New Experience for Families Fleeing Beirut Shelling : In Lebanon, Few Happy Campers

From a distance, the campsites have the standard touches--tent flaps blowing in the breeze, laundry on makeshift clotheslines, the smell of lunch cooking over an open fire.

But for the Maronite Christian families camped near the shrine of St. Charbel in the mountain town of Annayeh and the Sunni Muslim families living in a beach camp in Sidon, camping is a new experience--one for which they did not volunteer.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have been driven to the hinterlands by the shelling in Beirut. The stories of Annayeh and Sidon are typical.

The Musallem family fled to Annayeh two months ago, when Syrian shelling of the Christian area of Juniyah threatened their home and their lives.

Living out of a pickup truck parked behind the shrine church, the family’s two young sons, Joseph, 8, and Charbel, 6, sat waiting for lunch.

Father Out of Sorts

The boys’ father, who makes a living renting and driving the truck, was sleeping on a mattress next to the pickup. “He’s saakhin ,” explained his wife, using a Lebanese Arabic term meaning feverish and out of sorts.

About 340 families live scattered in tents and pickups around St. Charbel, with a few fortunate ones staying at a nearby monastery. Inside the modern church, traditional cotton-stuffed mattresses are stacked neatly in the corners where other families sleep at night.

Sunday worshipers, who come from miles around to visit the revered shrine, an hour’s drive northeast of Beirut, thank the Lord that they are not in the same predicament.

“I feel sorry for them,” said a young woman in a sequin-studded jeans suit. She had come on a drive from Aamchit, a coastal town famous for its camping facilities.

Little Help Offered

Few of the Sunday visitors, however, approached the campers or offered help. The monastery raises vegetables and the monks sell them to the refugees. “It’s easier for us to buy from the fathers than drive to a village and shop,” Musallem’s wife said as she served up a lunch of potatoes and bread with grapes for dessert.

Lebanese lunches are usually elaborate, with at least one meat dish--the Musallems’ bore no resemblance to such a meal. “Meat?” the young mother asked. “We can’t afford it.”

Her worst problem is washing. The only water source is on the other side of the church, an area settled by the first refugees who came and now command first rights to the water. Even worse are the weekends, when the shrine is packed with visitors. Bathrooms become dirty and taps dry up.

Children Fly Kites

The children are surviving the experience far better than their parents. They amuse themselves by flying kites, which they rig with string and bits of cassette tape. The kites themselves are patched together with sheets of the responsive readings from morning Mass. The children and their desperate parents live on the wings of such prayers.

In Sidon, an hour’s drive south of Beirut, the children of the beach camp find diversion in less bizarre activities, swimming and beachcombing.

Sidon, a Sunni Muslim capital in southern Lebanon, has experienced many an exodus from Beirut. This time the reason is Maj. Gen. Michel Aoun’s “answering service,” retaliatory fire against Syrian gun positions in West Beirut.

Sidon Muslim charities have stepped in quickly to meet the needs of the displaced. The beach camp is a near perfect example.

Run by Muslim Scouts

Muslim scouts, easily identifiable by their blue-and-white T-shirts, run the tented camp, which is home to 50 families. The scouts, similar to the scouting movement in the West, use walkie-talkies to contact the kitchen up the road. “Where’s lunch?” one radioed last week. Every day, a late afternoon meal is prepared for the 350 campers and scout volunteers.

The well-organized camp has ground rules, “but we don’t talk about them the first day the refugees arrive,” explained Bilal Hosni, the chief scout, a man in his late 20s. “We welcome them saying, ‘Hamdillah as-salameh , (Thank God you are safe)’ and urge them to rest and relax,” said Hosni.

“The second day, we encourage the children to swim, and we sit with the adults and explain the basic rules of the camp: No visitors after 10 at night. No swimming at night. One person per family cleans the area around their camp daily.”

A generator provides electrical power from dusk to 11 p.m. Like other cities of Lebanon, Sidon has rationed electricity.

Drinking Tap Installed

The scouts got the municipality to install a drinking water tap at the edge of the camp. Washing facilities, water and toilets are on the other side.

Sidon also has housed 1,600 families in the city’s 18 public schools and other centers, but many of the refugees spend their first few nights in the scout beach camp after fleeing Beirut’s latest madness. Last Thursday, a woman with four children arrived at the camp. She carried a cloth bag containing a change of clothing for each child.

The camp director said she was welcome to stay there. “All other lodging in the city is taken,” he said gently. The exhausted woman, looking at the wind-swept camp, shifted her feet in the hot sand.

She seemed dazed. “Thank you. I’ll think it over,” she said.

“She’ll be back, unless she can find something on her own,” Hosni said.

Thursday and Saturday nights, the scouts have a bonfire for the children with singing and sketches.