Shiite Pilgrimage Leads to Church

On Perilous Border, Lebanese Christians Take In Muslims

As thousands of Lebanese take refuge in the Christian village of Rmeish, some are drinking water drawn from a fetid pool. The green-tinged water is also used to bathe, cook and wash dishes. (By Lefteris Pitarakis -- Associated Press)

RMEISH, Lebanon -- The word went out -- there was refuge in a Christian village -- and thousands came.

In a pilgrimage of fear, Shiite Muslims from the towns most ravaged along the Lebanese border fled for Rmeish, a hilltop hamlet along a road where Israeli shells fell, at times, every 15 seconds Friday. Here, they escaped to a church, and at the church, a basement lit by soft shafts of sunlight. In it were the wretched of this war: children with dirty feet and a pregnant woman who feared giving birth in squalor, an 85-year-old man whose donkey, his sole possession, was killed by a bomb and hundreds of others among the at least 10,000 who arrived in Rmeish, some drinking from a fetid pool and walking the streets in search of food and goodwill.

"The safety of God," said Heidar Issa, one of those here. "That's what we were counting on."

In a country fractured by faith, torn asunder by 15 years of civil war, they found refuge among the Lebanese Christians they once fought. Their politics often diverged -- over support for Hezbollah, their views of today's conflict -- but they shared a plight. And in a common misery wrought by war, less than a mile from the Israeli border, there was fleeting coexistence rather than talk of strife.

"Everyone is opening their doors to anyone who comes," said Tannous Alem, a 43-year-old resident of Rmeish with a cross around his neck, who had brought 120 people into his home over 12 days. "We're all the same in times like these."

Southern Lebanon, populated largely by Shiite Muslims, has borne the brunt of Israel's attacks, its villages depopulated, its roads and bridges in shambles and nearly every family touched by the war. But the road to Rmeish along Lebanon's border is a microcosm of the diverse country itself: Sunni Muslim village, then Shiite hamlet, alongside Christian town.

Along the sea was Alma al-Shaab, a Christian village with its olive trees, cactuses bearing prickly pears and gardens wilting with no water. Inland was Yarine, a largely Sunni Muslim town, along rolling green hills with cream-colored stones and shrub-like trees. With a wave, an inhabitant there beckoned a passing car: "Welcome! Come join us!" On the Israeli side of the border, antennas stood like sentries along a ridge. Horses, seemingly lost, wandered the streets, unfazed by the explosions. Passing them was a gaggle of Syrian workers, fleeing on foot. Their white flags were tethered to crooked branches, held by hand.

"They are fighting jihad in the path of God," read a sign attached to an electricity pylon in Raamiye, a Shiite Muslim village near the site where Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid more than two weeks ago.

"Please," one woman cried. "Check and see if my home is safe."

"When you come back, can you take us?" another man shouted.

Next was Kawzah, a Christian village with an abandoned Lebanese army checkpoint, then Aita al-Shaab, a village known as a stronghold of Hezbollah, where torn electricity wires dangled like vines along the street. Israeli attacks have destroyed swaths of the village, now deserted. A white Toyota was abandoned there, its trunk unlatched. Next to it was a blue Mercedes, its hood open.

And then came Rmeish, long a rival of Aita al-Shaab, whose Christian inhabitants sometimes served as officers in a Lebanese militia that fought Hezbollah during the Israeli occupation that ended in 2000. The hundreds of displaced people convulsed its streets, gathering along the curbs.