Beirut: Seven Days in a Small War

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hands full of blood?" His eyes strain forward. "Do you think? But I am here." He rises abruptly and goes to his car, flashing the V sign for the photographers outside.

At 5:15 that afternoon, Israeli jets roar high above the city. Two sonic booms follow in quick succession. A cloud of leaflets is produced in midair. It hangs, then floats down very slowly, like a great hive of small white birds beating their wings wildly as they fall.

Tuesday, June 29

There is news of Lara. A few months after her parents were killed, the girl was taken to live with relatives in Jordan. She is said to be well. Nothing on four-year-old Samer or the baby Palestine yet, but Ahmed has been located. He is posted somewhere on the front and is a full-fledged soldier now. His older brother Farouk will try to track him down. Farouk is more self-assured than Ahmed, a bit colder as well. At 31, he holds a high rank in Al-Fatah, the largest faction within the P.L.O. He says very little at first, sizing up the stranger. Their taxi rolls past a fat man who has been forced to drop his pants for a search at a checkpoint in the middle of the street. He stands there helpless before a group of boy soldiers and squeals in rage and humiliation.

At Ahmed's home, his parents are warm and gracious. Within minutes, several of the family have gathered—sisters, brothers-in-law and their children. Soldiers saunter in. The discussion starts out focusing on Ahmed's whereabouts, and soon splinters into everything, from the Syrians to the weather to abstract politics. An old soldier suggests: "People are better than governments." Farouk gets an idea where Ahmed might be, and the taxi is off again, passing a mosque with a charred black wall on which some child has painted a bright blue plane dropping bright blue bombs. Rubbish burning everywhere heats the air from below as the relentless sun works from the top. In a marketplace in a Palestinian camp, where Ahmed is thought to be located, a walleyed woman asks furiously: "What do you think of these dogs, the Arabs?" A camp security guard points out a grape arbor on a roof and explains that Palestinians create such things "to express their relationship with their native home."

Ahmed is in Shuweifat, a Palestinian stronghold (a neighborhood, really) east of the Beirut airport. Both the Israelis and the Phalangists are encamped near by, not 500 yds. away. It is close to noon. The streets are white, deserted. Overhead two jets, flying side by side, make a quotation mark as they veer. Ahmed enters the office to which he has been summoned. Thinner than in September, he is still boy-faced. He shakes hands with all the soldiers sitting around the room. He wears a camouflage suit, a pair of sneakers and a cap that looks like a sun hat with the brim turned up, his P.L.O. badge pinned to the front of it. He plunks down on a couch with a machine gun resting in his lap. Then he gives his visitor the business for publishing the name of his girlfriend in last winter's story. His visitor tells him to watch his manners or the girl's address will be published this time.

"In September you said that you wanted to be a doctor. You also said that if you were at war with Israel and a wounded Israeli needed your help, you would behave as a doctor, not a soldier. Now that you are at war with