these are the emails i received yesterday from lebanon

[from ilham, my roommate, who lives in the coastal city of sidon in southern lebanon. she got a full scholarship to do her master's degree in math education at aub this fall and she is also planning to teach part-time in sidon while completing her degree. this would involve constantly traveling between sidon and beirut, which is quite difficult these days because of the bombings of roads and bridges. moreover, aub has to be open. the university's website (http://www.aub.edu.lb) announced on july 16 that summer classes have been suspended.]

hi ariana,

well the situation in Saida is still better than the rest of the countries. As i said to you, they are bombing the places where they doubt finding any reserves for guns for hezbullah and that is in Shee3a [shi'a] places as predicted; plus they are targetting at the citizen infra-structure; here in Saida we have a port that is not actively working, however we have an electricity station; I hope this time they would forget about it so that we won't be ligthting candles!!! Actually, uptill now saida is fine, yet if the situation got worse, I donno if there is another place to go to. I think we'll stay at home waiting for any political solution. Anyway, we are fearing israeli to bomb a place in Saida called "7aret [haret] Saida"; it is a shee3a place too that is near us and somehow near Mar Elyas where israeli have been bombing the Lebanese soldiers. Now, concerning my masters, hopefully the situation will get better from now till then..I have pre-registration in Mid-Sep so it's still too early to think about what's gonna happen from now till that time.

take care you too, ariana and hi to your family and esp. Elane

talk later back ...

hamo

***

[rim was in my lebanese politics class and my arab society and culture class. she lives just behind aub on the corniche near the lighthouse that is now only half there. if the airport runways are repaired by the fall, rim will be going to oxford to begin her master's in psychology. her family is from an area outside of beirut called choueifat, just before the entrance to the chouf mountains. a storehouse there was bombed two days ago. sodeco, an area she referred to in her letter, is in achrafiyeh, a predominantly christian area. two trucks carrying irrigation and drilling equipment were bombed there today, right near beirut's biggest mall, abc. abc is about 5 minutes from sodeco. http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.322714192&par=0]

Ariana hayete [my darling]!

Thank you so much for all your emails, you're wonderful. Sorry I didn't get the chance to email you earlier. I loved your last email where you put down all your thoughs, i think they were very insightful and I loved seeing how your perspective has developed.

My family and friends are all fine. Those who don't live in safe places have moved elsewhere. I moved with Nour [her sister] and my mom to Sodeco to my maternal grandma's. our family in choueifat is fine, no one got hurt, but we really didn't expect choueifat would get bombed. As for my paternal grandma, well, she passed away about two weeks ago, and thank god the funeral and the condolences all happened the week right before the war started. It was a perfect timing cos it also happened two days after my cousin got engaged. Hayete my grandma she timed it
all so perfectly :-)

Tayeb hayete, l send you lots of hugs and kisses and much love
Take care
Rim