The families started arriving at Shakib Arslan High School days ago, by car, van and bus from battered neighborhoods of Beirut and southern Lebanon. There were a few at first, some with only the clothes they were wearing. By Monday, the pilgrimage had brought more than 1,000. They threw frayed blankets, foam mattresses and cheap mats over dusty tile floors, staking claims to a sunlit courtyard that, in a capricious war, had become sanctuary.
"There's no way for any of us to know anything here," said Hassan Abdullah, whose mother and two brothers were trapped in the south. The wiry 24-year-old shook his head. "I just don't know anything about them."
In six days of Israeli strikes that followed Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, more than 60,000 Lebanese have been driven from their homes, an estimate that officials acknowledged was conservative. The exodus has overwhelmed Lebanon's already feeble infrastructure, swamping schools, clubs, mosques and churches in the capital and its mountain hinterland. In a war many Lebanese suspect will last weeks, months or perhaps longer, the unknown sometimes inspires the greatest fear.
"We're praying for them to be safe," Abdullah, who was at the school with another brother, said of his family.
"God save them," added his friend, Ayman Ghannam, 26.
The exodus that has washed over Beirut has sharpened Lebanon's myriad sectarian divisions: At the high school, a Sunni Muslim family fought a Shiite family over their opinions of Hezbollah and the conflict. But in a campaign that has gathered momentum in the past day, traditional parties have come together -- Druze, Christian and Sunni -- to provide food, shelter, mattresses and clothes. Radio stations have pleaded for help for the refugees, and television stations have broadcast a scrolling bar appealing for donations. Activists have inundated friends with text messages and e-mails, seeking their help.
"They've been at each other's throats, and now they're coordinating. That's the essence of it," said Rabi Bashour, helping coordinate efforts with friends at two Beirut schools housing 750 displaced people. "In Lebanon, unity takes place when it's not about politics anymore. And it's not about politics. It's about the country getting through this."
With a dozen other people, some drawn from a social work organization, Bashour has helped distribute more than 400 packages of bread, cheese, tuna, canned meat and milk to families like Abdullah's. They have relied on donations: One friend called to say he was bringing 200 loaves of bread by car. For children, they have brought diapers, baby food and baby milk. A mobile clinic from the hospital at the American University of Beirut has provided medical care.
As they work, television stations -- al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya and Lebanese counterparts -- punctuate the day with reports of more casualties: On this day, 10 civilians were killed when an Israeli attack struck two cars crossing a bridge.
‘We have to go on’
"It's like each one of us has his own moment of silence and goes on with work," Bashour said. "We have to go on."
While Lebanese factions have fiercely disagreed over the war itself, to a striking degree they have come together to help the displaced, who are mainly poor Shiite Muslims, Hezbollah's base of support. Supporters of Michel Aoun, a Christian leader who has a tactical alliance with Hezbollah, have been among the most energetic. But even the factions most at odds with Hezbollah -- the Druze led by Walid Jumblatt, for instance -- have come to their aid in his community's mountainous redoubt in the north.
"People are the same in hardship," said Ghassan Mahm, a Jumblatt follower in Barouk, a town in the Chouf Mountains, where more than 800 people have filled 40 schools perched along winding, misty roads.
Hussein Yaman left his village near Tyre on Thursday after a rocket fell 50 yards from his house. "Maybe God still likes us," he said. Yaman went first to western Beirut, but considered it too close to the bombing; his children could still hear airplanes. A day later, he took his children, ages 3 and 6, to eastern Beirut in his 1989 white Toyota. Again, too close. From there, he went to Byblos, a Christian coastal city north of Beirut also known as Jubayl, where he joined 180 people in the town's middle school.
"It was our luck we didn't get hurt," Yaman said.
Water bottles were stacked against the door, along with jerry cans filled by municipal authorities. Foam mattresses were spread on the floor in classrooms sometimes shared by three, four, even five families. Towels hung from the windows in lieu of clotheslines. Yaman was left angry by his exodus -- a journey he didn't choose. He was angrier at the war's toll.
"We can build again. That's not a problem," he said. "It's the children. Until now, when my daughter hears an airplane, she starts crying. What's her guilt? What did the children and others do wrong?" As he spoke, he grew more agitated, shaking. "When do you think this war is going to end? When is this war going to stop? This is the question to ask."
He thought about his brother Abdullah, still in his village near Tyre.
"Maybe he's dead," he said. "I don't know."
The fears of the displaced are often driven by memories that two names evoke. One is Qana, the town where more than 100 civilians were killed when Israeli forces shelled a U.N. peacekeepers' post on April 18, 1996, in another bout of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. The other is Marwaheen, where at least 16 civilians were killed last week in an Israeli attack on two cars fleeing the village. Those recollections justify their flight, mitigating what seems to be a sense of shame held by many for abandoning their homes and having to endure the indignities of seeking others' shelter.
"Marwaheen could have happened to us," Yaman said.
At the Shakib Arslan, neighborhood activists had handed out more than 1,000 packages of rice, soup, chicken, bread and cheese to the displaced, nearly all of them from the Shiite southern suburbs, which have endured most of the Israeli attacks in Beirut. "It's a mess," said Mohammed Ghali, one of the activists. Four or five families were sharing each classroom. A small pup tent was erected in the corner. On a hot plate, tea brewed. A web of wires powered the few television sets the displaced had brought.
Along one wall sat an elderly woman, a radio to her ear, as she strained, grimacing, to hear news from home.
"We're sleeping here on the ground," Ghannam said, pointing at the floor.
"This is what I brought," Abdullah said, pulling on his jeans, then an orange shirt embroidered with the words, "Day Sailor," which he said he washed each evening, hung to dry at night, then wore the next day. He turned his head.
"Look at the children," he said, as a young girl washed the floor with soapy water and a tattered broom.
Anxious about relatives
Abdullah's mother and two brothers had left the Beirut neighborhood of Bir Hassan to visit Marwaheen last week. It was the kind of trip Lebanese often take, to spend part of the summer in their ancestral village. Abdullah had heard the news of the 16 people killed as they fled. He and others traded stories about the 100 villagers who had sought shelter at a nearby U.N. post, but were turned away. Rumors swirled: that the village's mosque was destroyed, that houses were rubble, that only shepherds had stayed after Israel ordered the town evacuated.
"I wish I could go, by helicopter or something, just to bring them home," said Rabab Hammadi, 27, whose grandparents, Mohammed and Hasna al-Hajj, both 80, were in another village next to Marwaheen. "But I know I can't."
She tried to reach them by cellphone, but with electricity cut in parts of the south, they couldn't recharge the batteries. The land lines weren't working. Her grandmother had high blood pressure, and she feared she was running out of medicine.
"I want to know if they're still alive or not," she said, her voice pleading. "Is it not my right?"
As she spoke, there was tumult in the corner, shouts of grief and anger. Friends rushed toward Abdullah and his brother, Ali, both of them pulling away instinctively. The friends grasped them again, trying to get them to chairs.
"Why?" Abdullah yelled. "Oh, my God!" his brother shouted.
The names of the victims from Marwaheen had just been read, one by one, on a television set up at the shelter. Abdullah's mother and two brothers were among the victims. Shaking his head, Ghannam, his friend, walked away.
"We can't tell his sisters," he said. "We don't want them to know."
Ghannam looked back at his friend, still crying. "There's no way he can get home."
