by Dana Halawi
BEIRUT, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- It was an ordinary day until the pagers began to heat up. For Rida al Riz, a faint pop-up error message was the only warning before the blast tore through his body. His left hand was mangled, his left eye gone, his world plunged into partial darkness.
Stumbling from one overcrowded hospital to another, al Riz waited more than two hours before doctors in Sidon, southern Lebanon, could operate on him.
"It changed my entire life," said the 43-year-old man. "I cannot read or write as I used to. I miss seeing people around me. Sight is the bridge of contact, and it is lost."
Al Riz is only one of the many victims of an Israeli operation conducted on Sept. 17-18, 2024, which involved the detonation of thousands of explosive-laden pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies across Lebanon and Syria, aiming at Hezbollah members. According to Lebanese reports, at least 42 people were killed and more than 3,400 injured during the attack, leaving many permanently disabled -- blinded, disfigured, or without hands.
The United Nations condemned the attacks as "terrifying" violations of international law. "These attacks violate the human right to life, absent any indication that the victims posed an imminent lethal threat to anyone else at the time," the UN said.
In the southern town of Tebnine, supermarket owner Ghazi Fawwaz was speaking with his daughters when his pager exploded. Shrapnel took his sight, damaged his face and abdomen, and severed two fingers from his right hand.
"I knew immediately that I had lost my sight," the 41-year-old recalled. "In the ambulance, I told my father, 'I cannot see anymore.' I was prepared for something like this -- but it is still tough."
Despite his injuries, Fawwaz would return each morning to his shop, damaged in the blast and now under repair, and work from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., checking produce, guiding employees, and greeting traders and customers.
"They tell me, 'You must be seeing us,'" he said with a laugh. "I bathe alone, I dress myself, I water the plants. I don't want my children to feel my injuries."
This is not the first time Fawwaz has rebuilt his shop, which had been destroyed during the 2006 Lebanon War, a 34-day armed conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
"We will rebuild again," Fawwaz said. "This is our land. We will resist."
For 21-year-old Sara Jaffal, the explosion came just two months after she graduated in computer programming. A relative's pager flashed in her hands while she was sitting in her kitchen.
"I lost my sight completely for a month and a half," she said. "Now I can see a little with my left eye. I lost two fingers, and my right hand was badly injured."
Jaffal has since endured 48 surgeries. "(But) I was determined not to stay in bed. I wanted to get up, to live my life."
Jaffal has relearned basic tasks and now works on a computer, zooming the screen to adapt to limited vision. "I was independent before, and I want to remain independent," she said.
Hospitals were overwhelmed in the attack's aftermath. Salim Hoss Rahhal, a clinical associate of trauma at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, recalled that the facility received 300 patients in 30 minutes after the attack.
"Our capacity in the emergency room is 40. Patients were lying in corridors. Every injury was severe -- facial trauma, amputated fingers, mangled limbs, blindness," especially among those holding pagers close to their bodies, he said.
For Rahhal, rehabilitation remains the greatest challenge. "The first surgeries were just the beginning ... Learning to live with these injuries is a long journey."
Yet amid the physical wreckage, something else has emerged: resilience.
"What was astonishing was their calmness and strength," said Zeinab Dib, a clinical psychologist at Zahraa Hospital. "Many prayed constantly. Their faith, families, and communities gave them stability. They adapted, even after losing sight or hands."
The survivors are slowly reclaiming autonomy, relearning daily tasks, finding new ways to work, and leaning on the community. Al Riz, once a writer and military trainer, now dictates poems and stories to his wife. Fawwaz measures his independence through the small rituals of tending plants and guiding employees. Jaffal dreams of furthering her studies and finding a job that suits her new situation.
As Dib observed: "They lost their vision, but not their inner sight ... That is what gives us hope." ■
