After the destruction following the Israeli invasion, villagers are rebuilding the Shrine of the Prophet Shimon al-Safa and with it, the collective memory of their village.
As we climbed the historic hill of Chamaa in South Lebanon, the sky hung low above us. The chalk-white mountains rested upon the azure sea, draped in oak. The wind, neither cold nor warm, seemed lost between seasons. Three white domes gleamed in the distance, with a fourth one half-destroyed. Here we were, in front of what the locals believe to be the Shrine of the Prophet Shimon al-Safa (Saint Simon Peter), surrounded by a mound of ancient stones.
Winter was drawing near. A year earlier, the Israeli attack had largely destroyed the hill. Fine dust fell every day from the cracked domes. Each rainfall increased the risk of bringing down the last-standing walls, which motivated the villagers to accelerate the launch of a locally led restoration initiative.
The ruined village was almost deserted. However, its people weren’t going anywhere. They were here on the hill, lifting one stone after the other, with their eyes glancing out from beneath the straw hats they wore to protect their lovely faces from October’s gentle sun.
This is more than just a “restoration project.” It’s an initiative aimed at protecting the village’s memory, and it’s not supported by any funds or an official recovery plan, even after the invaders withdrew and the state remained absent. While the Ministry of Culture confirms the absence of any funding, the organizers of this initiative are coordinating with the Directorate General of Antiquities, through two engineers, to ensure the restoration meets proper standards. In the meantime, volunteers and workers are trying to fix what they can before winter arrives, using whatever materials the locals can offer. In the absence of any support, the villagers have become the guardians of this place, and that is why I chose to tell their story.
After climbing the stone steps, crushed by the tank treads, we reached a small courtyard with a well at its center, uncovered when the rubble was lifted. Three men were working to restore the well’s rim and re-pave it with limestone. From behind us, a man shouted, “Welcome to the Prophet’s.”
Standing in the courtyard, the whole landscape revealed itself. The Castle rose in the east, the old houses in the south, and the Shrine stood in the heart of it all. Here, the layers of history intertwined – Byzantine traces, Fatimid and Crusaders walls, and additions built by the people of Chamaa over the centuries. The location is one of “Jabal Amil’s” most famous sites, socially, culturally, and religiously. It carries unique historic value. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) itself granted the site enhanced protection during the war. Yet even that protection could not prevent its later destruction after the invasion.
While I was gazing at the stones, showing their colors again, I recalled the scene that unfolded eight months ago, when the villagers were finally able to return after the Israelis withdrew in February 2025. The entire place was so dark and silent, shocked by the war and the fire that had not yet ended.
To Restore is to Pray Again
Husein Srour (Abu Ali) is the deputy head of the municipality and supervisor of the restoration site. He sat on a mat laid over the old tiles. He counted the ones still intact. He ran his palm over the carvings, studying their geometric shapes so that the damaged parts could be re-paved in the same way.
Around him is a small reconstruction site powered by the village’s own resources – workers and volunteers, basic tools, and a clay mixture of lime and sand. Abu Ali was supervising the restoration site, but it operated without any hierarchy in place. Each person held responsibility for the village’s memory.
“When I first came back to the village after the Israelis withdrew, the minaret was split in half,” says Abu Ali. “The four domes looked as if they were swaying above the place. The first dome was partially destroyed, the second cracked, the third scarred with shrapnel marks, and the fourth lost its layer of lime plaster, exposing its rough stones under the light.”
“Today, however, the place is healing,” he continued. “What is being done here is stabilizing everything that had collapsed, and preventing what was at risk of collapsing as soon as winter begins. Walls have been rebuilt, and domes have regained their original chalk-white color, rather than the yellow paint applied after the 2006 war. The minaret is now surrounded by scaffolding carrying the workers as they lift the heavy stones so it may regain its historical form and resemble the minarets of “Jabal Amil”, rather than the post-2006 restoration. These efforts are undoing recent changes and correcting past interventions, bringing the place back to its true spirit and to the way it remains in the village’s memory.”
