This post is also available in: Français (French) العربية (Arabic)
Fatima AlBassam
I never imagined that I would one day become the news being relayed in local and foreign media outlets by capturing the moment I left my home and the popular neighborhood I live in in Dahiyeh, on the outskirts of the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut.
It was an ordinary day until the war came
I remember that it was a normal day, a month ago. Like any other morning, I headed to work in the Corniche al-Mazraa area in Beirut. I dressed comfortably, which later would prove to have been a good choice for that day.
I still don’t know what’s happened to this planet, what went wrong for a day that started out like any other to become an event that I am writing about from a room I moved into on Hamra street.
So far, I’ve mentioned three areas I moved between: from where I live in Dahiyeh to where I work in Corniche al-Mazraa and finally to the place I was displaced to in Hamra. How easy it seems to simply read the name of an area before going deep into the details of everything that happened.
“Fatima, take our parents and leave the neighborhood immediately,” my younger brother called me and said. It sounded more like a military order, and before I could ask for the reason, he had already hung up. Right after, dozens of calls and voice notes started pouring in from friends and relatives telling me to leave the Laylaki neighborhood immediately as it was on the list of neighborhoods being threatened by the Israeli army. I learned something new that night—the amount of time we have between the evacuation order and the strike.
These evacuation orders that Israel announces have become more “innovative,” in terms of style. No longer paper leaflets dropped by warplanes or reconnaissance planes over villages and towns, they are now transmitted in tweets by Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee. These tweets include maps and coordinates of the area to be hit and ask people to stay 500 meters away from the targeted location. Who would believe such a ridiculous thing on X? Considering that it was the first of its kind to take this form? Something inside me kept saying it might not be real.
When I got closer to the neighborhood, I was shocked by what I saw. People running around and screaming, some of them barefoot, crying. I was, quite literally, stunned, and I couldn’t say a word. Is this the scene of the apocalypse that everyone kept telling us about? Was what I was seeing really real? Hundreds of people evacuated the area at the same time.
My brother and his friend were waiting for me outside the building. I ran to the apartment without thinking. “Where’s Ginger?” I asked. I took a quick look at my bedroom, that I loved. I don’t remember the details. I found myself unable to gather all my memories from the room that had been mine for 29 years. I didn’t know where to start. So I left everything as it was, except for my cat Ginger, who had hidden under the bed. I pulled her from under there with force, like I was pulling her from a potential pile of rubble, and ran off, screaming to my parents, “To the car, now!” I wanted to cry, but it wasn’t the time for that.
Phone calls rained down on me like bombs. They were making me even more nervous, so I sent a video of the moment I left the neighborhood to a WhatsApp group of some of my journalist colleagues so that they would stop calling me. The video went viral on social media as soon as I sent it, on news websites and TV stations too. Even Hebrew channels and pages broadcast it and titled it “the moment the residents of the Laylaki neighborhood left their area.” I don’t know who leaked the clip, but it almost caused the death of my family and me that night due to the ever-increasing flood of calls and messages I was receiving. Some of them sounded more like accusations—“Good job, your voice has reached Israel.” Suddenly, I heard the sound of my car crashing into a block of concrete and my mother’s voice—“Be careful.” But it was too late. I screamed at the top of my lungs. “My God!” I threw my phone in the back seat and continued driving with three tires. Somehow, we miraculously made it to Hamra street. The next day, I took my car to the repair shop on a flatbed crane.
But where was I going to go that night, when it was already past midnight? I might seem unreasonable for having refused to stay with my family in the apartment that most of my relatives had moved to—they don’t like cats. And none of the hotels let me in because of my cat.
Displaced with my cat and a suitcase
I slept that first night at a friend’s house. Or I at least pretended to sleep. Ginger was scared. She sat inside my bag, which I had left in the car for a few days since I’d gotten back from media coverage in the South. I think she was looking for a sense of safety in the smell of my clothes. My home had become a suitcase containing a few items barely enough for a two-day trip, and my cat, whom many had asked me to give up, like others had.
My heart was afraid. I felt empty, angry. This time, I wanted to cry, as I watched the Israeli raids tear apart entire neighborhoods of Dahiyeh, while some residents had still been unable to evacuate. But I couldn’t cry. It’s like my nervous system had chosen to rebel at the wrong time. A strike here, another there. With every hit I was waiting for our turn. I thought the world was going to end that night, but I wasn’t ready to die…
