The mosque used to announce a death in the Lebanese village of Dhayra. The mournful call would ring loud enough that relatives on the other side of the cement border wall, in the Israeli town of Arab al-Aramshe, would be able to hear it – and prepare.
Two days later, the residents of Dhayra and Arab al-Aramshe would gather at the graveyard, separated by barbed wire. It was the only chance for the Bedouin families, whose village is split by the Israeli and Lebanese border, to meet and check up on one another. The two countries have intermittently been at war since the 1980s, and in Lebanon speaking to people inside Israel, relative or not, is against the law.
