The Land of the South - Where the Olives Weep & the Heart Endures

Carol Baliki

10/29/20267 min read

There is a place in Lebanon where the air tastes different. It is sweeter, somehow, and heavier all at once. It is the South. It is the land of rolling hills covered in olive groves, of ancient stones that have known a thousand prayers, of villages that cling to the mountainside like a child to its mother's skirt. It is a place of breathtaking beauty and unbearable sorrow. It is a place where the earth itself seems to ache.

To speak of South Lebanon is to speak of a wound that never fully closes. It is a land that has been marched upon, bombed, occupied, and abandoned. It is a land whose name, for too many outside its borders, is synonymous only with conflict. But that is not what the South is. The South is not a headline. The South is a grandmother. The South is a fig tree. The South is the sound of a shepherd's flute at dusk. The South is the smell of bread baking in a taboon oven, the taste of olives cured by hands that have done this for centuries. And the South is heartbreak. It is the heartbreak of a mother who has packed her life into a single bag more times than she can count. It is the heartbreak of a child who knows the sound of a drone better than the sound of a lullaby. It is the heartbreak of a farmer who walks through his grove after the bombs have fallen, touching the splintered trunks of trees his grandfather planted, trees that have fed his family for generations. Trees that are not just trees. They are memory. They are identity. They are the proof that he was here, that his people were here, that they belonged to this soil long before anyone drew lines on a map. The olive tree is the soul of the South. It is a patient tree. It does not rush. It grows slowly, twisting and turning, surviving drought and frost and fire. It gives its fruit generously, asking nothing in return. And when it is cut down, when its branches are torn away by the blast of a bomb, it does not die easily. It sends up new shoots from its roots. It refuses to surrender.

The people of the South are like their olive trees. They have been cut down so many times. And yet, they rise. I think of a village I once heard about, a place so close to the border that you could see the fence from the rooftops. It was a village of maybe a few hundred families. They had a school, a mosque, a church, a small grocery store where the owner knew everyone's name and everyone's story. They had a football field where the children played until the sun went down. They had a café where the old men gathered every morning to drink coffee and argue about politics and remember the old days. It was not a rich village. It was not a famous village. It was just a place where people lived, where they loved, where they buried their dead and celebrated their weddings. And then, one day, it was gone. Not the people. The people had left, fleeing in cars and trucks and on foot, carrying what they could. But the village itself, the buildings, the homes, the school, the mosque, the church, the grocery store, the football field, the café—it was reduced to rubble. The olive groves were burned. The fig trees were uprooted. The taboon oven where the women baked bread was cracked in two. When the people returned, they did not recognize their home. They stood at the edge of the destruction, and they wept. They wept for the walls that had held their children's laughter. They wept for the doors that had welcomed neighbors and strangers alike. They wept for the gardens where they had grown tomatoes and mint and roses. They wept for the graves of their ancestors, now buried under debris. They wept for the silence.

Because the South is never silent. There is always the sound of birds, of children, of life. But after the bombs, there was only silence. A silence so deep it felt like a physical weight. And yet. And yet. They did not leave. They pitched tents on the ruins. They cleared the rubble with their bare hands. They found the old taboon oven, still standing somehow, and they lit a fire in it and baked bread. They hung a Lebanese flag on a broken wall. They planted new olive saplings in the places where the old trees had stood. They did this not because they were told to. They did this not because it was easy. They did this because it was the only thing they knew how to do. They did this because the South is not just a place. The South is a promise. The promise is this: We will not be erased. We will not be forgotten. We will not be defeated by bombs or by poverty or by the indifference of the world. We will remain. We will rebuild. We will plant. We will harvest. We will sing. We will dance. We will mourn our dead. And we will live. This is the heartbreak of South Lebanon. It is not just the destruction. It is the knowledge that this has happened before, and it may happen again. It is the knowledge that the world has watched, and the world has looked away. It is the knowledge that the people of the south have been asked to bear a burden that no people should have to bear. They have been asked to be strong when they are tired. They have been asked to hope when they have every reason to despair. They have been asked to forgive when they have every right to be angry. And they have done it. Again and again and again. They have done it with a grace that is almost incomprehensible. They have done it with a dignity that shames the powerful. They have done it with a love for their land that is so fierce, so deep, so unshakeable, that it borders on the divine.

I think of a woman I heard about, an old woman who lived in a village in the South. When the bombs began to fall, her family begged her to leave. She refused. She said, "l have lived in this house for seventy years. I have buried my husband in this soil. I have raised my children in these rooms. I will not leave. If I die, I will die here, in my home, under my sky." And she stayed. She stayed through the bombing. She stayed through the silence. She stayed through the rubble. And when her family returned, they found her sitting on a chair in the middle of what was left of her living room, drinking tea, looking out at the olive grove. She was alive. She was unbroken. She was home. That is South Lebanon. It is a woman drinking tea in the ruins. It is a child picking olives in a grove that was bombed the week before. It is a man rebuilding a wall with stones that were scattered by a blast. It is a people who have learned that home is not just a building. Home is a feeling. Home is a memory. Home is a song that plays in your heart no matter where you are. The South is heartbreaking because it should not have to be this way. No one should have to live like this. No child should know the sound of war before they know the sound of a lullaby. No farmer should have to bury his trees like he buries his friends. No grandmother should have to pack her life into a bag and leave her home, not knowing if she will ever return. But the South is also heartbreakingly beautiful. It is beautiful because of its resilience. It is beautiful because of its courage. It is beautiful because of its refusal to be broken. It is beautiful because of the way a mother will still cook a feast for her children in a tent. It is beautiful because of the way a father will still tell his daughter bedtime stories even as the sky lights up with fire. It is beautiful because of the way a village will come together to rebuild a single home, one stone at a time, one nail at a time, one prayer at a time. The South is a wound.

But it is a wound that is healing. It is a wound that is being tended to by hands that have known nothing but struggle. It is a wound that is being wrapped in the fabric of love and memory and hope. It is a wound that will leave a scar. But the scar will be a reminder. It will be a reminder that the people of the South are still here. They are still standing. They are still singing. They are still planting. They are still loving. And they will be here tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. Because the South is not just a place. The South is a people. And the people of the South are made of the same stuff as their olive trees. They bend. They twist. They survive. And they refuse, with every fiber of their being, to be uprooted from the land they love. This is the story of South Lebanon. It is a story of heartbreak. But it is also a story of hope. It is a story of a land that has been wounded but not destroyed. It is a story of a people who have been tested but not broken. It is a story that the world needs to hear. Not because it is a story of suffering. But because it is a story of the human spirit. And the human spirit, like the olive tree, is a stubborn, beautiful, unkillable thing.