Mohamed Sabra, a 40-year-old businessman, was at home with his family in Nabi Ayla, in Beqaa, east of Beirut, on September 23, when the Israeli army bombed his building. Today, all he has left is his eldest son, aged 7, who was seriously wounded.
A big smile lights up Adam's face. In the photo on the phone screen, the child has his thumb raised. His father, Mohamed Sabra, a 40-year-old Lebanese businessman, looks at him affectionately. He holds back sobs. The 7-year-old boy is all he has left. His whole life now revolves around him.
Since the Israeli bombing in Nabi Ayla in the Beqaa valley on September 23 that killed most of his family, Sabra has seen his son only once, behind the glass of the sterile room in Beirut's LAU Medical Center-Rizk Hospital, where the child is being treated for skull and orbital fractures. He doesn't want the child to see him with both arms in plaster. One fracture in his left arm, two in his right and some ligaments severed. He talks to Adam every day on the phone. The boy thinks he's on a business trip to Dubai for his chocolate import company. He's promised to bring him back a present.
He doesn't know how to tell him that his mother, Dina Darwiche, and his 4-year-old brother, Jad, died in the bombing. So did his grandfather, his uncle and his aunt, as well as his other aunt from America, who had returned to the village for vacation. Six people killed, the day Israel began a campaign of massive strikes on Lebanon, one of which targeted the family's three-story building. It was 7:25 pm. The children were playing together. Sabra was watching television with his mother.