ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
For the past three weeks, Israel has been relentlessly bombing sites across Lebanon. One of the most affected places is a neighborhood just south of Beirut. It's both a Hezbollah stronghold and one of the most vibrant parts of the city. It's also an important symbol at the center of this war. NPR's Eyder Peralta reports.
EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: As we enter Dahieh, we find a ghost city. Everything that makes a place home is gone. The children are gone. The barista at the fancy cafe on the ground floor of the hotel with the glass chandelier is gone. The corner store lady is gone. The shawarma guy is gone.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
PERALTA: The militant and political group Hezbollah has called reporters for a tour. They take us from one destroyed building to another. It's all broken concrete and mangled metal. All that's left are men. On a corner next to one crumbled building is a man in his 30s. He won't give us his name because of security concerns.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: There's no one left. Yeah. Everyone left. It's only me.
PERALTA: He has two cats in his apartment, so he's not leaving. Instead, he seems resigned to dying in this place.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Well, you know, I live in a building like this one in the middle of nowhere. They will hit that. Why not?
PERALTA: At the sight of every strike, Hezbollah puts a picture of their slain leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in this neighborhood. Every once in a while, men come out of the buildings, and they stand in the middle of the streets to deliver soliloquys.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Israel kill Hassan Nasrallah. But Hassan Nasrallah here, here, here.
PERALTA: Here in his heart, he says.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Hassan Nasrallah in heart.
PERALTA: The U.S. labels Hezbollah a terrorist organization. In the '80s, it detonated truck bombs that killed 241 U.S. service members. And for decades, Hezbollah has fought against Israel. In 2000, it was their resistance that ended in Israeli invasion. The day after Hamas attacked Israel last year, Hezbollah started firing rockets. But like Dahieh, Hezbollah has also evolved.
Here, it's stronger than the government. It runs free schools and free hospitals. During the pandemic, it was Hezbollah that provided food and money to residents. The image of Hassan Nasrallah is now on the billboards that dot the side of the highway that runs through this neighborhood. Our last stop is at a building that was hit the night before. Smoke was still rising from it. Young men dressed in all black run through the rubble, through the smoke.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting in non-English language).
PERALTA: "We are facing the sword or humiliation. We will never choose humiliation."
Dahieh was born out of war.
MUHAMMAD NASSER AL-DIN: This area were cheap and was ready to receive the strangers of Beirut.
PERALTA: The poet Muhammad Nasser al-Din says his family's house in southern Lebanon was destroyed in 1984 during a previous Israeli invasion. Like many other Shia Muslims from the south, they fled to Beirut, but in the sectarian country, they were rejected, partly because of their religion, partly because of their support for Hezbollah. As al-Din explains it, that's when a people who felt like strangers in their own country formed Dahieh. At the time, he says, it was a romantic place.
AL-DIN: I still remember that the smell of the trees in the spring was a lemon scent.
PERALTA: His family home had a garden with a fountain, and the streets were lined with lemon trees. But war has always followed Dahieh. Even in those early days, Lebanon's civil war was raging.
AL-DIN: I remember we had a very big library in our house. And one day, my dad wanted to clean up the library from the dust.
PERALTA: There was a window that had not been opened for 15 years.
AL-DIN: And I remember my father opened this window for five seconds. There is a shoot from the snipers. It passed 5 centimeter away the head of my dad.
PERALTA: During Israel's last invasion of Lebanon in 2006, Dahieh was completely destroyed. Al-Din shakes his head. This feels existential.
AL-DIN: To be or not to be. This is a war to break the bones, either us or Israel.
PERALTA: Al-Din is not a member of Hezbollah. He weighs his words carefully. He's 46 years old, too old to start over, to rebuild, and yet he's not ready to give up his home.
AL-DIN: There's no choice. If we lose this battle, we will lose our children. And when someone is coming to my child, I will fight them by my teeth.
PERALTA: In the rubble of his childhood home, he says, the only thing of his that survived was a little toy car. It's still in his mother's house in Dahieh. Right now, it's in a drawer.
AL-DIN: Where Mom is putting the glasses of my father and the Quran, the photos of us. So this car is between these precious things and the house.
PERALTA: The next day, we meet Hadi Saghir just outside Dahieh.
HADI SAGHIR: (Non-English language spoken).
PERALTA: He's a merchant, but everything is closed, so his job has stopped. These days, he's one of the few men left. He runs a WhatsApp group with some 400 members. And after every strike, residents ask him, is my house OK?
SAGHIR: (Through interpreter) I look at all of these houses, and I send them pictures and tell them, your house is good, or, your house is destroyed.
PERALTA: I ask him, what is it about this place that makes you stay? He smiles.
SAGHIR: (Laughter).
PERALTA: He loves the people, the restaurants, even the chaos of the traffic. Dahieh is our land, he says.
SAGHIR: (Through interpreter) Our blood is Dahieh. We love Dahieh with its people, this environment. Every single corner of Dahieh is ours.
PERALTA: As we speak, we hear a boom in the distance.
SAGHIR: (Non-English language spoken).
(SOUNDBITE OF EXPLOSION BOOMING)
PERALTA: That's an airstrike.
SAGHIR: Yes.
PERALTA: Later, we see a plume of smoke arising from between the buildings. That's every day - same thing.
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: (Non-English language spoken).
SAGHIR: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: They're used to it.
PERALTA: It's history repeating itself. We're used to it, he says. Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Dahieh. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
