Title card:
A woman who was afraid to have her name used.
‘‘My husband and I and our family were sitting at home when we heard the sound of planes. So we and the neighbors who lived around us hurried to the shelter. A little later I saw my husband with three young men: they were saying, ‘Don’t be afraid, that’s not an Israeli plane circling overhead.’ So we weren’t afraid, because we knew it was a Syrian plane. We looked up at it and oh, the terror that was in store for us! It began bombing Tella al-Mir, and that’s when the slaughter began.’’
Title card:
Affaf Muhammad, age 32, mother of seven children, three still alive [continued].
‘‘… I carried my little daughter, who was no more than two weeks old, and my daughters Sonya and Abeer, who was only two. The rest of them held on to the hem of my dress. On the street, my children ended up without shoes. They walked over the rubble and glass, and blood ran from their feet until we reached the Hotel School. We stayed there from 4 am until 2 pm. My children were hungry and I’ll never forget the sound of Abeer’s voice as she says to me: ‘Mama, I want zaatar bread in a dish.’ ’’
Title card:
Fatima Mahmud, age 45.
“… They took the young men and lined them up in a single row with their faces to the wall, and began beating them on the back with wooden mallets until they fell down unconscious. They ordered some of them to kneel, and others to stand with their backs to the wall. They opened fire on the ones who were kneeling. Then they lit fires and heated iron bars in them until they were red-hot. Then they placed them in the shape of a cross on the stomachs of those who were standing. After that, they tied them up with ropes to cars and began dragging them around the streets. The women of that neighborhood were trilling the zaghareet at them and singing…”
Title card:
Jamila Qa’ur, age 32, mother of four girls.
‘‘… We got to the modern school and they started searching us. There was a Syrian officer with them. They found 75 lira on me and took it. Then the truck came. My children got in, followed by my mother and father, and finally me. I asked them about my daughters and they said that two of them got lost in the crowds of women and children. I began looking madly for them in the truck as I screamed in terror. After a few moments, I found them under people’s feet. The first had died and her body was blue, and the second was nearly dead. I started giving her first aid so I could save her life.
‘‘They made us get out of the truck on the highway. I wanted to get my daughter’s body out of the truck, but the gunmen refused and threatened to kill me. They wrapped her in the Lebanese cedar-tree flag and said, ‘Come on, take your daughter, give her to Yasser Arafat.’ Then they started shooting at us, even though we were standing next to the Syrians and Libyans in the Arab Security Forces, who didn’t lift a finger. In fact, we asked these troops for a little water for the children, but they refused, saying: ‘Now you’re making problems for us. Go get a drink somewhere else.’ So we kept clear of them until cars belonging to the resistance arrived. We got in, screaming, crying, and calling out, ‘Those poor Tel Zaatar boys!’ ’’
Title card:
Fawzia Mustafa Husayn, age 16.
‘‘A child was screaming and crying from hunger, so they asked his mother to quiet him down, but he didn’t quiet down. The Phalangist told her, ‘I’ll make him be quiet. Give him to me.’ He took him from her and threw him far away. He fell to the ground dead. Then he told her: ‘Now he’s quiet.’ ’’
Title card:
Affaf Muhammad, age 32, mother of seven children, three still alive [continued].
“… They brought tall, big trucks to transport families, so the women hurried with their children. Because there were so many people running to the cars, the bigger ones were stampeding over the smaller ones. When I had finished lifting my children onto the truck, I tried to get on, too, but the driver started off. I waved at him to stop and let me on, but he refused, and told me to get on another one. In fact, that’s what I did. I got to the Museum ahead of the truck that had my children. I waited there until the truck came, and they all got off, except for my children. In the end, my twelve-year-old brother got out and my five-year-old son Feisal, and my four-year-old daughter Norma. I asked about the rest of them and my brother said the people on it were stepping on them, which led to the martyrdom of three-year-old Suham and two-year-old Abeer. As for Sonya, who was nine, she got lost, and to this day, I still don’t know where she is, alive or dead. My husband was lost the same way.”
Title card:
Maryam Yaqub, age 45.
‘‘… The day we left the camp, my two children were with me. I told them, ‘Walk in front of us.’ I saw a girl who had been killed, and then I saw my son, killed, along with several young men. I cried and my husband, who is an old man, told me, ‘You’re crying now for our son, and soon enough you’ll be crying for me.’
‘‘At the Hotel School, they searched us, looking for cash and gold. Then the trucks came to take us and the isolationists got into the back of the truck to see if there were any men among the women and children. They took my husband out of the truck, took the money he had on him, and killed him. At another checkpoint, they took the children out of the truck, including my son Muhammad. When I saw the isolationist boarding the truck from the other side, I hid my son underneath me. I sat on him until the truck started moving…’’
Title card:
Randa Ibrahim al-Duqi, age 14.
“… The cats in Tel Zaatar were very fat because they would eat dead bodies. They were dangerous because they would attack people, once they had gotten used to eating them. Our fighters used to shoot at them…”
Title card:
Umm Nabil, age 45, mother of ten sons.
‘‘… I was making dough for bread for the fighters, along with a number of other women from the camp, when I found out that my son Kayid had been martyred. He was twenty-two. So I finished my dough and went to the place where they put his body. I kissed him and left him there, and went back. I didn’t tell his brothers so as not to break their spirits.
‘‘A week later, I learned that my son Faris, who was twenty-five, had been martyred, and I was able to endure it. No mother’s heart has endured more than that, but I willed myself to be strong because I was a source of strength for mothers whose children were martyrs. My son Nabil left the camp through Mount Lebanon, and to this day I don’t know what’s become of him. They assaulted the camp while I was there with my fourteen-year-old son Khalid. They lined up the men, took the girls, and performed intrusive, embarrassing searches on the women. My turn came and they asked me where I got a son like that from, since he had blond hair and green eyes, while I have dark skin. They said, ‘It’s a disgrace for a boy like that to be with the Palestinians.’ I answered back at them in a voice filled with defiance: ‘This boy is Palestinian — he’s my son, a son of Palestine.’ As soon as I finished speaking, they shot him. I showed no emotion, but stood fixed in place. They ordered me to walk over him, but I refused. I told them, ‘I know this is the end, and this is my fate, but we will never kneel, as long as we still have a single nursing baby.’ ’’