LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 7

      On the drive back to Beirut, a few days later, Hannah is aware of almost overwhelming tiredness. She has been to numerous encampments, has spoken to dozens of refugees and noted so many disturbing stories that she is not sure where or how she might begin telling them.

      Rifling through her bag, she takes out a thick pile of the small, lined notebooks she uses for interviews and attempts to sort through them. Would arranging them by region be best, she wonders, the regions in Syria from where the refugees have come or the areas of Lebanon where they consequently settled? Should she focus on communities, the number of Shia, Sunni, Christian or Druze who have fled, or is it more important that she keep the most horrifying stories uppermost in her mind, the family members killed in bombings, for example, the homes and communities destroyed, the injuries sustained, the accounts of children traumatized by what they have seen and experienced, the beheadings, beatings and barbarism they witnessed, or the anguish felt by their elders at leaving homes and property behind and the harrowing tales of escape?

      At moments like these, she recognizes the advantage photojournalists and television reporters have in covering tragedy; pictures say more than words ever could, their impact is immediate, their portrayal of suffering and urgency unequivocal. She suspects that whatever she eventually writes will not manage to express what she knows is true: the unyielding pull of despair, and, despite the odds, the inexorable reality of expecting something better.

      She thinks of their eyes especially, questioning, pleading and trusting eyes; she still feels the small hands of children grasping tightly on to hers; she pictures the recognition on the faces of the women and men she met of a shared humanity, of the potential in meeting like this, in chronicling these extraordinary events.

      Of all the images that struck her today, the one she cannot stop thinking about is the clothes line that had hung around the outside of one of the tents in the last encampment, the children’s clothes, a neat procession of trousers and shirts, jeans and pyjamas, diminutive and faded, appealing to her in a way she could not explain. Ahead, on either side of the dirt path, stretched two long rows of these makeshift tents, sheets of white tarpaulin with the UNHCR name and logo stamped on to them mounted on to wooden slabs to create a semblance of space, a suggestion of privacy. It would not have occurred to her that the refugees would be so proud of these simple dwellings, the men for having put them up with their own hands, the women for maintaining order in them, but this was exactly what she had sensed as her feet came to an abrupt stop and all she could do was stare at the clothes line in wonder.

      The skinny young man with the gelled-back hair who had agreed to show her around the campground when she first arrived stood beside her, quiet though clearly waiting for some sign of willingness on her part to go ahead with the tour. She had felt his presence like a hum on the outlines of her skin, was conscious of his expectation, but still she could not move.

      Above, the sky was blue, though she had a momentary impression of it descending gradually towards her in the breeze that touched her hair and blew gestures into the children’s garments, trousers lifting forward as if on a swing, a bright pink top simulating a wave with its sleeve.

      It astonished her that she could make out too the scenes that had unfolded behind her as she advanced: the tiny mobile clinic where a heavily bearded young doctor treated minor cuts and bruises and dispensed medications to a queue of refugees waiting outside; the movement of people in and out of the encampment with the sound of traffic from a nearby highway electrifying the air; the stench emanating from the filthy, rubbish-filled stream that ran alongside the camp which, according to the doctor, was the principal reason behind the infestation of parasites in the systems of so many of the children in the camp; the glassed-in café where she and the taxi driver had stopped for refreshment midway through their journey, the sweet, tangy taste of homemade lemonade and the little boy, brown and dirty, who had stood begging at the café entrance and smiled when she bought him a sandwich and a drink; the shopkeeper who had directed them to the encampment, muttering under his breath something about the plague of refugees who had descended on the area; the checkpoint they had passed earlier that morning on the road leading down to the eastern Bekaa, where young soldiers, one of whom had a cut on his cheek that oozed a thin trickle of blood down his face, waved them on; the trip from Beirut and she turning back to wave to Peter out of the car window, calling out that she would see him later that evening; and, most of all, the sudden indisputable certainty she had gained that in coming here, in being a part of this, however briefly, she was experiencing intervals of peace.

       Leaving the village of Bar Elias behind, we make our way back, Saturday-afternoon traffic leading through the town of Chtoura and on to the capital Beirut heavy and slow. In the back of the taxi, my journalist’s paraphernalia is scattered on the seat beside me: pencils and several notepads; copies of UNHCR reports listing refugee numbers, aid disbursement and other statistics; an old map so embarrassingly out of date that it describes Lebanon as a country of merely three million people, the majority of whom being Maronite Christians; and somewhere out of sight, hidden beneath the mess that also includes an empty water bottle and the remains of a packet of biscuits the driver and I shared on our way over this morning, is a disposable camera which I will have developed and give my colleague from England to use for reference when he takes the professional photographs that will accompany this article.

       The pictures, I know, will describe events in a way that no words, no matter how eloquent, ever can; will pull at heartstrings without the added encumbrance of intellect and reason. I put my pencil down and stare out at the shifting landscape, feeling remorse for the stories that slip from my fingers every time I attempt to write them down.