Word: gharb
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...seen from Beirut, Suq al Gharb and Aytat look like a single town strung across a ridge rising 2,900 feet above the capital's southern suburbs. Yet lines of trenches mark the boundaries between the two villages, and the residents are divided by chasms of suspicion and bitterness. "They are terrified of us, and we are terrified of them," Nassar says. "We are so afraid of each other that it will be difficult for us to be friends again...
...feud has proved more bitter than that between Christians and Druze. The primary battlefield in their long-running confrontation is the Chouf, where both groups sought refuge from Sunni Muslim persecutors 1,000 years ago. Before Lebanon deteriorated into outright civil war in 1975, Aytat and Suq al Gharb lived in peace as summer resorts. Wealthy Arabs were drawn to the towns' cool mountain air scented by thick stands of parasol pines. Since the fighting resumed in earnest last October, the villages have become ghost towns. Gardens are overgrown, grape arbors drop their fruit into rotting piles. The newer...
...either village can recall exactly when the latest troubles began, but each side blames the other for striking the first blow. The first skirmishes were provoked last summer by kidnapings and assaults that may have been the result of family feuds. By October, Aytat and Suq al Gharb were virtually at war with each other...
...fighting flared and subsided repeatedly through the winter and spring, the Israelis prevented either side from rearming or taking new ground. The Druze surrounded Suq al Gharb on three sides, but the Christians controlled the only road between Aytat and Aley, the largest Druze-held town, which in turn was encircled by Christians. After the Druze overran the Christian town of Bhamdun last week, the Lebanese army moved in to protect Suq al Gharb. The army has braved steady artillery fire all week long in order to block a Druze advance toward Beirut's southern suburbs...
...trenches that divide the two villages, young men who used to play together now exchange obscenities across a narrow no man's land. Walid, a Druze fighter in Aytat, must crawl through a series of trenches to reach his home, from which he takes potshots at Suq al Gharb out of a carefully sandbagged upper-story window. Walid says of his six-year-old daughter, who has neatly twined pigtails and the only clean clothes in the house: "I will teach her to hate the Phalangists and how to kill them." Oscar, a Phalangist commander in Suq al Gharb...