On Perilous Border, Lebanese Christians Take In Muslims
By Anthony Shadid Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 29, 2006 (m) Shiite Pilgrimage Leads to Church
RMEISH, Lebanon — The word went out — there was refuge in a Christian village — and thousands came.
In a pilgrimage of fear, Shiite Muslims from the towns most ravaged along the Lebanese border fled for Rmeish, a hilltop hamlet along a road where Israeli shells fell, at times, every 15 seconds Friday. Here, they escaped to a church, and at the church, a basement lit by soft shafts of sunlight. In it were the wretched of this war: children with dirty feet and a pregnant woman who feared giving birth in squalor, an 85-year-old man whose donkey, his sole possession, was killed by a bomb and hundreds of others among the at least 10,000 who arrived in Rmeish, some drinking from a fetid pool and walking the streets in search of food and goodwill.
“The safety of God,” said Heidar Issa, one of those here. “That’s what we were counting on.”
In a country fractured by faith, torn asunder by 15 years of civil war, they found refuge among the Lebanese Christians they once fought. Their politics often diverged — over support for Hezbollah, their views of today’s conflict — but they shared a plight. And in a common misery wrought by war, less than a mile from the Israeli border, there was fleeting coexistence rather than talk of strife.
“Everyone is opening their doors to anyone who comes,” said Tannous Alem, a 43-year-old resident of Rmeish with a cross around his neck, who had brought 120 people into his home over 12 days. “We’re all the same in times like these.” [more]