`We saw Hassan Nasrallah grow up here` in Bazuriyeh

Source: AFP, 23-9-2006
BAZURIYEH, Lebanon: While Beirut`s southern suburbs on Friday were celebrating Hizbullah`s resistance against the mighty "Israeli" Army with a mass rally, the home village of the group`s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, was turned into a virtual no-go zone for outsiders.
With "Israel" refusing to rule out a hit on its sworn foe, whose predecessor was assassinated in a 1992 "Israeli" air strike in South Lebanon after a Hizbullah rally, strangers were eyed as suspected spies of the Jewish (Zionist) state.
In a departure from the traditional hospitality of the South, a group of villagers and guards in Bazuriyeh, on the outskirts of Tyre, gave a cold reception to AFP journalists visiting a modest home marked with the Nasrallah name.
The Nasrallah family has never set foot in the village, they claimed at first. But the two-story home was draped with Hizbullah`s yellow flag and a giant portrait of Nasrallah.
"We saw Hassan Nasrallah grow up here," one of the locals, Adnan Abu Saafi, finally confided. "He studied and spent his holidays in Bazuriyeh all his life, but now any information we give could be passed on to "Israel" and put him in danger."
While Nasrallah himself was born in Beirut, he was brought up in his father`s natal village. Brothers, uncles and cousins have homes around Bazuriyeh, which was the target of "Israeli" air raids during the war.
One brother`s house appeared inhabited but access was denied.
A few meters away, an engineer sent by the local municipality, which is close to Hizbullah, was evaluating the damage from the air strikes, under the watchful eye of the guards - who remain on duty around the clock.
"The people of Bazuriyeh are very scared of "Israel". The Nasrallahs here live a normal life, they are humble people and know no more of the whereabouts of their son or brother than we do," said Ibrahim Faraz, a local councilor.
The Hizbullah chief, a grocer`s son, was born in the capital in 1960 but fled to Bazuriyeh with his parents in 1975 at the outbreak of Lebanon`s Civil War.
The roads of the village are plastered with portraits of Nasrallah - with his full beard, trademark glasses, the black turban of a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed and the brown robes of a Shiite cleric - and of Hizbullah members killed in years of fighting with "Israel".
"This man is like a mountain, where we can take refuge. He fills us with a feeling of security," said local pharmacist Mohammed Rida.
Like thousands of others from all over Southern Lebanon, a Shiite heartland, many Bazuriyeh residents traveled to Beirut on Friday for the massive "victory" rally called by the leader of the resistance.
"`Israel` wanted to kill Nasrallah and destroy Hizbullah, but it failed in all its objectives," said Rida, while also paying tribute to Nasrallah`s widely reputed simple lifestyle and incorruptibility.
During the latest showdown, a sister of the Hizbullah chief was trapped for several days by the "Israeli" bombardment of Markaba, near the "Israeli" border, he recalled.
"He is not one for favoritism. He could have got his sister out of there quickly, but for him all Lebanese are equal," he said of Nasrallah, who lost his own teenaged son Hadi back in 1997 in clashes with "Israeli" troops.
Another resident, Wafiq Deeb, said: "He lives humbly, like us, he eats with us ... He remains part of the people and has less means than any mayor in the region, not like the government ministers. He`s ready to sacrifice to the last."