Beirut: Seven Days in a Small War

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when it was hit by a phosphorous bomb. His face glows pink where the layers of skin have been burned away. It seems wrapped in cellophane. Said's head is swathed in bandages. He looks surprised, open-eyed, as if amazed at the removal of his face. He makes removal of his face. He makes candies for a living.

A Syrian in a crew cut was in the street when a shell hit. His right leg was blown off at the knee. He is engaged to be married. His fiancee in Syria does not know what has happened to him. He wonders if she will still love him.

An alert, handsome woman in a red-orange dress sits up in bed as a friend ceremoniously combs her wet black hair. The cluster bomb that hit her home killed her 22-year-old daughter and injured the legs of her 16-year-old son. She was born in 1936; she knows all about war. She says she is comfortable in the Hotel Triomphe.

The Maqassed Hospital is a real hospital. Two hundred have died there since the bombing began. Twelve-year-old Houda had her stomach slit open by shrapnel, but she feels well now and smiles to show it. She does not know what this war is about. Mahmoud, also 12, had his forehead burned by a phosphorous bomb. His black hair sticks up in points. He says that God will take revenge for him.

The emergency nature of the cases has been hard on the hospital staff. Only seven doctors were available for 100 patients. Five specialists had to work on one patient alone, so much of the man was either injured or missing. The patients who were transferred from the shelled mental hospital presented a particular problem. They would stare at their wounds and break out in laughter, or they would tear at their bandages.

One man was brought in with part of his abdomen hanging outside his body. He was fully conscious. With his left hand he tried to scoop his intestines back inside.

A 17-year-old boy had his testicles blown off. He used to work in a printing office. He wants only peace.

A 13-year-old girl named Waffa was asleep when her home fell on top of her. She is asleep now too. Her head is shaved where they operated. Her left ear is blackened, her left eye swollen red. Below it, her cheek is sheathed in a purple-gray plaster. Her brain is damaged. She will be partly paralyzed for life. Beside her bed sits her older sister, who cannot bear to look. She stares instead at the open window.

Noon at the Palestinian cemetery. The air is unusually cool under trees that look like umbrellas. Photographs of the dead are planted over the graves instead of headstones. They look like yearbook pictures. Four new half-dug graves lie open in the red soil. The older ones are festooned with the kinds of ribbons used on candy boxes. A discarded stretcher lies off in a corner beside a green hospital mask. There is shelling to the south. Back at the Commodore a message comes through that Colonel Azmi is reported killed in Tyre. Is the boy Samer alive?

Thursday, July 1

An excursion across the Green Line into East Beirut and a new world. Shops show pretty summer dresses. Beach balls hang in clusters in the toy stores. Hibiscus glows red in the dark green hedges. It is on the high ground, East Beirut; the air is almost cold. Except for the Jeeps and the armored personnel carriers, you would not know there was a war in the vicinity.

At the bottom of a high hill the Beirut airport lies open and