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Beyond the Green Line
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By July 1978, Israel had issued a warning to Syria: If Syrian forces continued to “massacre” the Christian population of Beirut, Israel would intervene in the civil war. The Israelis felt something of a kinship with Lebanon’s Christian minority, a religious group that they claimed Syria was oppressing. Israel was also worried about a Syrian victory in Beirut, and the possibility of Syrian troops being stationed near its border with southern Lebanon. On July 6, seven Israeli fighter planes streaked low across the sky over Beirut during a reconnaissance mission. Israel’s message was clear: We will protect the Christians.

Living in Furn-El-Chebak, a Maronite Christian neighborhood in East Beirut, Shukri Aoun would often see Israeli Phantom F-4s soar overhead before rocketing away at twice the speed of sound. With its nearly 40-foot wingspan and twin turbojet engines, the American-made F-4 was a formidable warrior in the sky. Flying low over the high-rises of Beirut, these planes were a window-shattering blur of brown, green and beige desert camouflage.

Such displays of aerial superiority might have strengthened the resolve of Christian fighters, but they also terrified the civilian population of Beirut. Whenever an F-4 flew overhead, Syrian or PLO forces on the ground would try to shoot it down with SAMs, surface-to-air missiles that were radar-guided or heat-seeking. The F-4 pilot would deploy aluminum chaff or a starburst of flares to throw the missiles off target. Muslim fighters on the ground also tried to shoot down

F-4s with flak or ground artillery. When the anti-aircraft artillery missed its target—which was often the case—the shells would rain down on Beirut, deadly miniaturized meteorites that disfigured the city, reducing once-glamorous high-rise apartments to slabs of shattered concrete and exposed steel rods.
In his late teens, Shukri would watch these F-4 flights in awe. Ever since he was a young child, he’d been obsessed with aviation. His family’s apartment in Furn-El-Chebak had a maid’s room that he’d turned into a model airplane workshop. There he spent hours building large-scale models for himself and his friends. More than anything else, Shukri wanted to be a pilot. Once civil war broke out in Lebanon, he dreamed of immigrating to the United States and joining its Air Force. For him, the greatest appeal of America was the chance to pilot a fighter jet like the F-4.

In 1966, at age 5, Shukri and his family had defected from Egypt and gone to Beirut, where the Aoun family was originally from. In Egypt, Shukri’s father was an aeronautical engineer in the Egyptian Air Force. Unhappy with Egypt’s politically repressive society, Shukri’s father decided to move his family to Lebanon, a place he considered the “Switzerland of the East.” Where else in the Middle East could one ski in the morning and then swim in the ocean come afternoon?

After working for Middle East Airlines, Shukri’s father became a captain in the Lebanese Army. Captain Aoun oversaw the repair and maintenance of the army’s Jeeps, trucks and tanks. He would often bring Shukri and his younger brother, Sami, to the army base he commanded, and the officer’s club in southern Lebanon where he liked to relax and play pool. Once the civil war started, Captain Aoun outfitted his sons with 7mm Beretta pistols. At home, they had an M-16 assault rifle.

A few years after they came to Beirut, the Aoun family settled in military housing in Geitawi. From their balcony, the family could see Beirut’s harbor, to the north. There, large cargo ships would sit anchored for days at a time in the clear blue water, waiting for quays to open up. Captain Aoun called it the “million-dollar view.” Later, the family moved to a large apartment in the Sin-El-Fil neighborhood of East Beirut. But just one year after moving, in 1975, Shukri fled to the mountains of Brummana with his mother, brother, sister and grandmother to escape the midnight shellings and daytime car bombings that civil war had brought. Captain Aoun remained with the army.

For nine months, Shukri watched as the sun set on Beirut and nighttime gave way to the most exciting fireworks he had ever seen. Since Brummana was so close to Beirut, only about 5 miles from the Aoun’s home, Shukri had a clearer view of the city and its high-rises than Seta Mergeanian did in Bikfaya or Zaghrine. Late into the night, past green valleys of tall Lebanese pines, Shukri would watch as the Christian forces lit up the sky with rocket launchers and tracer bullets directed at West Beirut. He couldn’t help thinking that the militias liked fighting at night—and not just because the cover of darkness hid them from their enemies. There was something more. It must give them some sort of twisted delight, Shukri thought, to watch their tracers and rockets glow across the sky. But even he could not deny the terrifying majesty of the firefights and their fatal, shooting stars.

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