March 4, 2000

Dear Joanne and Donald,

What struck me most about the camps was not the poverty in which the Palestinians live. It wasn't the mishmash of chipped cinderblock houses without windows or doors; it wasn't the shabby tents covered with shreds of yellowed plastic, or the rank smell of moldering garbage and fresh sewage; it wasn't the pretty little girl and her mother scavenging a handful of edible greens in the horrifying filth of the refuse heap, or the little boy dressed in rags, seated on a dirty concrete step, trying to wrap snippets of kinked wire around a stick. It wasn't the shadowy pathways which tangle among the unforgiving hovels where 40,000 or 70,000 live destitute; it wasn't the rats which cut our visit to the other camp short, or even the nursery school with its three, colorless cracked-plastic toys. It was, in fact, the water, which seemed to pour out of nowhere, which flooded the muddy walkways and the single paved road, water which drained from old cavities in the concrete, which fell from jagged holes and ran down the sides of buildings, festering in cracks and flowing in rivulets; thick braids of water which streamed without interruption, or dribbles of water which kept a maniacal beat.

Our shoes were quickly soiled. No one had clean feet.

"Because Lebanese law doesn't permit permanent structures, there isn't much in the way of plumbing," explained our escort, Bassam, an attractive young man with thick dark hair.

Hana pointed to sheets of metal topping a cinderblock shelter. "That's why there's no roofs," she said. "Apparently you have to be careful in high winds because the--.... What's that stuff called?"

"Acier," said Malek.

Hana said that she didn't think it was steel.

I said I thought it was tin.

"Yes," said Malek. "Tin."

"Isn't that carcinogenic?" asked Hana, stepping carefully through the muck.

"Everything here is carcinogenic," said Bassam.

It smelled it. It looked it. And we were just on the perimeter of the Sabra camp, one of the better camps apparently.

"I wanted to take you to Ain al-Hilweh," said Malek. "There you'd really feel it. Here, you just get a taste. There the mud is up to your knees."

It was difficult for me to imagine Malek, a tiny woman nearing 70, wading through the sludge.

"Really," she repeated. "It's up to your knees. You can't even walk sometimes. They lay cardboard down and you sink anyway. You can't move, can't go anywhere. You really feel it then. What they go through."

"Wait here," said Bassam. "I have to turn on the generator."

We stood in the trash on a muddy patch between two buildings. One had a carpet for a door; the other had a real wooden door with a lock.

"This is our community center," said Malek.

It was difficult, given the context, to say, "how nice" or "what an accomplishment." But I said it anyway. The building in question was a cinderblock and tin structure like the rest, but it had glassed-in windows and a coat of fresh paint.

"They're so lucky to have your center to gather in," said Hana. "Most of them don't have the 75 cents to take a service taxi to town. That's true--isn't it Malek? They can come and go from the camps as they please?"

"But they have nowhere to go," she said. "And there are social issues. The Lebanese, you know...." Her voice trailed off, stymied by the English vocabulary, the delicate subject matter, or both.

"It's a dilemma," said Hana.

"Yes," I said. "A dilemma."

"A real dilemma," said Malek.

Three men, their clothes caked in filth, their arms smeared in grime, came up the path pushing a heavy wooden cart full of what appeared to be old machine parts. We looked at them; they looked at us. No one said, "Ahlan." The situation did not admit social niceties. To say that we were overdressed is putting it mildly. Both Hana and Malek were wearing casual basics, but the finest quality showed. And I was in one of my stylish, but understated, teacher outfits. The men took in all this and more. They noticed my blond hair and foreign features. One of the men wasn't wearing shoes, I realized, when I hid my gaze. But the walkway was so narrow, and the men were trying so hard not to dirty us with their maneuvers that I instinctively looked up as we pressed our bodies against Malek's building, hoping to avoid contact.

It was then that I saw his face. I hadn’t had the courage to look before. Although Bassam had led us down the main streets in two camps, dressed in all our finery, we hadn't dared to look anyone in the eyes. Or at least I didn't. Hana's solid gold necklace was tucked inside her sweater. Malek had pulled her pashmina tightly around her. I kept my eyes moving, roving, sweeping, anything but look directly at those Palestinian faces. But it was difficult to maintain social distance while pressed against a grubby wall with only a few centimeters between us. I felt his breath. He was about forty, unshaven, his skin smudged, his features fine, with thick dark lashes circling his eyes which were not curious, or distrustful, or even sharp with scorn. His eyes were utterly, completely indifferent. I quickly looked away, embarrassed at being there, at being me.

