National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Day to Day 4:00 PM EST
June 8, 2007 Friday
A Year After War, Young Lebanese Men Look Ahead
ANCHORS: MADELEINE BRAND
It’s been almost a year since the war between Israel and the
Hezbollah guerillas of Lebanon. Dozens of Israelis died in Hezbollah
rocket attacks on towns and cities in northern Israel. And across the
border, about a thousand Lebanese civilians died in Israeli air
strikes. The conflict changed lives on both sides of the border.
Today we’re going to hear the stories of two young Lebanese men. One
who sought a new life in America, and another who went back to his
roots in southern Lebanon, just north of the Israeli border.
Reporter Shereen Meraji spent time in Lebanon as NPR’s Bucksbaum
fellow and part of the International Reporting Project. And here is
her report.
Mr. ANTHONY KOUYMJIAN (Lebanese): My name is Anthony Kouymjian. I’m
17 years old and I’m from Lebanon.
SHEREEN MERAJI: Anthony Kouymjian is a good-looking kid. He has dark
eyes with curly lashes and he’s smart. A Math whiz, he speaks four
languages.
Mr. KOUYMJIAN: (Speaking foreign language)
MERAJI: Anthony Kouymjian is a Christian Armenian from Antelias.
That’s a town just north of Beirut. He was born in the summer of
1989, during the final month of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. That
summer’s fighting was so bad, his mother left and went to Los
Angeles.
Mr. KOUYMJIAN: Again, my mom was pregnant and it was scary in
Lebanon. She just took a visa and by chance she just traveled to USA.
I was born lucky.
MERAJI: So Anthony is a U.S. citizen by birth, but he was raised in
Lebanon.
The Kouymjians run a family business in Beirut. It’s a corner flower
shop. Big red letters out front practically shout the name, Flowers
Anthony. Today is busy. Anthony’s father, Hogap(ph), ties a bow
around the bouquets, his sister Serene(ph) works to register, and mom
Maria helps to answer customer questions.
Ms. MARIA KOUYMJIAN (Flowers Anthony): We do the flowers, wedding,
everything like that. And we work on Sunday. We have no vacation.
It’s better for me to have no vacation, so that I don’t think very
much about my son.
MERAJI: When the war in Lebanon erupted last July, Anthony evacuated
with the other Americans. His aunt and uncle visiting from Los
Angeles helped persuade him to go.
Ms. KOUYMJIAN: They decided that the future for him is better in U.S.
I was crying inside, but I couldn’t tell him don’t go because I know
that it’s very difficult here. Sometimes at night, I wake – I say
where is he. I start to cry. I call him at five o’clock. He starts
talking, Mom, why you are awake? So this is my life.
MERAJI: Today, Anthony’s attending community college in Glendale,
California.
Mr. KOUYMJIAN: My life now (unintelligible) I go to college for three
to fours hours a day. Most of the time, I’ll be online, chatting with
my friends in Lebanon. Reading their messages, chatting with my mom.
That’s it. I don’t go out on Friday, Saturday. I don’t have a friend,
you know.
MERAJI: But as lonely as Anthony is, he’s not ready to go home, where
he says there’s always going to be war. He refuses to be the
third-generation owner of Flowers Antony.
Mr. KOUYMJIAN: No, I don’t want to takeover the shop. No, I want to
do something else. Because I think my dad – he’s a hard worker. If he
wasn’t in the States and he did all the things that he did in
Lebanon, right now he will be a millionaire. He goes to work at 5:00
in the morning, fix everything and close the shop at 11 o’clock at
night. I’d rather do something else with, like, less work with more
money.
Mr. ALI FADLALLAH: Ali. Ali Fadlallah.
MERAJI: Last summer’s war also prompted Ali Fadlallah’s move. Not out
of Lebanon, but back to his home village, almost astride the border
with Israel. Ali is a 21-year-old Shiite Muslim from Ainata. As a
teenager, he moved to Beirut to study and work, and when the war
broke out he was living in the Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah-controlled
suburb.
In Ali’s apartment, the power is out, but you can still make out the
faces on the martyrs poster overhead. Three women wearing hijab, two
young men and a baby boy – all killed during Israel’s war against
Hezbollah. Ali remembers the conflict, glancing up at the poster
every so often.
Mr. FADLALLAH: (Through translator) This war was tough because I lost
my family. It was very difficult for me. But we feel that as Shia we
were victorious. Maybe had we not won this war I would have never
returned to my village.
MERAJI: Okay. Where are we going?
Unidentified Woman: (Foreign language spoken)
Mr. FADLALLAH: (Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Woman: We’re going to where my family died.
MERAJI: It’s a three-hour drive from Beirut to Ainata. Ali walks
quickly down a dusty road through his village. It looks like a place
tourists go to visit ancient ruins.
Mr. FADLALLAH: (Foreign language spoken)
Unidentified Woman: And you can see here, there were old houses with
nice old stones. Very nice.
MERAJI: Piles of rubbles mark spots where houses once stood. The only
color is from the clothes hung on lines to dry, bright flags
signaling that people still lives here. Ali stops next to a hill made
of destroyed cement blocks. On his right a small construction crew
rebuilds a home, on his left a pile of rubble.
Mr. FADLALLAH: (Through translator) Here was the entrance. It was a
room of three meters by three meters, and 18 people were seeking
shelter in this.
MERAJI: Ali’s mother, Maryam, and younger sister, Zahira, were two of
the 18 people crushed when the Israelis bombed Ainata. Ali thinks the
building was targeted because his mother was sheltering a wounded
Hezbollah fighter. When the war ended, he came back to Ainata, to
this spot, to dig up the remains of his mother and sister. They were
buried under three storeys of rubble.
Mr. FADLALLAH: (Through translator) We looked at the bodies and we
tried to identify them. The heart of a son would recognize his
mother. I don’t know how to describe it. That was the hardest day of
my life. I don’t know how to describe it.
MERAJI: Ali says he used to play soccer with friends just a few
meters away from where his family died. His happiest memories are now
mixed with his saddest. But the sadness hasn’t stopped Ali from
coming home. He wants to return, rebuild and live in Ainata again,
for good.
Mr. FADLALLAH: (Through translator) I’ll come home and keep working
to build the most beautiful house and plant as many trees as I can.
My mother – may God have mercy on her – is like a flower. She handed
the flower to me so that I could go on with life. I’ll plant the
flower and keep on living.
MERAJI: For NPR News, I’m Shereen Meraji.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
