Franklin Lamb. Sunday September 16th, 2007
Photo: Shaima. Art work on of Sabra refugee camp.
Dearest Janet: It’s a very beautiful fall day here in Beirut, 25 years ago this week since the 16-18 September 1982 Massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra-Shatila. Bright blue sky and a fall breeze. It actually rained last night, enough to clean out some of the humidity and dust.
Fortunately, not enough to make the usual rain-created swamp of sewage and filth on Rue Sabra, or flood the grassless burial ground of the mass grave (the camp residents named it Martyrs Square-one of several so-named memorials now in Lebanon) where you once told me that on Sunday, 19 September 1982, you watched, sickened, as families and Red Crescent workers created a subterranean mountain of butchered and bullet-riddled victims from those 48 hours of slaughter. Some of the bodies had limbs and heads chopped off, some boys were castrated, crosses carved into some of the bodies.
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