Reem Haddad
Special to The Daily Star

For a reason that not even she can explain, the x-rays are still stored safely in her London flat. Once in a while she takes them out and looks
at them.One is of a 7-year-old child who was shot three times. His family was killed. She still remembers his name: Mounir.And then there’s the x-ray of the woman ­ the first casualty who came to her for treatment that September day in 1982. She had been shot in the elbow.She wonders what happened to that woman after she left the hospital that day. Most likely, she surmised, the woman was long dead.
And now, 20 years later, here she was again walking down the same poverty-stricken alleys of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp.To camp residents, the petite oriental orthopedic surgeon is simply known as Dr. Swee.To the world, she is better known as Dr. Swee Chai Ang, the author of From Beirut to Jerusalem, which recounts her eye-witness account of the massacre. She was in Beirut last month for a week, helping the BBC prepare a report on the anniversary of the massacre.The documentary is based on her own experiences in the camp, and many residents recognized her ­ and she still remembered them.One middle age man was completely taken aback when suddenly stopped by the doctor. “Ah, it’s you,” she said to the bewildered man. “You were a young troublemaker.”The man’s surprised look turned into one of recognition. “Dr. Swee!” he said.The doctor smiled. She never forgets her patients.“How can I forget Sabra and Shatila?” she said. “I was there.”Ironically, Ang ­ originally from Singapore but living in the UK ­ grew up supporting Israel. Arabs, she was told, were terrorists. But in 1982, the British media broadcasted the relentless bombing of Beirut by Israeli planes. Shocked, her view of Israel began to change.It was then that she heard of an international appeal for an orthopedic surgeon to treat war victims in Beirut. The petite woman ­ she is just under 1.5 meters ­ resigned her job in London, bade her husband farewell and set out on a journey to civil war Beirut.Once in the country, Ang volunteered to work with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and was assigned to the Gaza Hospital in Sabra and Shatila camp.Then Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat and his fighters had just been evacuated from the country. A cease-fire ensued and many residents who had fled the camp were returning and rebuilding their lives.“Everywhere I looked there were small children, women and old men working on their homes,” she recalled. “There was a hopeful atmosphere because they believed that now that the PLO was gone, Israel would leave the Palestinians at peace. I believed that too.”The atmosphere didn’t last long. Three weeks later, newly-elected Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel was assassinated.
“Everyone in the camp immediately became frightened,” said Ang. “They feared that the Palestinians would be blamed.”Their fears were founded. Early the next morning on Sept. 15, Israeli planes came swooping over the camp. From the upper floors of the Gaza Hospital, the surgeon could see smoke coming out from various places.“The smoke was coming closer and closer,” she said. “By nightfall, it became half a kilometer all around us. I could hear shelling from all directions.”
Most of the patients she treated that day were suffering from shrapnel wounds. The next day, however, a woman was rushed to the hospital. Her elbow was shot.
The woman had apparently gone out to get some water for her family when she was shot. It was the first massacre casualty ­ and it is her x-ray that Ang still keeps.“From then on it was pandemonium,” she said. “The people brought in were shot in the head, jaw, chest. Most of them were already dead.”It only got worse. Doctors huddled over their patients in the basement operating rooms, working continuously. It went on through the night. The mortuary was overfilled.
Still, Ang and the team of doctors had no idea that a massacre was underway.“All I could think is ‘why are these people going out in the streets?’” she said. “I was treating babies and old men. The same old men that I used to buy coffee from just down the road. I couldn’t understand it.”And then she was told that Christian militiamen were entering homes and killing its occupants. Meanwhile, the hospital had ran out of blood, food and medicine.The next day, gunmen entered the hospital and ordered everyone with foreign passports to leave the premises.Forced to leave their patients behind, the doctors were marched through the camp. The scene still haunts her.“There were people rounded up, men, women and children who looked at us with so much fear in their eyes,” she recalled. “Dead bodies were everywhere. I tripped over a dead man.”
In horror, she saw that his eyes were dug out.
Bulldozers were destroying houses ­ the same houses that only three days ago, the doctor had visited and drank coffee with its occupants.One woman ran up to Ang and handed her a baby. The militiamen pointed their guns. The woman took back her baby. After the massacre, Ang went back to the camp looking for that woman and child. She couldn’t find them.“I knew they had been killed,” she said.Ang would later testify at the Israeli Kahane Commission, which investigated the massacre. The commission concluded that the then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for the massacre and he was forced to resign from his post in 1983.The doctor returned to London, but couldn’t settle back down. “I just couldn’t forget,” she said. “The massacre had become part of me.”Instead, she went on a speaking tour around the country, telling people of her experience. “I wanted the world to know about the massacre,” she said. “There was a need for me to do so. It was my duty to protect my patients. But I couldn’t do so.“As a doctor, I failed.”
In 1984, Ang and several medical workers formed a charity to help Palestinians. They called it MAP ­ Medical Aid for Palestine. The aim was to rebuild Palestinian hospitals and provide the necessary medical supplies.With the start of the intifada, Ang turned her attention in helping the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.Two years later she published her book. It was an immediate success, with thousands of copies sold. A year later, another book with the same title but by a different author was printed. The new book brought confusion to readers. Ang’s book went out of print.“I could have filed a lawsuit but I didn’t want to,” she said. “The money and effort is better spent on helping the refugees. They need someone fighting on their behalf.”