Road Through a Landscape of Death

A woman weeps over a coffin in Tyre before the mass burial there of 82 Lebanese bombing victims. (By Marco Di Lauro -- Getty Images)

In Bozuriya, the only traffic was a single pickup, barreling down the hilly road with a half-dozen men in back. Each gripped a pole flying a white flag, shirt or towel, sometimes with two hands. Farther down the road, in Jouaiya, an arch welcomed visitors: "Lebanon is a nation of resistance." No one in the town was fighting. No one was in the streets. The only hint of life was the Muslim call to prayer, lyrical, reassuring and unhurried, its ritual of routine interrupted by the uneven cadence of bombing.

"No one's coming out of hiding," said Yusuf Kasani, a stocky 50-year-old carpenter.

Kasani lives in Deir Qanun. At the village entrance, bombing had demolished three houses. Patches of the distinctive red tile of Lebanese homes were still intact; the rest was a pile of masonry and metal spilling into the lone street. On the other side, the blast had sheared off the faces of buildings. Residents said 13 people were killed in the attack, four of the corpses still rotting under the wreckage. Down the street, Kasani huddled with the more than 100 people gathered in the basement, the village's only sign of life.

The stately villa of cream stone belongs to the Izzeddin family. They long ago fled to faraway Aley, leaving the house to the displaced. The tomatoes sit untended, and the vines of wild cucumber known as miqti have shriveled without water. The iron gates are open, and down the sidewalk, around the house, through a half-closed metal door, is the dimly lit, unfinished basement.

Hezbollah's radio station, al-Nour, and the BBC played inside. Along the floor, each family had staked out space, throwing down blankets and mattresses. No one has enough drinking water. Occasionally, the youngest men will run to the houses, bringing back food. Elderly women cook it -- rice, potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes picked from the villa's garden -- over a tiny stove hooked up to a blue kerosene tank. Alongside the stove was a pile of logs, for heat in the blustery Lebanese winter.

"If we run out of food, we'll eat this," Kasani said.

"Everyone here is the same," he went on. "Someone gives me bread, someone gives me food. Then I give when I have it."

He grabbed Rida Zalzali, 36. "This is my brother," he said. He pointed to Iman Naseer, 38. "This is my sister."

Four-year-old Rayan Zalzali handed a visitor a candy bar. Others offered a fig, a drink of water, even a tissue.

"No one here lives on their own," Kasani said.

On this day, the bombing outside the basement was near-constant. Israel repeated its warning that everyone in the south must flee north of the Litani River "immediately." Missiles fell every few minutes on Srifa, a village across the valley, where dozens of people are believed to be buried in the rubble. The most distant booms barely elicited a response. Those nearer drew the attention of the people huddled in the basement.

"Did you hear that?" an elderly woman asked, a question that seemed to seek comfort more than confirmation.