My Village Through a TV Screen
I was nearly seven years old when my father brought home four VHS tapes. Through them, he wanted to introduce my brother and me to the village he came from, to our grandfather’s house, the alleys where he grew up, and the places where he left a part of his life. Each tape documented a different season of the year. That is how the village entered my memory; not as a place I had visited, but as an image that preceded me there.
I remember my brother and me sitting on the floor in front of the television in our pajamas. We tried to huddle closer to the screen as if that would shorten the distance between us and the village. In his calm voice, my father narrated the scenes as if explaining the map of his heart: "This is our neighborhood. This is our house. Here is where we used to play." Since then, it has remained in my mind exactly as it appeared on those tapes: stone houses, narrow roads, and an abundance of flowers. In particular, I remember, in particular, the "Gamila" tree (the Silk Floss tree), with its drooping branches and striking blossoms.
In this sense, my relationship with my village was born twice: first in an imagination crafted by images, and then when I finally stepped onto its soil after the liberation and Israeli withdrawal of South Lebanon in 2000.
The memory of Liberation
We were on the school bus when the driver, Abu Salim, announced that the South had been liberated and that Khiam, my hometown along the border, was free. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what he was saying or the significance of the moment, but I could tell that the adults were confused and suddenly joyful. When we arrived home, we asked about my father. My mother said that he had already gone to the village and would return the next day to take us there.
Later, this detail became a central part of my memory of liberation: My father didn’t wait to hear the news. He left for the village while the Israelis were still there. He wanted to witness their withdrawal from his land himself. Just as he had known the beginning, he wanted to see the end.
The next day, my father returned. He wore an orange, yellow, and brown plaid shirt and carried a smile unlike any other. We set off early to beat the traffic. We stopped at the supermarket and bought bread, mortadella, "Picon," and biscuits for the road. That day, I felt as if I were going somewhere very far away, though I did not yet understand what it meant for a person to return to a place they had been denied for so long.
The only clear memory from the trip is Fairouz singing "Kan Gher Chakel El Zaytoun" playing in the car, as if it were the only suitable music for that day.
At the Kfar Tibnit crossing, the image began to feel more real. For the first time, I saw the meaning of a "crossing" and saw burnt Israeli vehicles on the side of the road. I remember a young man wearing a white shirt with Che Guevara’s face on it. His hair was tied back, and his sleeves were rolled up. My father called out to him, gave him a sandwich and a bottle of water, and congratulated him. It was touching how people didn’t necessarily know each other, yet felt close to one another.
The cars were barely moving because of the dense traffic, yet no one seemed angry. Joy was visible in the eyes before the words and in the smiles before the cheers. Even the silence that day felt shared, as if everyone understood that what was happening was bigger than any passing conversation.
When we reached the village, we visited my father’s uncle, then he took us to see the land where he would build our house. There, for the first time, the village was no longer just a place we loved or reclaimed; it became a place where we envisioned a future. I began to imagine the house: what it would look like, where my room would be, and how I would live in a place that had suddenly become more than just a story told by my father or a picture saved on a videotape.
I started waiting for the weekends to go up to the village. During that period, we rented a very small house where the whole family gathered, with more than eight people sleeping in one room. Yet, no one felt cramped. We saw that overcrowding was part of a delayed joy—a part of a promise being fulfilled.
Until our home in Khaim was finished, and became our summer house, with a colorful garden. In those years, the village felt an alive place: evening gatherings, get-togethers, and a "village dinner" hosted by the school, where we would dance the Dabke and get to know one another. It was there, too, that I met the first person I ever loved.
What came after Liberation
In the summer of 2002, I was swinging with my cousin near the house, listening to a song by Samira Said. Her mother came and turned off the radio abruptly, saying that listening to songs was forbidden and threatening us with my uncle. We turned off the radio and got off the swing, but the fear didn't turn off as easily. I didn’t understand why a song could become a source of guilt, or why a child should fear God for something she did not even understand.
By summer of 2003, the transformation became clearer. The village dinner disappeared. The school turned into a partisan center. The shared spaces that once gathered people despite their differences began to shrink. Bit by bit, the village no longer felt like a home broad enough for all its children, reshaping itself into something new, something felt unnatural to us.
Over time, the scene became clearer: occupation may not always be military in nature, nor does it always originate from beyond the borders. Sometimes it enters through schools, songs, gatherings, and the quiet fear that reshapes daily life.
Liberation felt incomplete. Those who had liberated the south from the Israeli occupation grew in power as their support base expanded, thereby dominating politics and society. They imposed a new culture on the South, deciding how people’s lives would be. Later, it became more violent, and those who opposed the domination faced intimidation, threats, or accusations.
Today, when I remember the day of Israeli withdrawal, and understand the cruelty of the paradox, we thought, like many others, that the end of occupation meant the beginning of freedom. But the years that followed revealed that land may be liberated, but we had another battle to fight: the new order taking shape in the South.
Fast forward to 2026
As the 2026 war continues to rage around us, the same question arises with greater urgency: how can we define occupation? Does it refer only to land occupation, or does it extend to the controllers of minds, public life, our very future and culture?
Perhaps that is why I cannot remember my village without two parallel images: the first on a TV screen, full of flowers, stone houses , and my father’s nostalgia; and a second on the ground, revealing how a place that was "liberated" can, despite everything, remain so far from freedom.