“As for the historical cemetery,” he went on, “it continues to hold a central role in the village. This is the reason we are restoring the graves, one by one. However, the parts that have been fully destroyed cannot be restored without the state’s intervention, funding, and expertise. The olive press cannot be rebuilt without expert oversight, and the ancient underground chamber discovered beneath it must be preserved. The historic wall that once surrounded the hill, rising nearly nine meters high, has collapsed. Its stones are now scattered and mingled with the rubble of the village. No government funding has come through yet, and not a single international organization has stepped in. The whole process is at the expense of the villagers and their donations, under the supervision and technical coordination of the Directorate General of Antiquities,” explained Abu Ali.
“Close to the reconstruction site, bones lie at the bottom of an unknown chamber uncovered by the destruction. When the olive press collapsed, its fall pulled down five graves with it. Among them are the graves of my grandfather, Abu Ali, and his wife. The headstones and the remains fell together to the bottom.” A relative of his approached him and asked, “What are you going to do with your grandparents’ bones?” Abu Ali got up slowly and walked towards the edge. He seemed to greet the remains with his eyes. He spoke in a hushed voice, “there is nothing we can do.” His relative objected by saying, “leaving the remains exposed is forbidden (haram).” “The ancient chamber cannot be sealed without the intervention of experts from the Ministry of Culture to protect it,” Abu Ali answered. Then he sat down, between the chamber, once hidden, and the remains that surfaced from the same graves.
Abu Ali supervised, along with villagers, the restoration of the modern graves down the hill and the process of putting them back in their original positions after the Israelis had hit them. However, this ancient chamber needed a specialized preservation effort – a technical process beyond the villagers’ means. And so, Abu Ali carried on restoring the collective memory, stone by stone, with lime and care, while his own wounds, and those of many in his village, were left at the bottom, waiting for a state that might one day help pick up the pieces.
The Day the Hill Burned
Husein Mohsen is a firefighter serving in this region. During the year of battles leading up to the invasion, he repeated these words while battling the white phosphorus fires in nearby villages, “I still have work to do. It’s not my turn to die a martyr - not yet.” However, last fall, when he saw his village burn before his eyes, he said, “I felt empty, and I was ready to die.”
From a small UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) position at the borders of Chamaa village, Husein witnessed everything. “After fierce battles, the clashes moved north to al-Bayyada, and the Israeli army established full control over Chamaa.” What he witnessed next was “destruction without a fight.” “Everything was gone, the whole village. Witnessing it was harder than the times I had to gather the scattered bodies of my fallen comrades.”
Husein closed his eyes. He recalled the scenes. “The Israeli army was advancing across the hill in heavy machines, demolishing houses one after the other without a fight. Walls were torn down, and roofs brought down by bulldozers. At night, they danced on the religious site, and loud music was playing in the sacred place.”
“Then came the last night before the ceasefire,” he continued. “A huge explosion shook the hill to its core, and the fire painted the village’s sky red. The flames consumed the walls, and thick black smoke hid the slender crescent from the western sky. That night, the moon glowed as a thin crescent, showing a small light on its right edge, before it disappeared into the smoke of the ruined hill. “Nothing of the village remained,” Husein said. “Only ashes carrying its name.” The villagers weren’t allowed to go back home for two months after the ceasefire was sealed.
That was the window set for the Israeli withdrawal. During that time as well, Husein left the UNIFIL position where he considered himself a “refugee,” and emigrated from his village while the Lebanese army was taking control of it and the Israelis were leaving. During those two months, Husein was living a daily nightmare. He couldn’t sleep and started taking sedatives. “To see the death of your village and be unable to help it is to die yourself.”
The toll of destruction turns Husein’s memories into figures on a municipal chart. Of 239 homes in Chamaa, 90 were bombed, bulldozed into rubble. Another 120 were burned or shattered under artillery fire, and all needed rebuilding. Twenty-nine others were half-standing, half-fallen. Every house in the village was wounded. The solar station was razed, the roads gutted, water and sewage lines torn apart. It did not happen in a battle, but after the Israeli army had already taken control. The same pattern of destruction was recorded in 23 other southern border villages, and Amnesty International deemed the demolitions carried out after control and after the ceasefire to be war crimes.
