A Tough Homecoming for the Residents of South Beirut
BEIRUT — The china cabinet survived unscathed. Everything else in the modest two-bedroom apartment of Zuhair and Salwa Hamoud has been twisted and blown out.
The new window frames the 51-year-old Zuhair installed last year have been bent beyond recognition by the impact of nearby blasts. Glass, rubble and a mysterious tangle of aluminum littered their bedroom.
"Look at this," Zuhair said Monday, pointing to a door that had been shattered and splayed across a nearby wall. "Our building was never even hit. It's all from the air pressure."
Israeli warships pounded south Beirut until a few minutes before the 8 a.m. cease-fire agreement went into effect. Once the explosions stopped, first a trickle and then a flood of residents began returning to their crushed neighborhoods to check on their homes. They rummaged through the piles of rubble, mangled cars and shaken apartment blocks for personal belongings even as some buildings continued to smolder into the early afternoon.
The Hamouds fled their home to stay with relatives in downtown Beirut on July 14 amid Israeli warnings that their neighborhood, a stronghold of the Islamic militant movement Hezbollah, would be targeted. They were preparing a snack of cheese and fruit when panic struck. The Israeli bombs were getting nearer. The couple and their four children went to a family's house near the city center, taking a change of clothes and some toiletries. They expected to be back the next day.
A month of continuous bombings later, the baker and his wife returned without the kids to this once vital quarter of 12-story apartment buildings, joining in a somber procession of misery.
Like hundreds of others, they shuffled along a trail of crushed apartment blocks and twisted electrical and phone wires. A bombed highway overpass lay on the street. Hands clamped mouths as whiffs of rotting flesh and produce wafted through the air. School textbooks lay crumpled and charred. "The bee lives in a hive," said one page in English.
They lumbered over huge mounds of rubble, grasping reinforced steel girders as they pulled themselves up and over.
Along the way, teary-eyed young couples, some carrying duffel bags stuffed with a few salvaged belongings, gazed despondently at crushed heaps of building material that once sheltered them.
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, pledged on television Monday night to help rebuild homes and provide shelter for the homeless.
