UAE resident recalls nightmare on road amid bombardment

Abu Dhabi: It was not until the Emirates aircraft from Damascus landed on the runway of Dubai International Airport that Eman Al Sarraj finally believed she had made it home.

Eman, 31, an administrator from Palestine, who was born and had spent her entire life in Abu Dhabi, is married to 39-year-old Richard Harris, a financial consultant from South Africa, a UAE resident for four-and-a-half-years now.

Like every year, Eman went to see her family in Sidon, Lebanon. This year, the visit was special - it would be the first meeting between Eman's mother and her six-month-old granddaughter, Yasmin.

Eman had no idea things were about to change. "I arrived on Tuesday and the bombing started on Wednesday ... I've never witnessed a war before as I am a UAE resident all my life," said Eman. "At 8pm the airplanes started flying over Sidon ... till the morning."

"My family and I were supposed to come to Beirut the next day because we heard Sidon was threatened to be attacked. My uncle lives in Beirut, we thought it was safer," she said.

Next day the bridge linking Sidon and Beirut was attacked. "Israel had also attacked Beirut International Airport and the suburbs, and we were stuck in Sidon.

"I didn't know what to do until I saw the Gulf News article the next day," said Eman's husband Richard.

"I saw the emergency number, I phoned my wife and told her to phone the embassy," he said.

Richard said he contacted Gulf News, which informed the ambassador about Eman and Yasmin. "The ambassador himself was generous enough to contact my wife and offer help," said Richard.

"The embassy told me to come to Beirut the next day so I could go to Syria. The UAE embassy is doing a great job ... I'm very thankful to them for helping me," said Eman.

"It took us two hours to reach Beirut due to the bombings. On our way to the embassy, we passed through the southern suburb of Beirut, where Israel had bombed one of the bridges, it was destroyed and ambulance was still pulling bodies from under the debris."

"We were going to Syria but no one knew if were going to make it there," said Eman. "We were around 60 persons on the bus, mainly UAE nationals and a couple of Lebanese families."

The first hour of Eman's trip was quiet and things were going easy, the buses were avoiding crossing bridges fearing Israeli bombardment.

"We were supposed to go to Damascus through Tripoli, but they bombed the road. We then went through Chtoura."
On their way to Chtoura, a rocket targeted a bus 5 kilometers from Eman's bus. "There was no bus, only pieces of metal, a big hole in the ground and clouds of smoke, it was terrifying, I didn't dare to look at the bodies," she said.

The trip from the UAE embassy in Beirut to the UAE embassy in Damascus took seven hours and a half.

Eman saw a large number of Lebanese families trying to flee to Syria on foot.

"They carried their children and their bags and trying to reach the Lebanese-Syrian borders, they couldn't find buses, they didn't even have money. We saw later a group of 500 Lebanese citizens. The Syrian authorities refused to let them enter because they didn't have their passports on them," she said.

Eman said the procedures at the Lebanese borders were easy "but the problems were at the Syrian borders".

"I had to pay $40 (about Dh147) for a visa for my daughter, since she had a South African passport, although the embassy in Beirut told us ... all the expenses were covered. The UAE embassy (in Damascus) provided everything to us from food to accommodation transportation."