“I am Hassan from the Beqaa... You do not know me, neither in peace nor in war”

I never realized that our stories would amount to little more than a breaking news headline—a brief summary in one simple sentence. For here is the Beqaa, marginalized in both peace and war.

Here is the Beqaa, marginalized in both peace and war.

I always choose to set off from Beirut to visit family in Beqaa at five in the evening. This way, my journey would line up perfectly with the sunset over Dahr al-Baydar road. I wait for the van to fill up with passengers at the airport bridge and enjoy a coffee along the way—a tradition shared by all passengers heading to Beqaa and Baalbek.

On the road, I put on my earphones to listen to my favorite songs, drowning out Wadih el-Cheikh, whose voice and songs sit heavily on the chests of everyone in the van. I often find myself thinking, "What issues or story ideas should I send that need more focus in my journalistic work?" Many of these stories are found in the daily conversations between passengers. All I have to do is mention or pose an issue in the van, and I’ll hear perspectives from different regions and people, each adding their own angle followed by the famous phrase: “God help us, my friend—no one cares about us, neither in peace nor war.”

I never thought we would die in this silence. I never thought we would contend ourselves with a wave of rushed phone calls after each airstrike to check on our loved ones who fled to nearby villages and refused to take refuge in the streets of Beirut, instead choosing their children’s schools as makeshift shelters.

A breaking news story summarizing our death

Despite all the marginalization, I never expected that one day, we would be silently wiped out when Israel intensified its aggression on Lebanon. Words that once sought an angle to capture our struggles in times of peace now fall short of describing the massacres we endure in wartime. Our tragedies are happening in places far from public view, far from the eyes of the press, and the institutions that contend themselves with a handful of images of Israeli strikes across the country.

I never imagined that our lives would be reduced to one brief line in the news: "A massacre took place in [name of area] in the Beqaa," followed by the number of the killed and wounded, and then images of the destroyed buildings. A quick picture or video taken from social networking sites is played, and then the story simply ends and passes unnoticed. I never thought we would die in this silence. I never thought we would contend ourselves with a wave of rushed phone calls after each airstrike to check on our loved ones who fled to nearby villages and refused to take refuge in the streets of Beirut, instead choosing their children’s schools as makeshift shelters.

In the Beqaa, we’ve always known we wouldn’t obtain our right to life within this country. But what I hadn’t realized was that we wouldn’t obtain our right to die either, not even to tell our stories. How did we die? Or how did we "survive"? Or how are we "holding on"?

I used to listen to the people of my village, Ali El Nahri—its women, elders, and men—constantly talking about the land. I would wonder to myself, “Why this obsession?” And, “Why is the land their refuge?” With time, I grew up and understood that the land is all they have left—or rather, it’s all they own. I realized they were ‘tuffar,’ that we are ‘tuffar,’ the forgotten ones. No one asks about us. True, we live in a so-called state, but only on paper. No, we live in a state, but always on the margins of everything.

They’ve cast us out, made us outlaws with their incomplete and deficient policies. They’ve turned us, the children of the Beqaa, into ‘wanted’ people, though we don’t know why. Over time, this accumulated and only deepened my sense of alienation from the so-called "state." I remember how politicians used to come to us, from every party—the “resilience” parties, the “liberation” parties, the parties from the right and the left, and even the “family” parties. They came with smiles and promises that they’d take us by the hand and welcome us into the fold, into the paradise of a state they’d build for the people of Bekaa, so we could join other Lebanese who, until recently, had at least the bare minimum of rights. They said it would be a place where we would finally belong.

Despite all the marginalization, I never expected that one day, we would be silently wiped out when Israel intensified its aggression on Lebanon. Words that once sought an angle to capture our struggles in times of peace now fall short of describing the massacres we endure in wartime. Our tragedies are happening in places far from public view, far from the eyes of the press, and the institutions that contend themselves with a handful of images of Israeli strikes across the country.

We always knew we’d never truly have the right to life within the state, within this country. But what I hadn’t realized was that we wouldn’t obtain our right to die either, not even to tell our stories. How did we die? Or how did we "survive"? Or how are we "holding on"?

I never thought it would take the government’s machinery and bulldozers days to reach us, to lift the rubble off our bodies buried under the wreckage of Israeli hatred that bombed almost every corner of northern Beqaa. Some of these areas briefly attracted the state’s and TV stations' attention when the army demolished the house of “Abu Salleh,” the drug dealer, more than they did when those same areas were reduced to rubble by the Israeli aggression. Abu Salleh had been a wanted man for a long time, but no political decision to arrest him was made until suddenly, they rushed to demolish his house—perhaps even more quickly than they responded to clear the debris from over our children’s bodies. Our hope for life and survival relies solely on our own hands, and nothing else.

I never thought it would take the government’s machinery and bulldozers days to reach us, to lift the rubble off our bodies buried under the wreckage of Israeli hatred that bombed almost every corner of northern Beqaa.

Discrimination, even in Israel's evacuation warnings

Even the spokesperson for the Israeli military, Avichay Adraee, distinguishes us from the rest of the South and the suburbs of Beirut when issuing evacuation warnings before their strikes.

When he posts evacuation warnings on his social media account, saying, “For your safety, you should keep 500 meters away from these buildings,” the warning circulates online, and we open the images, finding nothing related to our areas. We know he’s lying, hiding a deeper desire to kill us. But despite this, we need just a quarter-hour, or even less, to grab our children’s toys, whatever savings we might have, and some clothes so we don’t stand bare under the open sky.

We want the world to hear us. The world? We want the Lebanese people to hear us before the world. We are here; can you see us waving from beneath the rubble of homes in Karak? Since independence, we’ve been trying to say, “We are here.” Today, we’re trying to say, “We are being killed.” Remember us.

We need less than 500 meters to escape our homes, to survive yet another massacre. Our villages are close to each other, even adjoining, a result of displacement dating back to the Ottoman occupation. We lived near each other to create a sense of shared and collective awareness, to feel that we existed.

We need these false warnings, which have become a grim fixation for the Lebanese people who were forcibly displaced from the villages of the South and the Beirut suburbs, just to feel like we are on equal footing with them in our displacement. Do you understand what that means? To wish to be treated equally in displacement, and not be wiped out in silence?

I used to listen to the people of my village, Ali El Nahri—its women, elders, and men—constantly talking about the land. I would wonder to myself, “Why this obsession?” And, “Why is the land their refuge?” With time, I grew up and understood that the land is all they have left—or rather, it’s all they own.

We want the world to hear us. The world? We want the Lebanese people to hear us before the world. We are here; can you see us waving from beneath the rubble of homes in Karak? Since independence, we’ve been trying to say, “We are here.” Today, we’re trying to say, “We are being killed.” Remember us.

And me, who am I? I am Hassan Sindyan, yet another marginalized, forgotten person from Ali El Nahri in the Beqaa. You do not know me, neither in peace nor in war.

* The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Raseef22