Save the Children runs a session on hygiene promotion at the Tyre Technical School, in southern Lebanon. Photograph: Chris MaddaloniAt a certain point on the road from Beirut to Tyre the cars thin out a little. Ads featuring Bazooka energy drink and the Nesquik rabbit are replaced by empty hoardings and soon the road is flanked by the yellow flags of. As we get closer to Tyre there are images of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah as well as tributes to dead Hizbullah fighters.
In 2006 when the Israelis bombed the region, they used megaphones to tell the villagers to evacuate . This time there were no warnings. It took Nawal and her family a few days before they realised it was too dangerous to stay. “I never thought it would really happen and would be like this,” says Sara.
What do they miss? Amal talks about her cat and her morning routine: having 5am coffee, feeding the hens and going to the fields. Sometimes when she thinks of how her life has changed, she cries but she doesn’t let her sister see. She prefers to make jokes. “Someday we will all die so why not laugh together.”
His younger daughter is colouring in a colouring book on a rug. The room is divided with a makeshift curtain. Ten of his family sleep here. Another five sleep in another room. He also looks after his disabled elderly mother: he showers her, dresses her, holds her when she needs comfort. He is used to war. He remembers 2006. Left to his own devices he would have “stayed and died there”. But little children “cannot deal with the sound of bombing”, he says. Now he’s not sure what there will be to go back for. “Everything is dried out and everything is dying. It might not be possible to replant because of the phosphorous.”
When everything is too much, Mostafa walks to a nearby bench and sits alone. Hasan hides behind some nearby portaloos where nobody can see him. The whole time we are talking, Mostafa’s fingers have been fiddling with something. It’s his house key. He worries he will end up like the Palestinians, he says, left with just their keys.Everyone we meet here asks the Unicef reps if they can get fridges. It’s stiflingly hot. Food goes bad quickly and people get sick.
Because he has a military background, he says, he can’t handle “stupid people with their strategies. But if I contradict them it will turn into a clash, so it’s better for me to be by myself.” In the next classroom, a man in an O’Neill’s Edenderry rugby shirt shows me the raw and painful psoriasis on his arms. He and two of his children need expensive medication, that they can’t afford.