"They have--what do you call it--where they fix things," said Malek after the men had moved on up the path.

"Garages," said Hana.

"Machine shops," I said.

"Yes," continued Malek. "It gives them something to do. They have nothing to do. That's a real problem. They're forbidden by law to practice 60-some professions."

"72," said Hana.

"72, yes. And even the ones who are lucky enough to go to school, they can't work. There is no work. If there's a job, it goes to a Lebanese, not to a Palestinian. It's a real tragedy for the young men. They can't marry or have a career. Bassam is lucky. His father has a little money. He has a kitchen shop."

The generator kicked in--it's a sound we all know in Lebanon, a continual reverberation that never drops into white noise, which seems, sometimes, if you let it, to vibrate even within the skull. Many complain of insomnia because of those roaring dynamos. But the noise is just cosmetic; the real problem is the toxic fumes that the generators spew into the air. The camp reeked of their poison. Bassam opened the door and clicked on the lamp in the entryway. The room was shabby. Most of the paint had worn off the plaster, though the floor had been recently swept, with the chairs stacked at one end, old mattresses piled at the other.

"Here's my village!" said Bassam, pointing to the map of Palestine, a red gash on the wall.

"What's it called?" asked Malek.

"Dera'a." Bassam smiled proudly. We all peered at a tiny pinpoint labeled in Arabic.

"You don't see many of these maps." said Hana. "The villages don't exist anymore."

"Mine got plowed under," said Bassam. "I think 350? 370? villages were destroyed. You know--with the bulldozers."

They knew I didn't know.

"It was unthinkable," said Malek. "After the first massacres, people just closed their doors, turned the key, like that. We thought it was going to be a few days, just a vacation in Beirut. My father--you'll laugh--took a suite at the St. George Hotel. Then after a week, we moved to the Berkeley Hotel, and then to a big apartment, to a smaller apartment--."

"And a smaller apartment," said Hana.

Malek's finger roamed among the villages still marked on the map. "Families which had lived together for generations were suddenly dispersed. Everyone lost almost everything." She looked at me, her eyes hardened. "We should never have gone. We know that now."

"But the atrocities," said Hana.

"Even with the atrocities."

Hana pointed to Jerusalem. "We have a friend in Paris," she said to Malek. I knew she was thinking of Mona whose family was charged with guarding the covenant for centuries. "Her brother refuses to move. He won't leave the house."

Malek seemed pleased.

"Shall I show you the rest of the center?" asked Bassam.

We followed him from floor to floor. There were a few classrooms, a room with five computers, and a reading room where old books and magazines were kept, which reeked of cigarettes. "Are drugs much of a problem?" asked Hana.

"No," said Bassam. "No drugs. The problem is arms."

"In some of the camps, yes," said Malek. "But not here."

"Three people were murdered here last night," said Bassam.

Malek's face looked very tired. "Our organization doesn't get involved with the politics."

"Is this camp for or against the PLO?" asked Hana.

"This camp is under the direction of the Druze," Bassam said, leading us up to the next level. "It's the only one which hasn't been bombed."

"The Druze collaborate with the Israelis," Hana explained to me. "So the Israelis leave them alone and drop the bombs next door."

"Here's the rooftop suite," said Bassam.

It had the signature corrugated metal roof, finished, in this case, with plaster. There were no windows or walls. A fence tall enough to protect the children ran around the sides. Tables and chairs were set up in one corner, an old slide and three plastic rocking horses were arranged in the middle. We stood near the edge and looked out on the wet, gray squalor below, the mishmash of sad, sordid hovels. A tangle of wires, cables and pipes seemed to hold it all together. In a net.

"They're born here and die here," said Malek. "The lucky ones, who have some money in the family, get out."

"Every few weeks," said Bassam, "my friends and I get together and we pull out a map. We pick a country, usually in South America, because there's a guaranteed stopover in Europe. We pool all our money and one of us goes. He gets to Germany, tears up his laissez-passer, and requests political asylum."

"There's nothing left," said Malek. "Even if we went back to our homes there'd be nothing there. So they give us 'temporary' camps."

"How long is temporary," Hana wondered.

"Over sixty years now."

"It's time to go--it's getting dark." Bassam's face seemed to change. It looked less youthful, more worn.

We climbed down the stairs, picked our way through the sludge, and drove home.

More soon.

Love,

Dawn