| Students
Return from Beirut
By Susan Tart
Two UNC-Chapel Hill students who interned
in Lebanon are back safely after being stranded
during the fighting. Carolina Week spoke exclusively
with Ian Lye and Stephanie Preston this summer
when they were at a refugee camp in Cyprus.
Now back in Chapel Hill, Lye is relieved to
be out of a war zone.
"Never did I think that war would actually
happen while I was there,” Lye said, recounting
his vivid memories of the war.
“We would be awakened by the bombs, but
after awhile we just became accustomed to them
and they wouldn't even bother our routines anymore.
You could see smoke rising from an area which
had just been hit two minutes ago, and so you
would view these images, and you can't help
but be affected by them emotionally.”
Even though many people would panic just at
the thought of having bombs all around, Lye
says he remained calm and took advantage of
the moment.
“Just learning how people dealt with
the stress and worked through that stress was
a very growing-up experience for me,” Lye
said.
He also noted that the public perception of
Hezbollah and the group’s leader, Nasrallah,
changed while he was there.
“At first people were angry at Hezbollah
for bringing them into the war which nobody
ever wanted. But as the bombings and the killings
continued, the people started to view Hezbollah
as the defenders of the country since the Lebanese
army wasn't able to do so.”
Lye and Preston were eventually taken by ship
to one of the evacuation camps in Cyprus.
“It was very tense. People were complaining
all the time and they just wanted to get out.
There were a lot of them who were very anxious
and weren't able to relax. It reminded me so
much of the footage I'd seen of Katrina homeless
people; cots—rows of
cots—very basic amenities, but I will
say that the State Department did a very good
job in providing what they could in such trying
circumstances.”
Lye continued to travel the region before returning
to the States. Being the adventurous type that
he is, he didn’t leave without first buying
a few souvenirs—souvenirs which scared
him later, as they could have gotten him kicked
off the plane.
“After the war started, they were selling
all kinds of Hezbollah merchandise in the streets—shirts,
CDs, flags, stickers, everything. I picked up
this Hezbollah shirt in Syria for just two dollars.
Nasrallah is on the front of it, and on the
back is the word “Hezbollah” in
Arabic. If you look carefully, what they've
done is replaced the letter "o life" in
Arabic with a depiction of an arm holding a
rifle—it’s a call to arms.”
Although Lye was glad to leave the death and
war zone, he was reluctant to leave the city
that he once knew as alive and peaceful.
“Life has almost returned to normal for
me. It's back to classes and back to school.
But I would definitely love to go back to Beirut
and the region. I love the city; it was a very
vibrant city before all this started.”
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