Survivors Rise From Rubble Of Battered Lebanese Village

Namad Baidoun, traumatized by 20 days of Israeli bombing, screams as she walks out of the shattered ruins of her village of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. (Photos By Michael Robinson Chavez -- The Washington Post)

A dozen other people gathered along the curb, collapsing with exhaustion or begging for help. Children were expressionless, neither smiling nor crying, seemingly in shock.

Diabis kept feeling her way. She stopped every few minutes, once under the collapsed awning of the Abdel-Majid Habib Birri gas station, where a tattered yellow Hezbollah banner hung limply across the street. She finally reached the others, waiting.

A few hours later, a cry went out.

In the basement of a house, Ahmed, unshaven, was sitting in a baseball cap and dirty pinstriped pants. At first he refused to leave, then was told his sister wanted him to. He asked for his brown leather shoes, locked the door and took the key. With the help of others, he made his way, gingerly walking with a cane or riding piggyback, over rubble and a electricity pylon split like a toothpick.

"Where's my sister?" he kept asking.

Sitting in an ambulance, she finally saw him. The moment of recognition was gradual. Her eyes were too weak.

"Bring him here," Diabis finally exclaimed. It was a shout, though her voice could not muster it. "Have him stay with me."

They got into a white Volvo, its fender dangling, its front headlight hanging by a wire, headed for the hospital in Tibnin.

"God saved us," she said quietly. "He didn't have anyone."