Beirut: Seven Days in a Small War

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handicapped and retarded. Among its patients are Lebanese, Palestinians, Maronites, Druze, Sunnis, Shi'ites, Jews; all Lebanon is here. An Armenian lies curled up on the second-floor landing. His stained white shirt hangs outside his blue pants. He wears a gray suit jacket, even in this heat. Flies collect on his bare feet. He pays no attention. He wants to sleep. "There was nothing," he explains when asked about the bombing. He is said to have gone wild when the shelling started.

In the children's quarter a wall cabinet displays a Fisher-Price xylophone, an inflated plastic goose, and a blond doll with her arms flung wide in surprise. Two beds are charred like marshmallows. No children were in their beds when the bombs fell. Still, some tried to leap through the holes the shells created.

A young woman in red cannot control her body. Her arms flail; her legs buckle; she smiles sweetly through her writhing mouth. An old woman sitting in bed confronts a round slice of bread, tearing it to small bits, which she tosses one by one on the floor; this is her project. In the bed opposite, a Bedouin wearing a white shawl and a deep purple blouse turns from side to side in fierce perplexity. On her forehead one tattoo, on her chin another. These are marks of beauty. "She did not understand what happened," says an orderly.

Neither did the children. They have been relocated near the women. Heads shaved, they seem of one sex or of none. Some are naked. They are penned in a small dark space; they smell of urine; their thighs are stained with excrement. They seem to moan continually. One boy shivers, another laughs. A legless girl spoons mush into the mouth of a younger one. A woman lurches forward and shouts in English: "I am normal!"

"This is the worst I have seen," says Hamil, 75. He sits up in the bed in which he slept when the bombs fell.

"Were you in Lebanon during World War II?"

"Yes, I was here. But in that war the world was not so crazy."

At the P.L.O. press office, inquiries are made about the "children of war." There is a swift, sudden commotion. Yasser Arafat enters the room surrounded by bodyguards. He appears diminished, weary; the energy seems forced. Yes, he will take questions.

"When the war stops, what happens to the Palestinians in Lebanon?"

"They remain to put their fingers on the main spokes of the Palestinian issue, the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian rights. We are human beings, and we have the right to live like human beings, with our dignity. We have the right of self-determination. We have the right to go back to our homeland. We have the right to establish our own state."

"Will you give up your arms to the Lebanese army?"

"Would you give up your arms to the Lebanese army?"

A rumor of the day has five Egyptian ships on the way to Beirut to help with the proposed evacuation of the Palestinians. Arafat is asked if he gets seasick. He laughs off the idea as "silly." As for leaving a limited force in Beirut, he says that remains to be discussed with the Lebanese. Would he, under any circumstances, enter into negotiations with Israel?

"Do you think we should negotiate with the Israeli, barbarian, savage, terrorist military junta in Israel, with their