"Now go we in content, To liberty, and not to banishment."

Racha, my recently engaged sister-in-law, had been sitting quietly in her home with her brother and sisters and my widowed mother-in-law. She told me of her frustration and anxiety, sitting home in the dark, waiting to die. She is a nurse and needed to get out and help her people. Fearing for her life, her mother agreed only if she’d stay in a hospital or the Red Cross center. Today I saw her on TV in an MSNBC report. http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=2aff6882-ef72-4533-aae0-037400590ae2&f=00&fg=email She was working with the Red Cross with an ambulance while dodging missiles. She seemed alive doing what she was trained to do.

"All that glisters is not gold."

Updated from previous post. Now I have heard that the mosque may not have been the building leveled but the appartments attached. In one of those apartments is my cousin and her husband, a real humanitarian doctor who never let those in need pay for his services, Dr. Ghassan. Someone said they saw him on TV. He was ok, no official report on the casualties (I've heard that one person was killed). So what may seem like good news yeilds to more tragic news. And it goes on.

"Now is the winter of our discontent."

Every time I visit Lebanon I stay in Tyr. Tyr is a pretty crowded and historic sea-side town http://www.tyremunicipality.com/ . About a hundred yards from my parents apartment is the neighborhood mosque, a quaint little mosque built as part of a neighborhood complex complete with a school a couple of apartments and a couple of shops. This morning it was bombed. The mosque has been leveled. I don't know how many casualties there were. I'm still trying to find info on the net. My parents live a hundred yards away. I haven't heard from them as of this morning. One day I will make another visit to Lebanon, I'm afraid there may be nothing left for me to see, no mosques, no schools or playgrounds, no memories, no friends or family to visit only mourn.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

The town of Khiam was the location of a famous Israeli prison where thousands of Lebanese were tortured and held captive for years and even killed. In 1989 while in Lebanon visiting my grandparents, I heard of Hussien, a teacher and Khiam prisoner. Tortured once too many times, he tried to escape. Digging under the fence an Israeli bulldozer came in and buried him alive, no escape. This prison has been leveled seemingly to erase this part of history. Khiam was hit repetedly even the UN post where four UN peacekeepers were killed by Israeli strikes.