The second anniversary of the pager explosions in Lebanon: Stories of the resilience of the injured

“The most basic human right is to live in peace in his home, and I was in my home, living in safety and peace, until Israel decided, with the push of a button, to take away this security,” this is how the young Lebanese woman Sarah Jaffal recalled her feelings on the day that did not end two years ago, but rather extended to shape her life and future forever.

The second anniversary of the pager explosions in Lebanon comes to open an unprecedented medical and humanitarian file.

According to a recent study prepared by a medical team at the American University of Beirut and published by the British Journal of Ophthalmology, targeting these devices has caused great devastation among those not participating in the fighting, especially women and children.

The study demonstrated that eye injuries were the most common and severe; Raising the device and quickly looking at its screen upon hearing the strong alert placed the eyes and face in direct contact with shrapnel and explosive pressure.

This spontaneous action caused unprecedented record rates of complete eye lacerations and permanent loss of vision, marking a turning point in the history of eye injuries resulting from explosions.

Since then, Sarah has been haunted by doubts about any technological tool or artificial intelligence technology that might enter her home for fear that it might be explosive. After losing one of her eyes and part of the limbs of her hand, Sarah insisted after two years on moving forward to complete her master’s studies and achieve her ambitions, stressing that the experience taught her to sense the smallest daily blessings that a person experiences, such as the blessing of safety and sight.

She went on to say in statements to the "Middle East Diary" program broadcast on the BBC: "What are we? What about a military operation if most of the injured are children and women? What are we? We are civilians."

Sarah remembers how the injury cast a shadow on her university studies, which relied entirely on vision and computers, and how she feared that she would not return to see her family or continue her education.

But when she regained vision in one eye, she considered it a great blessing and pledged to herself that the accident would not take away what she said was more important than what she had actually lost, which was her “will.”

She said: "The enemy's goal was to break us, his goal was to isolate us, and his goal was to wipe us out, even though they took out my eyes and the tips of my hands. I decided that I would get up, get treatment, and continue to achieve my dreams."

Bayan Taha, a mother from southern Lebanon, who gave birth to her youngest child a month and a half before her husband’s pager was blown up, recounts the details of that day that will never be erased from her memory when the pager began ringing unusually and with an unusual intensity, in contrast to its usual light ringing.

Everyone was present in the vicinity of one room, and without the slightest curiosity to know the reason, but rather out of panic and a simple question about this loud sound, she held the device in her hands and approached to ask her husband about the reason for the strange ringtone: “What has gone wrong with her?” And at that very moment, the explosion occurred.

In the silence that followed the bombing, Bayan's eyes went out immediately, and her vision was transformed into darkness, interrupted only by the sight of the blood stained on her son Muhammad's shoulder.

Panic prevailed in her head and she wondered: “What happened? And my children... where are my children?! This blood is Muhammad’s blood?!”

Despite the severe injury and bleeding, Bayan did not lose consciousness; Rather, she remained completely awake, and when she was taken in the car, she would extend her hand - of which only a finger and a half remained - from the car window to open the road in the crowd of astonishment.

Over the course of three days in the hospital, doctors focused on stopping the bleeding before directly dealing with her eyes.

Bayan lived difficult days under the weight of fear of complete darkness, clinging to the hope of seeing her family again: “Bring me my family and see them before the second eye goes out.. I had this feeling that the second eye might go out because blood was dripping from it.”

After it was confirmed that her first eye had been extinguished, Bayan suffered from a severe psychological crisis and fatigue, but she overcame the bitterness with praise and gratitude for the remaining glimmer. She says of this glimmer: “Praise be to God, I still have hope that I still have one eye in which I am able to see my children.”

Today, Bayan continues to practice her full motherhood, braiding her daughter’s hair with the remaining finger and a half in the palm of her hand. Her little girl is happy with this attention and says to her friends with pride, pride and pampering: “Mama does everything for me... Mama is able to take care of all my details.”

The young bodies of children were not far from this deadly technology; The medical study documented serious eye injuries among children as young as five years old, who were present near the devices at the time of the explosion.

The data showed that the young age group led to what is known as “complex triple injury syndrome” (eyes, face, and hands together), due to the close distance of the child’s body to the device, which left severe deformities and long-term rehabilitation challenges.

Among these children, the story of Ali Abbas stood out, who turned fourteen years old coinciding with the anniversary of the explosion. Ali did not learn of the loss of his eye and its severe injury until about eight days had passed since he spent in the hospital.

Ali, whose first and greatest love was reciting the Holy Quran, suddenly found himself unable to read as before due to severe visual impairment.

However, he was able to return to school, relying on hearing as his main alternative to sight. Although seeing any pager-like device brings back to his mind the details of the day he was injured, he has not developed a pathological fear of phones or electronic devices, but rather accepts them as much as possible, according to what he says.

Today, Ali looks to the future with determination. Because he cannot read and relies on memorization and hearing, he chose to direct his energy towards studying psychiatry.

He said: “I felt that this work was similar to me and that it was beneficial to society. I heard people’s problems and concerns and we helped solve them.”

Thus, as Ali navigates his life among his football buddies, his primary ambition remains to continue learning and succeeding.

From a medical standpoint, Dr. Ali Shukr, a consultant for corneal transplantation and eye plastic surgery, explains that the danger of pager explosions was not only in the number of injured, but in the nature and quality of the injury itself, as the direct proximity of the device to the level of the face and hands directed the energy of the explosion and fragments towards highly sensitive parts.

Dr. Shukr points out that the most difficult thing facing the eye surgeon in these cases is dealing with young patients, as the medical stakes are in the first hours: “Can the eye be saved? Can any possible amount of vision be saved?”

Dr. Shukr confirms that surgical treatment represented an unprecedented challenge in this accident. The doctors did not face a single wound, but rather they faced complex injuries that included shrapnel, deep wounds to the cornea and the white of the eye, and damage to the eyelids and face, in addition to being bilateral injuries in many cases.

Israel later acknowledged its responsibility for the attack, confirming that it was targeting “Hezbollah fighters,” but the death toll from the pager explosions reached 12 people, including two children, and nearly 3,000 people were injured, according to official data in Lebanon and sources from the World Health Organization.