JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Israel is continuing attacks in southern Lebanon despite a three-month-old ceasefire and security talks with Lebanon. Fighting has decreased, but the hub town of Nabatiyeh was hit hard and lies in ruins. NPR's Jane Arraf and Jawad Rizkallah traveled there recently.
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: (Speaking Arabic).
NAJIB AYAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: To reach the door of Najib Ayad's apartment building, you have to make your way through piles of shattered glass.
AYAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: You climb over chunks of concrete, and then three floors up, past another broken door...
Even the walls are gone. And through the window, this - through the sliding doors to the balcony - now with no glass - you can actually see black smoke from an airstrike in a nearby village.
Ayad is an office worker, displaced to Beirut. He's come back to assess the damage. He says, even if his apartment weren't destroyed, he wouldn't stay here.
AYAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "You see the castle?" he says, looking out past the balcony. He's talking about a Crusader-era fortress visible in the distance, now occupied by Israeli forces.
AYAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "They can see us," he tells us.
AYAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: Nabatiyeh is a hub of southern Lebanon and an administrative center for Hezbollah, which is also a political party and a provider of social services. The small city has been one of the hardest hit in two years of war with Israel.
AYAD: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: In the street, Ayad points out elegant homes reduced to rubble.
He's saying there are drones above, so we're being told to leave again.
Downtown, Israeli attacks have also damaged the city's historic covered market. For hundreds of years, Nabatiyeh was at the crossroads of a route between Jerusalem, Damascus and Mecca. Under Ottoman rule a century ago, the market became a hub for farmers and craftspeople. Now the red tiled roofs are gone, the stone arches damaged.
ABBAS FAKHREDDINE: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: Mayor Abbas Fakhreddine points out a vegetable seller, a barber, what used to be bakeries and clothing shops.
FAKHREDDINE: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "People come back during the day and leave at night because there's still no electricity or running water," the mayor says.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
ARRAF: Just around the corner from the market, Hanan Hamadi and her mother have painstakingly repaired and restocked their tiny convenience store.
HANAN HAMADI: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: "We arrived yesterday and found the shop completely damaged," Hamadi says. There's still no door, just a plastic sheet, but it's the only shop open in the entire neighborhood.
HAMADI: (Speaking Arabic).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking Arabic).
HAMADI: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: A little boy asks the price of a chocolate bar. Between canned goods, bread and batteries, there are items like birthday candles - a sign of optimism that families will eventually return. But for now, there are still bodies buried under the rubble.
HAMADI: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: Hamadi says an airstrike killed a neighboring family - parents and all four of their children - in an area called the Nuns' Quarter. Two of the children's bodies have still not been recovered. "Now when I look at the neighborhood, they're the only ones I can think about," she says.
HAMADI: (Speaking Arabic).
ARRAF: Hamadi is 40 years old. "We all say that the difference between us and others is that we're very resilient," she says of the people of the South. But at the same time, she says she's tired of always starting again.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, Nabatiyeh, Lebanon.
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