BABY WITH BLUE PACIFIER
By Kursat Bayhan
Zaman Online, Turkey
Aug. 9, 2006
Lebanese children are dying every second before reaching the spring
of heir lives, from bombs and the ongoing atrocities in their country.
I have been in the southern Lebanon city of Tyre for quite a while.
Ironically, we are staying at the house of an Armenian family, owing
to its relative safety. We decided to move here after an apartment
block and a six-storey building, just 200 meters from the basement
of the house we had rented, was completely razed by an Israeli bomb.
Madam Laila is the youngest daughter of an native Armenian-Lebanese
family. Although she still harbors anger against the Ottoman Empire,
she fried potatoes and made us salad in her tired state. When I told
her, "Auntie Laila, the food is exactly the way my mom prepares,"
she was pleased to hear that and smilingly invited me to the table.
We are staying in the hallway of the house with three Spaniards,
a North Korean and a Canadian. In the evenings, we talk about the
Israeli bombardments we see all day long. Israel is continuously
bombing areas near the Lebanese cities of Qana, Aytarun and Tyre. We
hold our breaths with every explosion and try to guess the distance
between the house and the explosion. Suddenly, I remembered the
carnage I witnessed at the very last moment in Qana, where 57 people
were killed. I think the whole world should extract a lesson from
the picture of the baby, with his blue pacifier, who was dug out of
the debris of destroyed buildings.
Sometimes I watch the reactions of Spanish journalist Monica. She
cannot help jumping whenever a bomb explodes and weeps for children
near explosion sites.
Israel continues to bomb southern Lebanon in order to create a
buffer zone and we can only drive towards the south when the air
strikes stop. I keep telling our driver Mohammed to continue driving
regardless of the bombings and explosions. Although the UN and the
Red Cross are doing virtually nothing to alleviate the suffering of
the people in the area, local rescue teams are trying to clear roads
in order to reach civilians trapped in isolated towns. Some sources
say 200 women and children are waiting for help in Aytarun. Although
Aytarun is 35-40 kilometers from the UN post in Tyre, these people
have been cut off from the rest of the world for 21 days.
When we arrived at our destination, women and children were in
desperately waiting to be rescued from this inferno. We made every
effort to comfort crying mothers and children. When I entered one of
the houses, I saw a dead body on the floor next to the photographs
of his family. I ran out of the building as soon as I took his photo.
We told the villagers we could give them some help though we were
journalists, not aid team. They only asked if they could find a safer
place for their families. The stench of dead bodies overwhelmed the
smell of gunpowder in the streets. "A 48-hour-long air bombardment
has stopped," I tried to comfort them. These 200 people had to leave
their hometown, Aytarun, in overloaded buses.
How long will the world remain a silent spectator to these massacres,
I asked myself? Israel continues bombarding the area and the UN team
only cleans up the debris after Israeli bombings. Meanwhile, babies
are being killed with pacifiers hung from their necks. Parents are
mourning for their children; only the photographs remain…
Shall we see an end to this war, shall peace come in the end?
The cities have been turned into ruins and people are dying every
second. Helpless people who do not know where the next bomb will
explode only hope that someone will help them someday. They can
neither cry for their destroyed homes nor for their dead children.
The only thing they can do is pray to God for help.