TYRE, LEBANON — Hiba Qassir dreams of making movies. She's ambitious and precocious enough. At 18, she's taught herself how to edit video and sound on a computer, and has her sights set on directing gripping social and psychological dramas.
But if the movie business doesn't work out, that's OK. She has other dreams: perhaps to become a cop or a pilot. Or maybe a suicide bomber.
"Martyrdom is the shortest way to heaven, and the history of martyrdom is not like any history," Hiba says. "It made victory. We wouldn't have achieved victory without these martyrdoms."
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Hiba wears a colorful head scarf and faded bluejeans and running shoes under a black cloak as she gives a tour of Hezbollah's annual "martyrdom" exhibit here in this southern port city.
Cheery and rosy-cheeked, she helpfully guides visitors past mannequins of guerrilla fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, and placards chronicling suicide operations against Israeli troops during the Jewish state's two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon. Recorded sounds of machine-gun fire, helicopters and walkie-talkie chatter fill the halls of a drab brick community center on the outskirts of Tyre.
"Here is some information about each martyrdom operation," she informs a small tour group.
She points to a hall lined with posters adorned with artificial flowers. "The first one was in 1982 here in Tyre," she says. "You can see that [late Israeli leader] Yitzhak Rabin said that this operation took the lives of many people, especially those with special qualities and skills."
That suicide bomber was 18, just like her, when he drove an explosives-filled Peugeot sedan into the Israeli command post here on Nov. 11, 1982, and killed 75 Israeli soldiers, border guards and intelligence officers, according to Lebanese accounts. Israel has long maintained that the blast was an accident, caused by a gas leak.
His name was Ahmad Qassir, and Hiba is particularly proud of her uncle, martyr No. 1 in the official history of Hezbollah's long war against Israel.
"Israel usually says that these people are hopeless people and lovers of death," Hiba says. "But we always say that martyrdom is our way to heaven."
Hiba says she feels bored with kids her own age. All they want to do is shop at Beirut Mall, gossip and chitchat about clothes and makeup. She'd rather spend a free afternoon at the swimming pool or visiting the Internet cafe to surf the Web for news of the world.
She's a dutiful daughter, baby-sitting her three younger sisters without complaint. Her mother, Samar Qassir, 38, who stopped attending school when she was married at 14, is immensely proud. Her parents let Hiba do mostly as she pleases, shuttling from the bustle of the capital, Beirut, where they live, to the farmlands of the south, to visit relatives.
But that's not enough for her. She wants to learn about the world, to travel. That's why she eagerly took up the temporary job of playing English-speaking tour guide for the three-week martyrdom exhibit, a chance to interact with foreigners and dignitaries, as well as make a little cash before she begins college next month. She spends all the extra money she makes as a docent on movies, books and software to help her prepare for her filmmaking career.
The martyrdom exhibit and similar shows are part of an occasional series of public multimedia installations organized by Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite political organization and militia that is a state unto itself within Lebanon. Like recent exhibits about the late Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah in Nabatiyeh and another in Beirut last year about the summer 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, this one is filled with captured Israeli weaponry and giant posters of Israeli leaders in anguish.
Grim-faced portraits of the father of Iran's revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah's spiritual and political guideposts, stare out at visitors.
Parents bring children to walk through the exhibit, past the posters of martyrs and works of art commemorating their deeds, which usually involved ramming vehicles packed with explosives into Israeli positions. A preteen boy with a messy mop of brown hair takes photographs of mannequins of bearded Hezbollah fighters praying in the battlefield.
"This operation was done by Ibrahim Jamil Daher," Hiba says, pointing toward one of the displays. "It was first a battle against a team of 22 Israelis. It wasn't supposed to be a martyrdom operation. But when he found it was a good opportunity to make such an operation, he took advantage of the situation and did it."
She adds with satisfaction: "It took the lives of so many Israelis."
