The forgotten people: Like many of those exiled from Palestine, Fadia Labouni's life has been scarred by tragedy. She talks to Foreign Affairs Correspondent Deaglán de Bréadún in the second of two reports from refugee camps in Lebanon.
Sand and bombs. These are the components of Fadia Labouni's first childhood memory. It was 1973 and she was only four years old. As children do, Fadia was playing happily in a sandpit - scooping up the sand, feeling the texture of it in her hand, sifting it through her tiny fingers. Suddenly, she heard the terrible noise of bombs exploding around her and the joyous innocence of childhood was cut short by fear and terror.
The scene was Burj el-Barajneh refugee camp outside Beirut, where Fadia lived with her family. Fighting had broken out between the Lebanese army and the camp inhabitants and the Lebanese had decided to get tough with their Palestinian "guests" who came to their country to escape the Arab-Israel War of 1948. Fadia's family grabbed their possessions and fled to another, safer camp at Tel el-Zaatar.
Fadia Labouni today is head of a kindergarten and a committed educationalist. She would much prefer to talk about her work with 200 pupils but is willing to have her personal and family history put on record because she wants the world to know what she and many other Palestinian refugees have had to contend with since they fled in their tens of thousands from their homeland.
After their escape to safety in 1973, the Labouni family remained in Tel el-Zaatar camp for three years. But then further fighting erupted; this time the Lebanese were supported by a combination of the Phalangist Christian militia - sworn enemies of the Palestinians - as well as Syrian forces. Fadia's mother, Fatima, collected her family, which at that time consisted of four girls, and headed for safety in the Nahr el-Bared camp in north Lebanon.
Fadia recalls how the Phalangists set up a checkpoint along the way, killing anyone who spoke Arabic with a Palestinian accent. While we in the West joke - I say tomayto, you say tomahto - in Lebanon, where Phalangists asked those at the checkpoint to give them the Arabic word for "tomato", the wrong pronunciation was a death sentence.
The Lebanese pronunciation of "banadurra" was the password through the checkpoint; but those who said "ban-dora", in the Palestinian fashion, were killed. The tears flow as she recalls that they would cut people's throats or, even more horrifically, tie each leg to a different jeep and pull them apart. Women and girls were raped before being killed.
Luckily for the Labounis their mother was a south Lebanese woman married to a Palestinian and she had the right accent and pronunciation.
Fatima told her children to keep their mouths shut and let her do the talking. They had another lucky break - it was winter time and raining, forcing the Phalangist militiamen at the checkpoint to take cover. The little group made it to safety at Nahr el-Bared but their security was short-lived. Within two years, the Syrians were shelling the place and the family headed back south to their original home at Burj el-Barajneh.
Four years later, the Israelis launched their invasion of Lebanon and attacked the camp. Fadia's family escaped and took refuge at a schoolhouse in Beirut. When they returned, all the homes in the camp had been destroyed. "We walked on stones to the place where our house had been," says Fadia.
Their home was rebuilt and a period of relative calm followed. Fadia was doing very well at school: one of the star pupils in all of Beirut. As a prize for doing well in her exams she was given a watch with a map of Palestine on it. But the school was outside the camp and there were many incidents of violence, including a report that four Palestinian girls were raped by members of the Amal movement, a Shia Muslim militia. Her father said: "Don't go any more." It still rankles with Fadia that her schooling was cut so short by the threat of violence.
The travails of the Labouni family were not over. There was another outbreak of violence when Amal, with backing from the Syrian army, placed Burj el-Barajneh under a prolonged siege. Cut off from all food supplies, Palestinians had to eat cats and dogs to survive. Dog meat is "salty", she says. Fadia married at 17, the year after she left school; early marriage is common among Palestinians and she became pregnant. Food and water were scarce as Burj el-Barajneh was still sealed off by Amal, and anyone moving around in the open risked coming under fire from snipers.
"When the time for delivery came, I had bleeding," Fadia recalls. Her younger sister Rajia was small enough in stature to have a chance of evading the sniper's gaze. Heroically, Rajia made her way out of the camp through a nearby cemetery and returned with medical supplies for her beloved older sister.
But as she dropped the container of medications off at the camp hospital where Fadia was being treated, a sniper's bullet hit her in the leg. It was only a flesh wound and she survived. Rajia, who was only eight at the time, continued to make forays out of the camp until she was finally caught. Her captors held her for a week during which time she was beaten up and had her nose broken.
Meanwhile, Fadia's life was hanging by a thread. She smiles about it now: "I told my mother that, before my death, I wanted to eat an orange." Then the birth-pangs started: "That day, the whole day, tanks and rockets were hitting the camp. It was a rainy day and the women of the camp tried to break the siege to go out to get food." Shells and rockets notwithstanding, Fadia gave birth to a baby girl.
"My husband asked me, 'What do you want to name her?'" Because of the day that was in it and the circumstances, Fadia answered: "Somoud". The Arabic word is difficult to translate but the closest words in English are "resistance" or "steadfast". This was a joyous event but there was further sorrow to come. Nadia, aged 17, another of Fadia's sisters, was killed during an Israeli air attack on Burj el-Barajneh in 1988. After that, most of the family took the opportunity to move to Denmark, where they were given asylum.
As Palestinians, they were entering into a second exile. Rajia was among those who left. She is married now but still experiences depression because of her memories of the conflict.
Fadia stayed behind with little Somoud. She also had a baby son, Mohammed. Tragically, her husband Abed was killed in 1990 when a car bomb exploded near Ein el-Hilweh in the south of Lebanon, the scene of much fighting between Palestinian factions and Abed was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fadia has since remarried.
Somoud is now 19 years old and studying journalism at university. She shows me a piece she has written in English about the severe difficulties refugees have in finding the money to pay college fees. The heading is: "The Dreams of Palestinian Students are like Candles in the Wind."
Somoud is a self-confident and relaxed young woman and her mother, too, despite her bad experiences, retains an upbeat and optimistic disposition. Indeed, Fadia exudes happiness among her tiny pupils at the Izzedine al-Qassam kindergarten in Burj el-Barajneh. Young as they are, the children are taught Arabic and what in my day was called "sums", with English as a second language. Fadia has created a garden with vegetables and fruit: "This is the only garden in the camp." As a treat for the visitors, the children recite the basic facts about their Palestinian homeland, last inhabited by their forebears 58 years ago when the Arab- Israeli conflict forced them out.
The kindergarten is named after a revolutionary leader and educationalist from the 1920s and 1930s and the teachers are keeping the flame of Palestinian nationalism alive.
Fadia Labouni recalls the day she found out she was a Palestinian. She was brought to the south of Lebanon by her mother and soon found herself exulting in the open spaces and the sunlight streaming into the house - a great contrast with the cramped reservation where she normally lived.
"This is my land, this is my sun," she told her mother delightedly. But her mother replied: "It is not your sun, it is not your land." Fadia was taken to the roof of the house and her family's former homeland across the nearby border was pointed out to her.
Her mother told her: "There is your country, Palestine."
Deaglan de Breadun's and Frank Miller's visit to Lebanon was funded by the Development Education Unit of Irish Aid.