My Grandmother on the Cliff

The sky over Mount Lebanon held its breath the day I ran to my grandmother's house. Grandma believed her presence could protect a house. I believed she could protect the world. Then the shelling started.

Everything changed the year the war taught me to listen differently. Perhaps danger cuts deeper into a child's mind, or perhaps by nine I had grown old enough to sense the weight in adult whispers and the slow unraveling of a country.

Shells whistled overhead and rained down from all directions. Explosions punched the earth and shook the sanctity of home. Children's cries tangled with mothers desperately calling their names. People ran blindly along paths that offered no safety. The gritty air tasted of cinder and ash.

Our own home stood in the middle of it all. Its stone arch and thick walls offered what felt like ancient protection. Sandbags lined the windows, yet shrapnel still sliced through the old grapevine at the edge of our porch, a chilling reminder of how close death came. My grandparents' house, by contrast, stood alone on the cliff, exposed to sun, air, and the fury of war. Grandma refused to leave, as if her presence alone might shield the house from harm.

Then came an afternoon I cannot forget. Bomb shrapnel reached into the deepest corners of refuge. Panic fell upon the neighborhood. My mother pulled my siblings, friends, and a neighbor inside; the woman had been searching for her son and now stood frozen, her lips shaping his name as her hands twisted together. My little sister sat nearly catatonic, repeating adults' assurances that our house was built of strong stone.

In that moment, we thought of my grandmother alone on the cliff. To me she was indestructible, carved from strength itself. It had never occurred to me that she could be in danger, but my mother understood. When the shelling softened, she wanted to run to her but could not leave a room full of terrified children. I begged her to let me go instead. At last she relented. Her fingers dug into my shoulders. Her eyes were wide with fear, she didn't look away, even when the glass in the windows rattled in its frames. In a stern voice I had never heard, she ordered me to return with my grandmother quickly, no matter what she said. I ran toward the cliff house, never fast enough, the empty street feeling as if harm were chasing me, focused only on reaching my grandmother.

I burst into Grandma's house, gasping. She was crumpled in the far corner, praying. When she recognized me, she rose and wrapped me in her arms, her body trembling until the shaking eased. I told her the shelling had paused, that my mother had sent me, and that I was not allowed to return without her. Her answer came distant and determined: "No. I cannot leave my home."

Even as a child, I understood how exposed her house was. I brought her shoes and tugged at her hand, urging her to come. She shook her head and kept praying. I had never seen her afraid, and now fear pinned her to the floor. Then she looked at me, a ghost of a child running through war, and something shifted. She saw my fear, pulled me close, and hurried us out.

Outside, the world had gone strangely still. The path along the cliff left us bare beneath an immense, watchful sky. No one else was on the street, as if the entire town had vanished. Not even a neighborhood cat stirred. Grandma prayed in a soft, rapid rhythm, sweat and tears sliding down her face.

Halfway home, the shelling resumed. The air shook. The ground jumped beneath our feet. My grandmother's steps grew small and faltering, each one costing the strength she no longer possessed. I pleaded with her to walk faster. She could not. She clung to her prayer as if it were the only solid thing left in the world. I darted around her, torn between the instinct to run and the need to shield her.

A shell landed close enough to steal the breath from my lungs. Instinct flung me forward, but love pulled me back. I ran to her again, caught between flight and protection.

Everything was shaking, but beneath the thunder, I heard Grandpa's voice: Our people were like the olive trees, cut down and burned yet always growing back from the same deep roots. I looked at Grandma's hand, wrinkled and tough as bark. We were not just two people running; we were a long line of people who had walked through fire and survived.

I stopped being afraid, took her hand, and matched my steps to hers as we walked our history.