“When the camp fell, we resisted to the last, and finally I destroyed my weapon, according to instructions, and went with my family to Dekwane…”
Title card:
Amina Fariha, age 35.
“When the water supply was cut off from the camp, around fifteen women went to the well, and only six of us came back. A cup of water was worth a cup of blood…”
Title card:
Shaykha Ahmad Shahrour, age 32, mother of two.
‘‘We were keeping ourselves hidden from one house to the next, until we reached the well. There were Phalangist men there, occupying the heights nearby that overlooked the well. They were shouting at us, ‘Two at a time,’ and that’s when the shooting began. Sometimes we would stay out all night long but come back with no water, and the children would start crying and yelling, because they needed a drop of water instead of milk.
‘‘My little boy, one year old, was sick, so I took him to a doctor with the Red Crescent, but he said, ‘We don’t have any medicine.’ My son’s temperature went up to 40 degrees Celsius, and he became paralyzed in one leg. My husband was hit in the stomach and his legs. Before, I would tell him, ‘Leave this place, and secure our future for us,’ but he would tell me, ‘I won’t leave Tel Zaatar as long as it has a single stone left.’ He kept his promise and stayed there until the last moment, and to this day, I don’t know if he is alive or dead.’’
Title card:
Affar Muhammad, age 32, mother of seven children, three of whom are still alive.
“I went to the Red Crescent hospital on the main street of the camp, to see the wounded. Before I could get there, a bomb fell on the door of the shelter while my children were there, including my oldest daughter Amal, age eleven. She was martyred along with six children her age. After that, my health declined, and I was six months pregnant. The children were hungry and some died from thirst. Mothers nursed their children on the water from boiled lentils, and fever spread among the children. Some of them died of it, and others became dehydrated. By the time I went into labor, the bombing had grown intense, and my daughter was born on the stairs. I couldn’t sleep for a single moment.”
Title card:
Khazna Muhammad Salih, age 29.
‘‘… On the day the camp fell, I gave away the weapon I was carrying after they assured us that there were guarantees from the Red Cross and Arab Security Forces. I headed toward Dekwane along with several other women. At a roadblock near Studio Fawzi, a gunman tried to rip my clothes off, but I gave him all the money I owned. At the Hotel School, I saw a woman who was with the isolationists: she was wearing black and beating a boy around fifteen years old on the head and face with a pistol. Then she took him to a trash yard and while cursing the Palestinians, she killed him. I found my mother and brothers in the school. My mother tried to get a car to get us out of there, and my brothers were shaking with fear and terror. She paid a sum of money to the driver and we got in the car. I saw the isolationists tie a rope around the neck of a young man. They hanged him and then drove a car over his dead body. His flesh stuck to the ground. They did all that in front of his injured wife and his small children, who couldn’t utter a word.
‘‘The car took us a little way, and then stopped. That’s when I saw them bringing out a young man whose name was Muhammad Karum. After they got tired of beating him, they tied his legs to two cars, and his body was torn in half. As for my husband, who left through the mountains, we still haven’t heard anything about him.’’
Title card:
Feryal Shahrur, age 18.
“We ate nothing but lentils and dates. They would brew the tea with dates because there was so little sugar, but the tea ended up having no taste. The men would fight all day on only a little food and drink, and they would smoke rolled-up sage leaves and the leaves that birds eat…”
Title card:
Huriya Mustafa, age 20.
“On the day the heavy fighting started, my mother went out to fetch water, and suddenly she came upon a dead body on the ground. She went up to it, in the middle of all the bombs and rockets, and found that it was her son. Yes — it was my brother.
“On the day the camp fell, we came out by way of Dekwane. One of them came up to me and took one of my brothers. He hit him with the weapon in his hand until blood poured over his face. Then he emptied the bullets from his machinegun into his head. My brother turned toward us as if to say goodbye and fell to the ground a lifeless corpse. They took my third brother but my mother intervened to rescue him. She told them that two were enough, and to leave him to me because he was the youngest, but they paid no attention to her and shot him.
“They tried to take me with them but I refused. I didn’t budge an inch because I preferred to die. My mother intervened, pleading for help and crying. But they drove her off and opened fire on her, shooting her dead. I seized the opportunity: I picked up my youngest brothers and ran to escape.”
Title card:
Fatima al-Musa, age 45, mother of eight.
“I lost three of my sons, bearing in mind that my husband abandoned me, and didn’t help me with anything.”
Title card:
Fatima Badran, age 36, mother of nine sons.
“I went out while going to get water, and two days later my husband and sixteen-year-old son were martyred. My daughter Samira took care of me. She helped evacuate the wounded under heavy fire. She was hit in the neck and martyred instantly.
“When the camp fell to the enemy, I went out with my mother and father, and the rest of my children. They took my father and killed him. I turned to see him and saw him with blood gushing out of his body and his mouth as he shook on the ground. Just like the eight young men who were with us — they killed them all. I saw a boy with his mother: the gunmen took him and he was standing up against the wall, where the gunmen fired bullets into him from head to toe and he screamed, and his poor mother screamed, too, but they hit her with their rifle butts and they pushed us toward the Hotel School (Ecole Hotelière).
“We looked for a car that would take us to the Museum. The driver wanted 300 lira per passenger. We were shaking with fear: we didn’t have that much on us, so we waited for another car. That driver asked for 100 lira per passenger, so we got in and he took us as far as the Museum. They stood us up there against the wall and ordered us to cheer for Pierre Gemayel. They took four girls: they grabbed them by the arms and legs and threw them in the car, then they took my female cousin to a nearby room. She was pregnant and they forced her to take off her clothes and they tried to cut her stomach open…”
Title card:
Fawzi Shahrour, age 30.
“… I saw them rip open the stomach of a woman nine months pregnant, and in front of our eyes, the baby came out of her belly. The woman died instantly. Everyone was terrified, and no one could turn around to look…”
Title card:
Zaynab Umm Ali, age 40, mother of ten [continued].
‘‘… After he threatened me, he took my two daughters from me. He did that in order to rape them. I offered him all the money I had. I ran to his superior officer and kissed his feet, telling him, ‘Take anything but our honor’ — even after he had completely stripped my daughters before my eyes. I asked him, ‘Why are you doing this? You have no conscience if you’re going to machinegun the ten of us.’ One of them came and told him, ‘Let her go.’ Then they brought trucks. My children and I got in a truck. As we passed, they threw filthy water on us and slapped us with their shoes. We were driving over the corpses of young men and women. They gunned down eighteen young men at the Museum, sparing only women and children. They would ask women: how do you want your husband to die, by machinegun or a slit to the throat? A woman from al-Duqi was pulling her children along, but they stopped her and told her, ‘Bring your son here.’ She didn’t obey and started crying, so one of them beat her with the butt of his Kalashnikov and killed her son. They pulled out Abu Yasin and killed him right there in front of people. They ran the car over him and crushed him. They brought Suleiman, the military official for the Nationalist Front, and tied his legs to the truck and beat him.”