However, Husein didn’t need a legal observation. For him, the village is a living creature. It has a name, a memory, and a face. When the village is destroyed, those born in it are broken too. When going back was finally allowed, Husein was among the first arriving. He didn’t wait for any orders or funding. He gathered the volunteer firefighters and started from scratch. They opened roads blocked by rubble, brought water back to the surviving tanks, pulled the power lines from under the ruins, and revived the village’s basic infrastructure. Everything was paid for through donations: road paving, public streetlights, and even a new solar power station have brought life back to the village. “No funds from the state. All expenses were paid for through aid and donations. As for the workers, they were all volunteers.”
Today, when Husein stands before the rebirth of his village, he gazes for a long time, proud. For him, restoring is not just rebuilding, but about healing his memory and trying to forget all he witnessed. And in doing so, he recovers the first image of the place as it was in his memory. He takes pride in having rebuilt his own house and two of his relatives’, in just one month. In truth, he was also restoring what was broken within him.
To become the Memory’s Map
“This stone doesn’t belong here,” said Ibrahim, bending in the morning dust. He blew gently over a deep engraving, then turned the piece between his palms. “It belongs there,” above the doors of a room near the Shrine. He lifted the stone slightly toward the light, and the inscriptions on it became clear.
The first days after the withdrawal, young men were carefully lifting the rubble as if they were carrying their dead to their final rest. They sorted the stones on the ground: sandstone and rock to the right, concrete to a pile of rubble to be carried away. The explosion had hurled stones from the fortress and the Shrine as far as the distant vineyards. This was how the first process began, quietly, gathering what could still be rescued from the memory of stone.
Ibrahim had photographed the hill before the war erupted. It had become part of his core memory. Today, however, his photographs could serve as a reconstruction map. It was all about ornamental details, tiles, and windows reborn. Then he would grab his camera again and wander through the vineyards and the fields. He was looking for precious antiquities, fragments that carried traces of literature or history. He found a missing piece early on, kept looking until he found the rest, and then returned to deliver it to the Directorate General of Antiquities. “Every time I uncover a single letter,” he said, “I feel the soul of this place slowly finding its way home.”
Among the rubble, he found the round stone of the Shrine’s guest room, carved with a phrase written four centuries ago. When the stones were overturned, it became clear that the round stone’s reverse side formed the base of a Roman column, estimated to be two thousand years old. In the heart of the hill lies the Shrine of the Prophet Shimon al-Safa. A lower layer of unknown history, and above it an upper layer whose minaret’s inscription dates back to the 490 AH (1096 AD), bearing witness to a Fatimid era whose people once offered their prayers here.
Ibrahim wiped the dust from his fingers and said, “We’re not just rebuilding the place, we’re bringing the memory back home, letter by letter, stone by stone.” Through his photographs, he preserved the place in its original form. Through his collection of inscriptions, he preserved the evidence of its authenticity. Through visual documentation, each stone found its way back to its original place. Human memory begins here, in the memory of stone. And so, sixty-year-old Abu Rabih stands here as this hill is not just ruins, but a living heritage that remains in use.
Cleansing the Memory
Unlike Ibrahim, who was born in a time when Chamaa and its Castle were occupied and who grew up watching them from afar, Abu Rabih grew up in the village where his home, school, and Shrine were located. His grandfather lived in the Castle itself, and his mother would accompany him to the Shrine to make offerings during the rainy seasons. When he tells the story of the hill, it isn’t just history – it’s his family’s own story.
Abu Rabih approached me with a smiley face, handed me a booklet – that survived the fire that burned most of the Shrine’s library – as it’s a spiritual document that illustrates the site’s importance to believers. He read it to me. It said that Simon Peter, Christ’s closest and most beloved disciple, was buried here in this place. It also said that the Twelver Shias regarded him as the ancestor of the awaited Mahdi on his mother’s side. “The Imam al-Mahdi is the savior who will return with Christ at the end of time, while Ali, the successor of Muhammad, is his ancestor through his father’s line. All vows are answered here; it’s a place of blessing,” says Abu Rabih with deep faith.
During the 1978 Israeli occupation, the Castle turned into an Israeli military base for twenty-two years. After their withdrawal in the year 2000, the Ministry of Culture, alongside the Directorate General of Antiquities, began its restoration process. Soon enough, the July 2006 war broke out, and heavy bombs destroyed more than 80% of its structure, including the towers, the courtyards, and the attached Shrine. The Castle was partially restored later, and the Shrine was reconstructed. However, the towers remained destroyed, bearing witness to another layer of history added to the memory of this place.
