A wedding's irresistible momentum

Displaced by Islamic militants and short on food, refugees in Lebanon find a way to wed.

from the August 6, 2007 edition

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Food still arrives daily, but there's little variety. "Rice, rice, rice, every day!" complains one teenage boy – a diet with a low nutritional value, Butterly points out. Dairy products have gone bad in the heat and caused stomach problems among hundreds of people, many of whom share one bathroom. But the refugees' main concern is when the fighting will stop in Nahr al-Bared so that reconstruction can begin.

"They're uncomfortable, there's absolutely no privacy, they're lacking some items ... but all that is nothing compared to what's going to happen in the future," says Ismael Sheikh Hassan, part of a volunteer team assessing refugees' desires for the future Nahr el-Bared.

People want the camp rebuilt the way it used to be, several refugees and relief workers say. So the Lebanese government's talk of a bigger and better camp with wider roads is sparking fear. Refugees worry that a new layout will disrupt the social fabric or allow tanks to enter more easily, Mr. Hassan explains.

For now, Nahr el-Bared remains a battle zone, with the death toll already over 200 and rising almost daily. On the morning of Hussein and Shtiwi's wedding, a Lebanese soldier who was a neighbor of the bride's family was killed at Nahr el-Bared. The family decided not to cancel the wedding yet again, but they did nix the music and dancing out of respect for the fallen soldier.

There was also a scare in Beddawi the night before. The grooms had been celebrating loudly with hundreds of guests in their Beddawi school's courtyard, dancing, clapping, and yelling.

But the party was cut short by the sound of gunshots. The music stopped. Half the crowd ran outside to see what had happened; the other half grabbed kids and ran inside. Within minutes, the schoolyard was cleared.

It turned out that a security officer had fired bullets into the air to break up a fight between two boys – nothing serious, but a skirmish symptomatic of overcrowding.

The night of the wedding was quieter, particularly after the newlyweds said goodbye. The guests moved from the patio into the living room – and turned on the evening news. Two more soldiers killed, a power plant hit. After the news update, the joking, and the baby talk, laughter and chitchat returned to family-reunion volume.

"Inshallah, your wedding will be more beautiful than this," one bride's mother tells her nephew. She apologizes for not throwing more of a party, because of "the situation."

"But of course we are happy with the wedding," she says. "It's a wedding!"

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