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ADC-NJ Members Speaks on Family in Lebanon
By: Ashley Kindergan
Source: Herald News
Date: July 19, 2006
NEW YORK -- Fidele Harfouche would have joined her mother in Lebanon
this week if it had not been for the violence ripping across the country
where she was born and claims her heritage.
Instead, Fidele's mother, Sally, 54, is trapped in Alayh, a city near
Beirut, with Fidele's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. With part
of her family in a war-torn country and half of her clan back in the
United States, Fidele and her father said Sally is split over whether
she should attempt to leave as part of the State Department's effort to
evacuate the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon.
"(Sally's) mother, she has a heart condition," Sam Harfouche said
Tuesday in telephone interview from Closter. "If she leaves her mom and
comes back, probably she will be very worried ... both ways, it's very
hard for her. She's worried about us here, and she's worried about them
over there."
Sally has been in Lebanon since May, visiting family and renovating a
luxury hotel as a family business. Now, Sally is staying in the hotel
with a number of family members, and five or six families of refugees
from southern Lebanon, where Israeli military attacks have been the
heaviest.
Fidele, who was born in Lebanon and spent the first five years of her
life there, spoke to her mother on Monday only after dialing
unsuccessfully for two to three hours. She said cell phone towers in
Lebanon have been bombed and land lines are often inoperable. She and
her father got to speak to Sally for about 15 minutes before the line
went dead.
"I said, 'Mom, I want you to come home,' Fidele said. But she knows that
the roads her mother would have to travel to reach the American Embassy
are treacherous, and fears for her safety.
"God forbid I tell her to get in a taxi and go to the ports where the
State Department is setting things up and she gets blown up," Fidele
said. "I don't want to be responsible with my conscience."
Meanwhile, Sam said he now he spends about 18 hours a day watching
television. He stayed home from work over the weekend from the Closter
bagel shop he owns, even though he usually works every day. Sam said he
wakes up almost on the hour each night, compelled even in sleep to turn
on the television for news about the situation in Lebanon.
Fidele, too, sleeps sporadically, bursts out crying for no apparent
reason and spends her days glued to the Arabic language news station,
Al-Jazeera, and BBC broadcasts that her family can watch over their
satellite dish.
American television news channels like CNN make her angry because they
do not show the full extent of the wreckage. Fidele said.
Earlier this week, Fidele got into a fight with cousin, Maya, because
Maya insisted they turn off the television, unable to watch any more of
the graphic images of the dead and dying among the rubble.
"I know the streets they're bombing," Fidele said. "I go to do laundry,
and then I go to the bank, and I turn the TV back on, and I say, 'My
country is being completely and utterly destroyed.'"
Fidele, like many other Lebanese-Americans, is angry about the latest
military conflict. She said she harbors no malice toward Jews, and
points to the fact that her father used to have a Jewish partner in his
bagel shop - Goldberg's Bagels - and that many of her neighbors are
Jewish.
But she said she would like to see negotiations begin toward peace
instead of war.
On Tuesday, she, Maya and about 10 relatives from nearby Ridgefield
joined several hundred protesters in the hot muggy weather outside the
Israeli mission to the United Nations. The family wore matching red
T-shirts with "Stop the War" scrawled across the backs in black.
Fidele and her cousins and aunts held up signs and chanted along with
slogans like "No justice, no peace, U.S. out of the Middle East" and
"Stop bombing Lebanon."
A block away from that demonstration , a small impromptu group formed a
counter-protest in support of Israel.
"I just hope it helps," Fidele said of the protests |
