Schoolgirl's ride to safety

Out ... Lara Abi-Farraj with her mum at home / Pic: Mike Keating

By Kelly Ryan and Mary Bolling
July 20, 2006

A MELBOURNE schoolgirl, Labi Abi-Farraj, has told how she escaped bomb-blasted Beirut in a terrifying three-hour taxi ride after cowering for three days under a mattress.

Lara, 13, said she had cowered under the mattress with her grandfather as bombs exploded around his home before they decided to flee.

The Mulgrave teenager said she had expected to be killed by missiles raining on Lebanon's devastated capital.

"I was terrified. I was thinking I was going to die and I'd never see my family and friends again," Lara said yesterday.

As we drove to Damascus, I could see and hear the bombs going off, about five or six on the road we were travelling.

"Giant craters appeared in the road and huge puffs of smoke, and there was just noise everywhere."

Reunited with her family yesterday, Lara told of horrifying images.

"There was a baby blown in half by a bomb and burnt very badly," she said. "There were lots of bodies being thrown into the backs of trucks."

The fighting has killed at least 300 in Lebanon and 27 Israelis.

Lara, a student at Sacred Heart College, said the experience had changed her life.

"I left Australia for Lebanon with no idea what I would do when I finished school," she said.

"But in the time I have been away I have become certain I will be a pediatrician, a doctor who looks after babies."

Lara said the 85km trip to safety took three hours.

"It was so dangerous, the road was all but deserted except for big buses and our taxi," she said.

"My grandfather risked his life to get me to safety."

Despite her terror, Lara remained cool enough to take photographs.

She was given a digital camera before she left Melbourne to record happy holiday snaps.

Instead, Lara captured the destruction of her parents' homeland.

"When I arrived I was shopping and eating and sightseeing," she said.

"One day I was on the beach getting a tan, and the next I was cowering under a mattress thinking I would die.

"I was screaming and crying, and we stayed in the house for three days.

"At night I cried, because the sound of the bombs made it impossible to sleep."

Lara was on her first trip abroad without her parents, but the thrill of being trusted on her own turned to a nightmare for the whole family.

Phone calls became impossible and mum Sue Abi-Farraj said she and husband Henry were beside themselves as they stayed glued to the TV, hoping for good news.

"Because my daughter is so mature and takes notice of so much, I knew she would be scarred by what is happening," Ms Abi-Farraj said yesterday.

"It doesn't matter that she is very mature and can look after herself.

"She was my baby girl again, and she needed her mum and dad."

Lara told how her reunion with her grandfather Ahmad turned into a dash to safety.

"We were just sitting in his lounge having coffee with other relatives, and suddenly the whole room shook," she said.

"My relatives knew straight away what it was, but I had never heard bombs before."

The gravity of Lara's situation hit home when she saw the first television news broadcasts.

"Places I visited when I first arrived were being shown on the news as ruins, where bombs had just totally destroyed them," she said. "Lebanon was a beautiful country. Look at it now."

Lara's grandfather went out for hours one night, returning at 2am to say he had finally found a taxi driver willing to make the dangerous crossing to get her to safety in Damascus.

"I sat in the back with my grandfather and another relative in the front with the driver, and for the first 30 minutes things were OK," she said.

"But then the first bomb hit the road nearby, and I counted another five or six. My grandfather ordered me to keep my head down, but sometimes I looked up to take a photo."

Lara left for Lebanon on June 7.

On arriving at Melbourne Airport early yesterday, Lara's family was among many who cried and wept at the safe return of a loved one.

Their prayers now are for relatives and strangers still in the war zone.

"I wish they could cease firing and resolve this conflict," Ms Abi-Farraj said.

"There are too many innocent people suffering."

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