Refugees Wonder Where to Go, What to Do : In Cypriot Harbor, Lebanese Tears

The ferry terminal at Larnaca harbor, a few hundred yards from beaches where European tourists lay stretched out in the sun, was a place of frustration Thursday, of anger and tears.

A fashionably dressed Lebanese woman bolted from a shipping office, flung her small suitcase to the ground and sat on it, sobbing. “I will not talk,” she blurted. “I’m not in the mood.”

Nearby sat three bewildered Sri Lankan women. They were house mates in Beirut but fled the shelling there on the ferry Larnaca Rose. They had no clothes but those that they wore and no money but Lebanese pounds, valueless in Cyprus.

They did not know where to go, but they knew they would not go back. “Boom Boom,” one said, “all the time Boom Boom.”

The Larnaca Rose was the last ferry out of the shell-shocked Lebanese Christian port of Juniyah, which has been pounded for weeks in a furious, sectarian artillery war. It arrived here Wednesday morning, by which time further service had been indefinitely suspended. The shelling was making the harbor too dangerous.

“I’m fed up. Fifteen years of war,” exclaimed an angry woman whose whining young daughter clung to her legs. “We are not French, and we are not British. Nobody will accept us. I’m taking Valium like peanuts.”

These were the lucky ones. Most had money for the ferry and appeared sufficiently prosperous. Cypriot immigration authorities, who said many arrived with purses full of jewelry, had given them visas to ride out the latest Lebanese storm here or to catch a plane to another Arab country, Europe or the United States.

“People who don’t have money had to stay behind,” said a man who would identify himself only as Habib. Others did not want to risk leaving their shelters to try to catch the ferry.

Habib, a fish merchant, left Juniyah on Sunday night. Thursday he went to the terminal to meet his brother, who had telephoned that he was taking the Wednesday night ferry for the nine-hour voyage.

Boat Never Came

But the ferry--the Baroness--which had alternated the daily runs with the Larnaca Rose--never came.

When Habib left, the ferries were still docking at Juniyah. “They put the baggage in first while we were waiting in a shelter,” he said. “Then there was this big scramble as the passengers went aboard, maybe a thousand in about three minutes, not much longer.”

But for the past few days, shelling at the Juniyah docks was too dangerous, and the ferries had to lay off shore. The passengers left the harbor in small, open boats, a risky trip that took an hour or more.

Wednesday night, said a representative of the shipping agent, the Baroness waited offshore for more than three hours, “but no boats came.” The ferry returned to Larnaca with no passengers, and the owners of both ferries said no more crossings were scheduled immediately.

In Beirut, the latest spasm of shelling, which began at dusk Saturday, inexplicably slackened late Wednesday and the lull continued Thursday, with only an occasional salvo.

Shellshocked residents emerged cautiously from bunkers to face shortages of water, bread and electricity.

The lull allowed diplomats, officials and relatives to attend a memorial service in the an East Beirut suburb for Spanish Ambassador Pedro Manuel de Aristegui, 61, killed when a shell hit his home Sunday. An army spokesman said Aristegui’s body and his two children, who were slightly wounded in the attack, were flown to Madrid.

Observers warned that the relative peace would not last. “The shelling may have stopped for the time being but both sides still want to beat each other into submission with the blockades” of key ports, a Western diplomat told the British news agency Reuters. “It will take a long time.”

The seaborne exodus of Christians to Cyprus has totaled more than 15,000 since late March, a customs official of the Larnaca terminal estimated. Many have taken hotel rooms and apartments in the port, flagged by Cypriot rental agents meeting the ferries with signs advertising space to rent. Now, Cypriots at the terminal said Thursday, there are no more rooms here.

Those with money have taken taxis--more than 100 stood in line to meet the ferries last week--to Nicosia and Limassol in search of rentals, and others were staying with relatives who have moved to Cyprus since the Lebanese civil war began more than 14 years ago.

The flight of the Christians from East Beirut has been matched by an exodus of Muslims from the western sector of the Lebanese capital.

Overland to Syria

Thousands have gone overland by road to Syria, whose troops are fighting on the side of Lebanese Muslim militias in the battle against the Christian forces. Others have gone south. According to Israeli spokesmen, more than 100,000 have passed into the region controlled by Israeli-backed militiamen in southern Lebanon.

None have left by air. The Beirut airport has been closed since the fighting began.

The flight of the civilians has caused concern on both sides, both for their safety and for political reasons.

“They’re bleeding us,” Richard Jreisatti, an official of the Lebanese Forces militia, said in Nicosia this week, commenting on the effect of Muslim shelling on the population of Christian East Beirut.

The Christians arriving here are angry, often lashing out at the United States, which they accuse of taking a soft line against Syria in the crisis.

Back in East Beirut on Thursday, according to Reuters, about 50 Christians chanting anti-American slogans marched on the fortified U.S. Embassy in an effort to get the Bush Administration to pressure Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. Ambassador John McCarthy telephoned Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun, the Christian Lebanese Army commander, who sent troops to control the crowd.

“Three representatives were allowed onto embassy property and talked to a U.S. official,” said an American diplomat. “They echoed Aoun’s recent criticisms that Washington was not doing enough.”

Bush told reporters in Washington on Thursday that he and other world leaders “can’t give up” trying to end the violence in Lebanon. But he said the United States does not have “great influence in Lebanon with the factions that are fighting.”

In Larnaca, the woman with the whining child echoed the anti-American sentiments.

“Americans kill people and walk on them,” she spat out. “It’s (Henry A.) Kissinger,” she grumbled, but she would not explain why she thought the former secretary of state had anything to do with Lebanon’s current predicament.

Then she mellowed. “Of course, I’ll go back,” said the woman, who refused to give her name. “It’s my country. You cannot leave your land. You’ll become Palestinians.”

But she won’t return yet. There is safety in Cyprus.

“When we came ashore,” she noted, “my children asked me, ‘This place, there are no rockets here?’ ”