We got to be very good at it, and started taking X-ray images, rolling them up and tying them in place, and then we would pour the wax in. After pulling it apart, we would get a beautiful, slender candle…”
Title card:
Fatima Iwad, age 22, nurse.
“Ever since the siege began, I was working night and day to secure food and water for the wounded. Many of them were dying for lack of medicine. We had nothing to sterilize wounds with except water and salt. Ten days before the camp fell, we were waiting, one day after the next, for the arrival of the Red Cross to evacuate the wounded, but it only came three days later — after the camp had been cut off from the world for forty-two days… Around eighty wounded were evacuated, and the next day 150, and on the third day 750, along with several nursing infants suffering from dehydration.
“The night the camp fell, we were told that there were guarantees from the Red Cross and the Arab Security Forces to transport without objection those people living in the camp who surrendered. The next morning, we waited from 9.30 am, at the place where it was agreed that the Red Cross would be at 9 am. But during that time, the bombardment grew insanely intense, and the isolationists entered the camp. We were told that Red Cross trucks were in Dekwane to transport the wounded and civilians, so a group of us — nurses, along with several inhabitants — headed that way. But a barricade manned by Phalangists stood in our way: they searched us, while heaping curses on us. At the next barricade, the isolationists took the male nurses, tortured them, and killed them before our eyes…”
Title card:
Fatin Badran, age 23.
“I joined other female volunteers to establish a medical center in the fortified area, under the guidance of the doctors of Tel Zaatar. The night the fortified area fell into the hands of the isolationists, I was with my grandmother in the shelter. All the families in the shelter had Lebanese citizenship except for me and my grandmother. We became more afraid.
“The isolationists entered the district and began firing bullets through the windows and doors into the shelters that were crowded with women, children and old men, since the young men had joined the Tel Zaatar fighters. Then they moved us to the entranceway of another building, without knowing we were Palestinians. A little later, the isolationists brought people who recognized their friends who were among us, so they took them and left. The only people who remained were me, my neighbor and another neighbor woman who was called Wadad Qusur. At this point, my fear grew more intense, so she began reassuring me and telling me that she had friends who would come and take her, and that she would take us with her. But bombs fell on us and we got separated. We walked until we met a Palestinian family carrying Lebanese identity cards, and we went with them in a car. The driver asked us if we were Muslims or Christians, saying, ‘If you’re Muslims, then you’ll have to get out at the Christian neighborhood of Sin el Fil.’ But I persuaded him to take us to the edge of the Muslim neighborhood of Furn el Chebbak.”
Title card:
Haya Feriha, age 20.
“In our free time, we would prepare the arsenals for the fighters’ weapons, and I took part in an assault operation along with the martyred Samira Badran on the front lines in Hazmiye. We returned safely after destroying an armored car, although one of our men was hit. We let them know that we wanted to be with the heavy artillery (the anti-tank guns) on Tella al-Mir, and they agreed, but when I let them know that I wanted to be trained in how to use it, the fighters laughed since they were sure that women couldn’t do jobs like that — they could only talk about it. But I was determined to prove to them I could. I really trained, and began by firing fifteen rockets at the opposing position, and I grew more devoted to the revolution. They showed they were prepared to train a squadron of female fighters.