78 Martyrs

I visited a friend of mine in the southern suburbs this morning, and noticed this long line of ‘new’ martyrs in Haret Hreik. We tend to forget, or at least I do, that there was a war this summer, because nothing much happened in my part of town.

But here the sign are very present, yet subtle. There this bridge for instance, that used to look differently, courtesy of the IAF.

And then there’s a new martyr on every lamppost, going all the way from the roundabout near the Kuwaiti Embassy (street names don’t work in Beirut, only landmarks), down past the Palestinian camp (never can remember which one it is, Sabra or Chatila), to the intersection with Hadi Nasrallah Boulevard (yes, son of Hassan Nasrallah), and then up to Martyr’s Graveyard.

78 martyrs in all, I counted them (they’re double sided). Some are so young; they don’t look one day over 16. Most of them obviously have their teenage acne photo-shopped away. Some of them are in their thirties. A few look so good they could have reached Hollywood status. One of them had a very distinctive Jewish nose, sign of the Semitic similarities between the two foes.

The term ‘martyr’ is a bit of a sensitive one. A martyr is ‘a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion or a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle’. I assume Hezbollah talks about the second part, at least I hope so, since the resistance should be based on the principle of land, not religion. Anyway, they were soldiers, and can you consider a soldier a ‘martyr’?

I think the term is being overused. Anyone dying in Lebanon these days, whether it is voluntary or not, is called a martyr. A Lebanese blogger, from Beirut to the Beltway, some time ago had a very interesting post about this ‘martyr’ culture, and how death becomes a way of life.

Some sources say Hezbollah lost about 250 of their fighters, others say it is more. It doesn’t really matter. It is a sad sight, these 78 young faces. I am sure, with the world being as small as it is, I must have crossed the path of some of them.