Who's under attack

Good question... I am not under attack that's for sure. The Hezbollah-free areas are not under attacks. In other terms, the North (Tripoli and Batroun) is not in war, Mount Lebanon itself is not, even East beirut and the Northern suburbs (all christian) are not, Zahle is not really under attack just the surrounding regions.

In fact in Jounieh (where I live) which is part of Mount Lebanon, we hardly notice that there is any war going on, even the market didn't close. The maritime port was bombed and on Saturday the attack on the TV/Radio/Cell phone antennas were frightening because we heard them and we saw the smoke in the mountain next to us; but nothing dangerous so far. Life supplies are available, and everything's very peaceful, I am even able to post this, right?

The regions next to the bombings are safe but the psychological pressure's too much. A friend of mine is from Jezzine - South Lebanon (Aoun's homeland ,hehe yes I have Aounist friends), only she doesn't live in Jezzine, in fact none of her family lives there, she only goes there from time to time and they have frinds there. Everybody's safe for now, the Israelis aren't bombing Jezzine, well Hezbollah doesn't dare to enter that town, especially not anymore so no danger for them to get forced into this conflict. Never the less the psychological pressure is big, they can't live because of the siege and they constantly here the explosions everywhere around them, even in my friend's house (here in Adonis) things are crazy, my friend's mom actually doesn't let her daughter leave the house.

My elder brother who lives with my uncles in Hadath, the Northern suburbs of Beirut, and he describes the situation as intolerable. The Northern suburbs themselves weren't attacked, except for when the trucks were being bombed, that bombing was only 200m away from my bro's place. For the first time that night since the start of the war my brother had managed to fall asleep . And he didn't even wake up when the attack took place, lol he desperatly needed to sleep! He woke up at the screaming voice of one of my uncle (U#3 if you remember), my uncle was crying to wake Zouzou up, because huge blocks of glass had landed on my brother, at the same time my uncle didn't want my brother to wake in shock or make any sudden moves, he feared he might cut himself with some of the glass. My other uncle (the youngest of my uncles) was sleeping in the other room, and the funny part's that my uncle didn't exactly wake up at the moment of the incident, he was only half awake when he felt that he was removing big heavy things off his body on the bed and throwing them next to him on the floor, then all of a sudden he took conscious that he was removing glass! At that moment he froze, and slowly moved out of his bed.

The doors are heavily damaged and all the glass is on the floor now. The next day my brother came home, work in the Hadath branch now has stopped and my brother's enjoying a well earned vacation home. My uncles are sleeping in the North (at my aunt's place and my dad's uncle's place) but everyday they are going back to Hadath, that's almost a 90 minutes ride, to be honest it's not a very safe ride either. But my uncles are saying there's not danger what so ever. In fact they don't want to leave the building unpopulated, because Lebanese military forces are occupying any building that's totally deserted. It's really weird to think about this. This is so much like the civil war! And at war times you come to think about how precious, or should I say "cheap", life is. People are willing to risk there lives in order to preserve there homes.

Beirut's abandoned and work's off. My dad's still going to work in Hazmieh that's the city where Gebran was assassinated in the 12th of December (I wonder what would have he said right now...No wonder Lebanon's dying, its protectors have died, we killed them.) Anyway enough about our heroes, as I said my dad's going to work, but he's hardly working a few hours/day (he usually works more than 12 hours/day) because there's no one there and when electricity goes off he can't run the moteur on his own, and besides his back is killing him right now.

Personally I had spent last week in the North, in Batroun, family visit worthy of a blog all for itself! The first impact of the war was reduced by my presence there. The first time that Jounieh was attacked (the port in Jounieh) I was still there so I didn't even here it.

Now back to Jounieh... In Jounieh you could almost say we are not concerned with the war. We sit at home, watch TV, talk about politics, curse Hezbollah, most of the times we end up cursing the Israelis too. We are not scared for our lives but we see the children dying and we can't help remember all the kids that we had lost before, and we can't help to think about the children that we have. What hurts the most is knowing that everything we, the Lebanese have worked for in the past 15 years is now nothing but ashes.

So many sad scenes.