A Son Waits to Join Hizbullah to Avenge Shattered Family

The Cheaitos family, like others in the village of Tiri, just across a range of hills from the Israeli border, are still learning to live with their wounds from the war. On July 23 last year, an Israeli tank missile burst through the roof of a hired white van, killing three of the family's members and inflicting lifelong injuries on the dozen survivors.

The family lost its matriarch that day - Nazira, 67. Her daughter, Muntaha, who was seated beside her, nearly died as well. For precious minutes after her bloodied body was hauled from the van, her teenage son Ali cradled her in his arms, patting her gently on the face and pleading with her not to die.

After four weeks in hospital and several surgical operations, she was discharged disabled on her left side. Her left arms hangs limply, the undulations in her wrist evidence of the missing bone. She has been told she will need a dozen more operations. "If you knew how our bodies were deformed you would be shocked," Ms Cheaitos says.

She has kept her family going since then, it seems, almost through sheer force of will, negotiating two parallel welfare systems in postwar Lebanon: that of the government and of Hizbullah. Ms Cheaitos carries benefits cards for both; the government pays for the operations and Hizbullah for all other treatment and medication.

Over the last year, she says, she has learned to live with her injuries. On the rare occasions when she cannot manage the cooking on her own with her one good hand, she takes food to the neighbors to prepare. She says the miracle of survival for her and her sons, Ali and Abbas, and daughter Ghadir is reason enough to live. But it may not be enough for the children.

Ghadir, 16, turns her face to the right when she meets visitors. She has a bulge in her left cheekbone where her face was shattered. She is also missing a finger. Her mother spent $300 on an artificial finger for her from a plastic surgeon in Beirut, but Ghadir cannot bring herself to wear it. "I thought it would be like a real finger. When I saw it, it wasn't like that," she says.

Ali is 15 now and Abbas is 13. The boys' physical injuries were relatively minor on that day - shrapnel across their upper bodies. The other damage is less immediately visible. The brothers still hide whenever they hear a helicopter overhead. They do not like to talk about the war. Ali will only say that he wants to become a Hizbullah fighter once he leaves school. He will not give his reasons, but his mother knows. "He wants to take revenge for me," she says, laughing loudly. But sometimes even all her considerable resilience and good humor are not enough.

"Sometimes I look at my children and they are just looking off in the distance, and I know they are thinking of that day," she says.