MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Losing a home to foreclosure, to a fire, to a flood, it's one of the most traumatic things anyone can experience, especially a home that someone has built over decades. But what if the home is one of thousands destroyed to a conflict far away? Will anyone notice or care? That's a question Fayrouz Saad was asking in a heartfelt social media post she sent to friends.
Her family is just one of several thousand families whose homes have been destroyed by the Israeli military when it reduced the town of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon to rubble. Saad is also a former assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security. She was born in Michigan to Lebanese parents. And she's with us now. Good morning. Thank you for joining us.
FAYROUZ SAAD: Good morning. Thank you so much for having me.
MARTIN: Would you tell us about Bint Jbeil?
SAAD: It's just this beautiful little, quaint village in south Lebanon. And when I would visit it, it was almost like stepping back in time in some ways - right? - where you literally see sheeps crossing the road and a town souk, you know, the market.
MARTIN: Yeah, market.
SAAD: It's where the family business that had been generational in our family for decades, a meat market, halal meat market, stood as well. And so it was just this lovely little town.
MARTIN: You know, the IDF, the Lebanese army, Hezbollah, they've been vying for control of the area for decades. And so when you would go to visit, how did you experience that? What did that look like up close?
SAAD: You know, as a child visiting, you're not really keen to what's happening in terms of, you know, the geopolitics. And I was experiencing Lebanon in as honest as a way as you possibly can as a child. My parents came here in the 1970s. And they came here specifically escaping, you know, Israeli aggression and the threat of Israeli occupation. And that was before Hezbollah existed.
MARTIN: How did you find out that the house had been destroyed?
SAAD: My brother had actually sent us all a message in our family chat. And he let us know that they had been tracking it through satellite images. And that's essentially how they had confirmed it because my family in the region has been displaced. It felt like a piece of us had just been destroyed. I used to joke with my dad that he has seven children, the six of us and then that home. You know, and I would joke when he would go back - and he went back so much. It was truly his happy place. I would be like, how's your favorite child?
MARTIN: Have you talked to them since? I guess you all found out at the same time on the family chat. Have they been able to accept it?
SAAD: I think everyone's going through the stages of grief in their own way. My mom that day was so sad and so upset and crying. In her words, she said, you know, we're American. We did everything right. We did everything right here. We did everything right there. And what did we do to deserve this? Sometimes it's easy to just only look at the broader picture and think, well, you know, the geopolitics, or it's complicated. And, oh, they only target certain people or certain areas or certain homes. There's real humans behind these stories. And we deserve the same humanity that we want all people to have.
MARTIN: That's Fayrouz Saad. She is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. We've been talking about her ancestral home in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon, which has been destroyed along with thousands of others in a course of Israeli airstrikes. Fayrouz Saad, thank you so much for talking with us. We really appreciate it.
SAAD: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
