Lebanese child near Total, Tibnine, South Lebanon, 1994. Photo: Michael J. Whelan
During my tour of duty in South Lebanon as an Irish Peacekeeper with the United Nations forces (UNIFIL) I witnessed much of the human fallout from the conflict, which had been ongoing for many years before I arrived in the Middle East, as it still does. In the Irish battalion Area of Operations there was an orphanage for young children victims of the wars. This orphanage was and still is situated near the village of Tibnine and is still sponsered and looked after by Irish soldiers serving there. In times when violence erupted or the area was being heavily shelled in retaliation for attacks on Isreali positions the orphanage would feel the impacts of shrapnel and sometimes recieved direct hits from heavy weapons, ie moror rounds, artillary rounds, bombs and bullets. The peacekeepers did their best to protect the children and in times of extreme shelling would stay in the orphanage to comfort them or take the children to the UN bases. I often wondered about the children on violent nights, separated from their parents in a world of men’s wars, how they were coping and I still do now almost twenty years later, it still goes on. They must have been terrified. This is where my poem came from, how it was inspired!
DELIVERANCE
(South Lebanon 1994)
In the orphanage a child
cowers from cursing men outside.
She wants to climb back into
her dead mother’s womb
and hide inside its warm, soft,
un-edged safety,
where no explanation is needed
or reason to hide under splintered
staircases or run the gauntlet to basement
bomb shelters, existing minute to minute
with strangers until the dawn arrives with her
deliverance and she refuses to be born.
Michael J. Whelan
Published in Cyphers Literary Magazine, Issue 72, 2011
Michael J. Whelan - Writer 