“On Sunday rain and sleet and snow fell all day and the hills around us turned white—from a few kilometers up the road, all the way to the top of Mt. Sunnin, and along the road to Damascus. Our house was oblivious to the cold.”
This is the final paragraph of a tiny section called “Home” in my book In Borrowed Houses. It was December 5, 1984. Just the day before we had finally moved into our little stone house in Beit Meri. I remember how I loved that day, home at last, watching the snow fall across the mountains, feeling warm and safe, and then the shock of the news on the radio. Many travelers were marooned across the canyon on the road over the mountains, covered by that beautiful white blanket. They were freezing in their cars. According to my memory, as many as 80 people died like this on that lovely, fateful day.
Why? How could this happen?
First, they had no warning, We had no expert weather predictions. Not in Lebanon. Not in 1984. People didn’t know when they left their homes to drive from Beirut to the Biqaa or from Zhalet to Bhamdoun that snow was coming. Then the snow fell fast, and they became stuck.
Second, some inefficiency had caused the snowplows to be needing repair or, for some other reason, unavailable. (In the end someone lost his job because of this unpreparedness.)
But why did the travelers stay in their stranded cars instead of seeking help? Simply because there was civil war in Lebanon. In civil war, who can anyone trust? Christians trapped in a Muslim vicinity were afraid. Muslims near a Christian community were afraid. People related in any way to a militia or to the Lebanese Army might have been afraid of the Syrian Army, which occupied most of the Damascus road. Everybody was afraid of somebody, afraid enough to sit in their freezing cars and hope for the best.
In many cases occupying soldiers were the ones who finally swept the snow away and opened car doors. We heard that they rescued people they found alive. Those who were dead they robbed, even digging the gold out of their teeth.
Why am I telling this now? Because several winter storms have dumped snow across Lebanon, from Beirut to the Biqaa. The Daily Star and numerous friends have posted beautiful pictures online. First, though, there was the prediction. A storm named Windy was coming; there would be lots of snow. Tourists were flying into Beirut to go skiing.
Meanwhile, Lebanon is occupied again, not by a Syrian Army, 30,000 strong, but by Syrian refugees, homeless, jobless, penniless, hungry, wounded, sick. It has been a miserable winter for these. Jean Bouchebl, the friend who sent me to the refugee camp to visit Um Na’im and is now doing relief work among this horde of needy people, told me he wept when he saw children barefoot in the snow. Numerous published stories have told of deaths from hypothermia, with children and the elderly being especially vulnerable.
Though my information is mostly from Lebanon, we know that the same storms have dumped snow across the Middle East, and the suffering extends to the displaced inside of Syria and Jordan.
I love snow. But even snow reminds me of the miseries of human conflict. War changes everything for those on the ground where it is happening.