by Maryam Aqil
BEIRUT, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- When the ambulances arrive carrying the dead, my work begins.
My name is Maryam Aqil, and I am in my sixties. I live in Harouf, a village just outside Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, where war is written across the streets.
When fighting sharply escalated in early March, many people fled, but not me. As houses were destroyed and people killed, the narrow alleys I have known for most of my life have become a map of memories: I pass a certain spot and immediately recall someone who is no longer there.
In late April, my cousin and a neighbor of mine lost their lives just down the road from my home. Their deaths changed how I saw the war. Its victims were no longer distant; they were people whose faces I knew.
I chose to stay in Harouf because I felt my presence mattered. There were people who needed someone to be there for them.
My work is to care for the dead and prepare them for burial. I usually wash the bodies with camphor and traditional Arabic soap. Sometimes the remains were too fragmented to wash, so I collected them, arranged them with care, and placed them in shrouds.
More often than not, I was the only one there because no one else was available to do the work. I was afraid, but I kept telling myself: Why should I run? What is meant to be will be.
Although I have grown accustomed to witnessing tragedy, some stories break my heart more than others. About two weeks into the war, a woman and her three children were killed. When the children's remains were brought to me, a wave of grief swept over me. All I could think about were those innocent lives cut short, taken through no fault of their own.
Yet the encounter that cut deepest was with a man returning from Africa. After the war began, he set out for Lebanon to take his family -- his wife and three children -- to safety. But just one day before he was due to arrive, all four were killed in an airstrike.
When I met him, he was devastated. Again and again, he asked what had happened to his wife and children, and how they had spent their final moments.
His questions -- and the desperation behind them -- shook me to the core. There was little I could say to ease the anguish of a man who had crossed continents to save his family, only to find them gone before he could reach them.
I have spoken with several families after washing their loved ones, but I am careful not to share what I have seen or describe the condition of the bodies. I offer only quiet words of condolence and prayers -- to respect their feelings, not to deepen their pain.
Families from several areas thanked me for what I had done. I told them that I do not see my work as taking sides, but as a humanitarian duty to those who have lost loved ones.
Standing beside them in those dark moments was something I felt I simply had to do.
Despite the painful scenes, I have carried on. I pray for mercy for the dead and recovery for the wounded, and for people to remain close to one another, even in the face of war's brutality.
I have carried on because I believe the dead have a right to dignity, and their families a right to a final farewell.
Today, some details may have faded from my memory, but the places have forgotten nothing. Every street in my neighborhood tells a chapter of the war.
I simply hope that one day, the streets burdened with so many memories of death will echo again with the sounds of life -- people returning, rebuilding, and walking safely through them.
Editor's note: Maryam Aqil worked at a private hospital in Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, before the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. She now works as a mortician.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Xinhua News Agency.
