“I’m a doctor, Kevork, a doctor! I cannot be with one side or the other. The flowing blood, the injuries, the pain: one fighter is the same as the next, and they are just like anyone who is injured or a victim. I see only damaged bodies. A wounded person, for me, is stripped of any identity: they have no nationality, no religion, no affiliation. A tortured body ought to be treated, cared for, saved. Many people tried to stop me from going to Karantina in those days. ‘Only foreigners and strangers live there,’ they’d say to me. ‘Foreigners?’ I’d reply. ‘Strangers?’ They were poor refugees from Palestine, Syria, and here in Lebanon, needing help and care. I used to go there to provide treatment once a month, and then I started going every week after the start of the war, when it was no longer possible to reach my clinic located on the front lines. Sometimes it was impossible to get home after roadblocks were set up and shells started flying, and I’d remain trapped at the clinic. Those nights, I’d call and tell Thurayya not to wait up for me because there were so many injured people, and I might be a while. She would just hang up the phone without comment, either to blame or criticize.

“The clinic was in a two-story building at the end of the camp, and we were in a one-story room that had been built on one side. The sound of gunshots and explosions, one after another, was getting closer. Then screams and wailing. The children were shaking like little animals and would scream in fright with every boom. Nurse Widad was crying out, begging the children to be quiet so they wouldn’t attract any attention. But I knew they would search the buildings to drive out anyone hiding inside. I called to Widad and told her to inject the children with a sedative that would put them right to sleep, something I used to prescribe when a patient’s pain became too much. She stared at me, wide-eyed and almost deranged. Then she began nodding her head violently. ‘Yes, yes!’ she cried, before heading to the medicine cabinet to take out needles and bottles of medicine. Widad injected all the children with the same needle, refilling it more than once. I didn’t watch, and I didn’t give her any instructions about how to do it safely. The children received their shots obediently. Then they lay down on their beds and, in a matter of minutes, drifted off to sleep.