It was around 4 in the afternoon. My girls had just come home from school and were eating in the kitchen when my cell phone rang. It was one of my Lebanese friends. He sounded pretty stressed. – Yama, have you heard what has happened, he said out of breath. – No, what is it, I asked. – There are many pagers that have been blown up in the hands of Hezbollah people all over Beirut, says my Lebanese friend in half-bad English. The picture shows an exploded pager. Photo: Screenshot / Telegram I didn’t understand anything. What was he talking about? Pagers? Who will use it in 2024? The last time I saw a pager was in 1998, before mobile phones became common property. Confused, I called another friend who speaks better English. Yes, he confirmed that hundreds of pagers had exploded across Lebanon. It was about pagers Hezbollah had ordered for its people, so that they could communicate with each other without fear of Israeli eavesdropping and surveillance. Hezbollah had banned its members from using smartphones. Hundreds of explosions Social media was also overflowing with video evidence showing the cunning attack. In surveillance videos from vegetable shops, bus stops and busy street intersections, men could be seen fishing out beeping pagers from bags and trouser pockets. As they try to read the messages on the small screen of the viewfinders, they explode in their hands. The victims fall over and scream in pain. Some have their hands blown off, while others have major injuries to their faces and are bleeding profusely from their eyes. Hundreds of Hizbollah people lie bleeding everywhere – injured for life. Here, one of the several hundred people who were injured during the pager attack in September was carried into an ambulance. Photo: Mohamed Azakir / Reuters It turned out that the pagers, which Hezbollah believed were safer than smartphones, were rigged with explosives that were triggered by a coded message. The Lebanese had no doubt who was behind the massive attack: the enemy to the south, Israel. The Israeli spy services never confirmed that they were behind the exploding pagers, but they rarely do when they carry out such acts of sabotage against their enemies. It is almost only Israel that has the technical expertise, motive and will to carry out such a dramatic attack – which set off hundreds of small explosions in broad daylight in Beirut. 80 tonnes of explosives The shock of the pager attacks had not subsided when hundreds of walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah people went off the air a few days later. And then Beirut was rocked – literally – by a giant bomb attack that killed Hezbollah’s powerful leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah died in an Israeli attack in September. Here he receives a symbolic burial. Photo: AP He was killed in his bunker several tens of meters underground in the Hezbollah-controlled district of Dahieh, in the far south of the Lebanese capital. Israeli warplanes dropped almost 80 tons of explosives on Nasrallah’s hideout. No wonder all of Beirut shook. The fierce Israeli attacks on Hezbollah across Lebanon have turned the lives of many Lebanese upside down. 1.2 million people, which is 1/5 of the population of the country the size of Rogaland county, have been driven to flee from Israeli bombs. Among them hundreds of thousands of people from the Beirut district of Dahieh where normally around 700,000 people live. Parts of Dahieh look like the Gaza Strip, quarter after quarter laid to rubble. Jokes about explosions In what has been an extreme few weeks in Beirut, Lebanese are doing what they do best: adapting to abnormal circumstances that would have thrown most others off guard. They get used to the sound of the Israeli killing machines, or drones, over Beirut, a constant reminder that death hangs over them. And, the daily bangs from Israeli fighter jets that break the sound barrier over the capital – a powerful explosion-like sound. One way Israel conducts psychological warfare against Lebanon, according to the Lebanese. And, actual bombs that shake the ground when they hit their targets in Beirut. I have been sitting in outdoor restaurants in downtown Beirut for the past few weeks and heard loud booms. People splash and gasp loudly. They look at each other in shock. Was it a bomb? Or was it the sound barrier that was broken? People check their mobile phones for news messages. – Phew, fortunately it was only a sonic boom, which means that the sound barrier is broken. Then you continue to puff your hookah and eat your dinner. A police officer inspects a car that was hit during the paging attack in September. Photo: Hussein Malla / AP Gives the drones grades Gallows humor is another way of coping with the fear of death that many Lebanese feel during the rain of Israeli bombs. Some creative souls have created a separate website dedicated to all the sound wall bangs. Here, people can rate the drones they hear from 1-10, depending on how powerful they are. – I spilled my morning coffee there. Thank you Israel. Today you get 7/10. While others are not impressed by the drones from the Israeli warplanes. – My lady slammed the door louder when we argued, writes one. – This was embarrassing Israel, I didn’t even flinch. Was that all you had? – What was that, Israel? My guy let out a fart that was louder than the bang right now. 2/10 from me. The other day my photographer and I were out on the streets of Beirut to talk to people about the tense security situation in the city. We went to the Sassin junction in the Christian district of Achrafieh where I live. On one of the sidewalks, a group of older guys sat around a game of backgammon. A very common sight in Arab cities. One of the older guys was willing to talk to us. While he lit a smoke, I attached a small microphone to his shirt collar. As I was about to put the microphone transmitter in his pocket, he said: – Is there a pager? It probably won’t explode, said the man with the smoke in the corner of his mouth to great laughter from his friends around. Published 30.10.2024, at 16.38
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