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Update: Reader G writes in response to the Shadid piece, "I'd recommend that you entitle that Shadid except 'A new Mid-East being born.' I'm involved with moving refugees out of Turkey (Cyprus overflow), and it really is impressive how evacuees of all stripes are get along so well together and are moving down the road with amazing resilience and good spirits, in spite of what they've gone through, and what's happening to their country."The word went out -- there was refuge in a Christian village -- and thousands came.
In a pilgrimage of fear, Shiite Muslims from the towns most ravaged along the Lebanese border fled for Rmeish, a hilltop hamlet along a road where Israeli shells fell, at times, every 15 seconds Friday. Here, they escaped to a church, and at the church, a basement lit by soft shafts of sunlight. In it were the wretched of this war: children with dirty feet and a pregnant woman who feared giving birth in squalor, an 85-year-old man whose donkey, his sole possession, was killed by a bomb and hundreds of others among the at least 10,000 who arrived in Rmeish, some drinking from a fetid pool and walking the streets in search of food and goodwill. ...
In a country fractured by faith, torn asunder by 15 years of civil war, they found refuge among the Lebanese Christians they once fought. Their politics often diverged -- over support for Hezbollah, their views of today's conflict -- but they shared a plight. And in a common misery wrought by war, less than a mile from the Israeli border, there was fleeting coexistence rather than talk of strife.
"Everyone is opening their doors to anyone who comes," said Tannous Alem, a 43-year-old resident of Rmeish with a cross around his neck, who had brought 120 people into his home over 12 days. "We're all the same in times like these."