Videos have begun reaching us, we, the sons and daughters of the villages of “consumed devastation,” filmed in our towns by members of the civil defense who did not leave. Videos of homes and neighborhoods struck by Israeli bombardment. In one of the clips that reached me, a young man from the Islamic Risala Scouts (the Amal Movement) is inspecting a house after it was targeted by an Israeli airstrike. The young man stands among the destroyed walls, facing another house burning nearby, shouting: “Is anyone here?” He repeats the call several times.
It may be the first time I have felt that the Amal Movement has a function in this land of ruin. I felt a surge of emotion toward that young man, whom I do not know. A friend told me that two young men from the town were lost in that house. Two young men who were not members of Hezbollah.
There are many videos, but they did not help me identify the places where they were filmed. I am no longer closely familiar with the geography of my village. I know our house and the road that leads to it, and the homes of some relatives and friends, but Shaqra, my town, has expanded during my absence and turned into a small city. I have lost my grasp of the map.
I felt that these videos were an emotional channel between me and what remains of the town. Shaqra, which is witnessing a second wave of destruction these days, had already seen around 400 houses destroyed in the first “support war,” and we lost around 120 of its residents. My friend Hassan tells me that the death toll has started counting again, and five more have now joined the 120. The number represents an entire generation of the town’s sons.
Many of my relatives have seen their homes destroyed for the second and third time. Abu Radwan’s house had been blown up by Israel before its withdrawal from the town in 1986. The family rebuilt it and added more floors, but an Israeli airstrike returned and destroyed it completely in 2024.
Incidentally, we used the word “blown up” to describe an act carried out by an Israeli commando unit that would infiltrate the town, head to a house, evacuate its residents, and then detonate it.
Across from Abu Radwan’s house stands the residence of the family’s grandfather, the Shiite religious authority Mohsen Al-Amin. The house later came into the possession of Firas, Mohsen’s grandson. It was damaged in the airstrike that targeted Abu Radwan’s home, and the walls of the century-old building collapsed. Firas restored the house and sent me a photo after completing the renovation, writing beneath it: “We rebuilt.”
Today I try to check on Firas, who lives in Bahrain, but I do not dare ask him about his house in Shaqra, the one he restored. One war is enough for him; there is no need to remind him of a second.
This is the story of Abu Tarif’s house, which the Israelis blew up on the same day they destroyed Abu Radwan’s home in 1986. The family rebuilt it, only for it to be destroyed again in 2024. My aunt Umm Mohammad’s house also followed the same cycle: it was blown up, rebuilt, then shelled, and rebuilt again. All of this happened before the latest war, before the villagers once again reopened the count of their dead and their destroyed homes.
My uncle Ali Samad’s house remained standing until the latest war, in which he was killed. To this day, I have not allowed myself to place that house in my memory as something perishable. When I passed by it, I turned my face away.
This is Shaqra, less than seven kilometers from the Israeli border. The distance is even shorter than what Israeli media suggested would be the depth of the buffer zone the Israeli army intends to establish. My relatives doubt that Shaqra will fall within it. They say that Wadi al-Slouqi, which separates Shaqra from the town of Houla, will mark the boundary of the buffer zone.
“Poor Houla,” my cousin said, whose family has long had ties to Houla because of the Communist Party, to which his father belonged, as did most of Houla’s residents in the 1960s and 1970s.
Houla, separated from us in Shaqra by Wadi al-Slouqi, remained under occupation until the year 2000. Families displaced from there often lived in our town. The daughter of our neighbor Abu Mohammad Wezani married a man from Houla whose name I no longer remember. Those who moved from Houla to live in Shaqra were always called “the people of Houla,” even after decades of living among us.
Houla’s tragedy, however, began long before its official occupation. In 1948, the town witnessed the well-known massacre carried out by the Zionist Irgun organization, whose fighters infiltrated the town and executed dozens of its residents by firing squad. Shaqra, too, had its share in that massacre. One of my relatives was among those executed.
Our rural lives were always accompanied by stories of houses destroyed and rebuilt. We used to compare the two versions of the same house. We grew up with stories of homes that we were expected to continue living in, though rebuilt in entirely different designs. My uncle Adnan’s house is one example. We spent part of our childhood and mischief in its ground floor. The Israelis blew it up in 1981, and when it was rebuilt differently, it was no longer a place we returned to. The same is true of Abu Tarif’s house. When I visited it after it had been rebuilt, I felt it was not the same house where I had spent so much of my childhood and adolescence.
Will this war bring us a third version of these houses? A third version of Shaqra, from which every war pushes me a little further away.
I examine the videos that reach me, hoping to find a house in its first version. On the television screen, I read the news of another airstrike targeting Shaqra. I open the videos and study the houses. Fadi told me that the latest strike may have hit the house of our neighbor,s Abu Mohammad and Umm Mohammad Wezani. The video reaches me, but I cannot be sure. The house, in its new version, was built during my absence.
