By Nada Al-Hassan -Beirut

The place is no longer my place … it turned from white into black. It is the same scene here and there: destruction and bloody bodies. What is the oppressive hand that devastated homes and turned dreams into everlasting nightmares, shaping a dramatic scene of terror and fear!

"I don't know whether my house was destroyed or not!" said a 50-year-old man. He no longer knows where his house was now all land marks are gone.

Here was the entrance of Al-Mannar TV building but nothing is left except rubble and smashed pieces. However, on the other side of the road there was a signboard saying "Death For America." It is still there as the Israeli rockets didn't drop it yet.

If you try to go to the southern suburbs of Lebanon, you have to know how to escape and run, because the black birds are there: the Israeli aircrafts that fiercely bomb people everywhere.

Here was my father's place where sun and flowers kept decorating its sides. But now the place has become a pile of cracked buildings. Even after all this destruction, they are still going on executing their inhumane plan. Here you can smell death, see fear, and hear terror. But they will never darken our sun; we will return again to our homes..

I went searching for the home of Zainab, my best friend; I wanted to pinpoint where it was, but how difficult this operation was! The features of the place have been changed. I went forward to be sure, but my feet stumbled and I fell on the ground where there was a science book for the third class of secondary school. I carried it as if I had found a body of a dead child. I think that the book owner is either killed under the rubble or has moved away to a nearby place … I was confused where to put it.

Finally I found a wall that was half destroyed, so I put the book on it — perhaps its owner might come and take it again!

At last I left the place when the buzzing of planes began to get closer. I left with a pain in my heart for my brothers and sisters who were buried under debris.