Gabrielle still doesn’t understand how she finds herself wandering the streets of Bordeaux or sleeping in her room at her parents’ house. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she keeps saying. Because for more than two years, most of his life has been several thousand kilometers away, in Beirut. However, on October 1, this young 29-year-old from Bordeaux made the decision to leave everything, terrified by the Israeli bombings falling on the Lebanese capital since September 23. Leaving behind her, her memories, her work, her friends and A. her companion. “Here, life goes on as it goes, people have their daily lives, ‘futile’ problems, but who can blame them? » she asks herself.
The fear, however, still remains anchored in her, still jumping when airliners pass over the family home. For a week, she experienced the screams, the tears, the destruction, the deafening hum of the drones, the morbid and constant fear of being the next target. “The terror is also coupled with fatigue. Israel attacked mainly at night, it was impossible to sleep. And during the day, we observed the damage, while trying to have a normal life. »
I was convinced I could take it, but I realized I couldn’t.”
The bombing of Hezbollah headquarters on September 27, killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah and more than 400 civilians, in the southern suburbs of the city, was one too many. “I was in my apartment when I heard and felt the explosions. I live about two kilometers away, in a Christian neighborhood, which is considered rather ‘safe’, but that day, I experienced the most terrifying thing of my life. I simply thought I was going to die. » She then makes her decision to take a plane ticket to Paris. “It was very hard, I was convinced I could cope, but I realized that I couldn’t do it,” she confides moved, saying she is “aware of being privileged by my nationality and my passport.
Sentiment d’abandon
Her face always lights up when she talks about the country and its people, its warmth, its heritage, its culture and its festivals. She discovered Lebanon after the revolutions of the Arab Spring. After obtaining a master’s degree in LEA, she flew to Beirut and became a program coordinator for the NGO Amel Association International, active against social exclusion.
Since her return, there has not been “a second” without her thinking about Lebanon. “My body is here in Bordeaux, but my heart and my head are still there. » Constantly, Gabrielle follows the latest information, between social networks showing the latest destruction and her acquaintances who remained on site. “Lebanon has experienced too many crises, civil wars, attacks, port explosion, inflation, Covid-19… We talk a lot about the resilience of the Lebanese, but above all I see the glorification of their traumas, while they do not only aspire to peace. Currently, they feel abandoned, they need us, families are being destroyed. »