Last February, when the destruction was still recent, in that silence, I met Abu Rabih for the first time. The workers were spraying the walls with water to remove the black soot covering them. Layer after layer, as if they were taking out the fire again. Forty thousand liters of water were poured on these walls to remove the fire’s dust. Water became an act of ablution – a ritual cleansing. Abu Rabih would bend towards the eastern wall of the Shrine, wipe the stones with a wet cloth, as black water ran through his fingers. “Every time we poured water, it flowed and turned black. We are healing a bleeding wound, not just a wall,” said Abu Rabih while wiping the wall.
That moment was the first step in the restoration process, and the first act of recovering memory, by cleansing it and washing it clean. Abu Rabih knows every corner of this place, its identity, and every stone he caresses brings him back to his childhood. There was the “Shrine’s guest room,” the village’s historic guesthouse that welcomed visitors coming from distant villages. It was also where Abu Rabih went to school. Inside the Castle lived his grandfather, as so many other villagers lived there as well in other rooms, before the village grew and expanded outside the walls of the hill, less than a century ago.
Abu Rabih said that this hill is for the village what the sun is for the universe – the center of gravity that gives it its meaning. “If the sun dies, the planets are lost,” he added, smiling. Today, Abu Rabih isn’t just restoring a past souvenir, but the life he lived. It’s the memory that they scrubbed clean of ruin.
Back to the Capital’s chaos
Chamaa village and Beirut are 100 km apart, but the gap seems bigger between an ancient, wounded history trying to heal itself, and the tangled politics that risk deepening the wound instead of curing it. Here, in the busy streets of Beirut and its ministries, the Ministry of Culture held a special press conference to emphasize the importance of Chamaa and assure that “restoring it is a priority as proven by the Minister’s visit.” They also informed us that no updates were recorded ever since their visit to the village last March. “We are trying, with the help of international organizations and UNESCO, to secure funds for the restoration of the site, but it has yet to succeed.”
However, Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly, founder and manager of the non-governmental organization “BILADI” (my country), aiming at preserving heritage, confirms that “there is no green light for any funding in the South, especially for areas south of the Litani river. People are left completely on their own with no national strategy and no clear recovery plan, despite all the calls for help.”
In his last conference, the Minister of Culture Ghassan Salamé announced a series of new projects with big budgets. Aid worth several million dollars has been received, all for valuable projects. However, all of them are taking place outside the South, far from the areas devastated by the Israeli war. Even half a million dollars from the ministry’s own project went to restoring the UNESCO Palace in Beirut. A review of the draft 2026 national budget shows that not a single dollar was allocated to the region south of the Litani.
Winter draws near, though. Zainab Merhi sat at the bottom of the Chamaa hill, next to the road in front of her house, which burned down in flames. She looked up toward the distant domes. She was waiting for the workers to leave so she could go in and pray. Here, local restoration itself has become a form of prayer. “I wasn’t as sad when my house shook to its core as much as I felt sad when the Prophet’s Shrine got destroyed,” said Zainab. The workers leave. As for Abu Ali, he stood between his personal wound – the exposed bones of his grandparents – and his responsibility toward the collective memory embodied by this hill, with the Shrine in its center.
As the sun set, silence invaded the place, except for the whispered prayers of the worshippers. The smell of earth filled the air, carried by the dew. Even the sound of the sea climbed the hill, whispering, like a prayer coming from nature. The villagers don’t need a new metaphor, though. They need one simple decision: not to be abandoned.
Reporting Lebanon is a collaborative storytelling project that brings together independent Lebanese journalists to document everyday life in a country shaped by war, displacement, and prolonged instability. Through in-depth reportages and narrative-driven features, the project focuses on the human, social, and psychological realities that have unfolded in the aftermath of the 2023–2024 escalation – at a time when violence has formally subsided in parts of the country, yet insecurity and uncertainty persist. Rather than offering situational reports, Reporting Lebanon prioritizes long-form journalism that stays close to its protagonists. The project seeks to capture how people experience, remember, and endure war – and how its consequences continue to shape daily life long after the headlines fade. Reporting Lebanon is a cooperation between the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and zenith.
