For one woman, evacuation is a beginning to problems – not an end
THAT HARROWING film Sophie’s Choice made a mother choose which of her children to save in a time of evacuation. The same choices are facing the citizens of Lebanon now.
Should they stay or should they go?
I spoke to one dual-nationality British woman who had decided not to take the chartered flight back to the UK arranged through the Sovereign base at Akrotiri, and instead base herself in a tourist hotel on the outskirts of Larnaca.
Jane Brown is four months pregnant. Her husband, though Lebanese, was entitled to accompany her, he has decided to stay at their small hotel in Beirut, just ten minutes drive from the airport. Why?
“We have put our life savings into the hotel, it is all we have. This year has been a good year and we were looking forward to the summer when we were fully booked. Our future seemed secure, we have a child on the way.”
At this point she began to cry. ”My husband was worried that if he left, people would come and loot the hotel, destroying all we had made. It has happened before.”
“Please do not mention my name or the hotel, but we hate Hizbollah. We just want peace and we want to be normal people, leading normal lives. I could not believe it when Israel bombed the airport. We had French guests staying – no one could believe it. Then it just got worse. We got our information from the internet and the guests contacted the French embassy. I think they left via Damascus. Everything became chaotic.”
She said she had pathetically little in her suitcase. “Just a few clothes, some jewellery and photos of my family.”
Until today, she has been able to talk to her husband by mobile phone, now she was panicking as the line is dead. She wanted to get to an internet caf? to see if she could contact him.
”It’s a living nightmare,” she said, made all the more surreal for the view from her window of a clear, blue Mediterranean with a beach crowded with bikini-clad holidaymakers.
“It’s not just us – it’s our staff too. We have maids from the Philippines, how will they survive with no money and nowhere to live?”
Jane hopes her husband will get on a ship and that he will find a way to contact her. She hopes that she will get her life back, but she is choked with fear.
“It looks like paradise here, but I’m in hell. I fear he won’t make it and I just pray he survives and doesn’t make himself a hero. I think he is going to stay and fight, he’s a reservist and will most likely will see it as his duty.”
In Nicosia, I talked to Rosemary and her partner David, a Briton working for a charity in Lebanon.
An old hand in the Middle East, she had been transferred to Beirut about a year ago. Now she has set up her office in central Nicosia trying desperately to stay in touch.
Her British colleagues are now all out, the last arrived on Sunday, but many local Lebanese staff who were given the opportunity to leave have decided to stay. Unable to face leaving their homes to be ransacked and looted, or having to make the terrible decision to leave elderly and sick parents behind.
Now she says she fears the “hidden hands with their own agendas”. Her largest worry that the people will not remain united, that the country will deteriorate into total civil war.
David chips in, “We are the lucky ones, we had choice. The ones I feel most sorry for are the ones with no choice.
“Many of the migrant workers employees take their passports as security, many aren’t registered as they are working illegally. Then there are the 400,000 Palestinians in the refugee camps.” He goes on to tell me how these people have no rights, no documents, they cannot work and they cannot leave.
Poor as the dusty encampments they live in, they are the landless masses caught in a No Man’s Land. It is not surprising that Hizbollah, who helps support and educate them, may find its recruits among them in the days ahead.
A British Official says, “I haven’t seen many poor evacuees arriving in Cyprus.”
It’s probably true. The way out for the thousands with no money will be via Syria, on foot or bundled into trucks. As Cyprus is forced to put up “No Vacancies” signs, we should once more think about those on the road to Damascus: damned if they stay and damned if they go.
For some, poverty and lack of documentation will not even provide that choice. As fares of $100 are being quoted to get a choked ride on a cattle truck to the border, as roads and bridges continue to be destroyed, it is always the ones with least who will suffer the most.
??
??
??
??
