Nakba #1 - Amena Hassan

Amman Hassan Banat, born 1931 in Sheikh Damun, Akka, Palestine. Recorded in Bourj el-Barajneh Camp, Beirut, 2019. Photo and interpreter: Mona Bibi Is there anything you’re wondering about before we begin?” “Where are my four boys?” (points to four photographs on the wall). “Aziz was 30 years old when he disappeared, Ibrahim was 25, Mansur was 22, and then we have Ahmad, who was 13 years old when he disappeared,” says Amman Hassan Banat. “Yesterday was the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and now they have been missing for 37 years, since 1982. On the same day as the massacres in Sabra and Shatila, the Israeli air force bombed our camp in Bourj el-Barajneh. Many houses collapsed and we fled to a house near the abandoned Kuwaiti embassy. A woman took us in there. When things had calmed down, we sat down to eat breakfast with the woman and her son. The Shatila camp was only 200 meters away. Suddenly two trucks appeared and the soldiers shoved my sons and other men and boys onto the backs of the trucks. They were forced to sit with their heads bowed.” “My eldest, Aziz, had his upper body bare, so I went up to his truck to give him his shirt. When he heard my footsteps, he lifted his head. An Israeli soldier kicked him in the mouth. Aziz covered his mouth with his hand. Then he was kicked in the stomach” (begins to cry). “Then the soldier pushed Aziz down onto the ground and the beating continued. Men and boys from the Shatila camp were marched out of the camp and over to the trucks, supervised by soldiers.” What kind of soldiers were they?” “Since I cannot read, I didn’t understand what was written on the sides of the trucks, but they were Israeli and Lebanese forces. The trucks were escorted by two tanks, one in front and one behind. I asked a soldier: Where are you taking my boys? I received no answer.” “I ran around looking for my boys; people told me to seek shelter, but I counted on managing because I was a woman. People lay massacred in the streets; the only way to recognize them was by their clothes.” “While the Sabra and Shatila massacre was going on, I saw Ariel Sharon, Israel’s defense minister, and Elie Hobeika, the Phalangists’ militia leader, up on the roof of the Kuwaiti embassy. I returned to the woman in the house—what else could I do? My house was destroyed and my boys were gone.” “In the afternoon a car stopped and a man asked the other woman why she was crying. She explained that her son and husband had been taken away. The driver then said that he had seen her husband at the airport. He explained that the airport was so full of captured men that you couldn’t even put your foot down. The airport was controlled by the Israelis and the Lebanese.” “It was Friday, September 17, 1982. From that day on, I never saw my four sons again.”