{"id":611,"date":"2018-04-09T10:30:12","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T08:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=611"},"modified":"2018-04-06T10:32:53","modified_gmt":"2018-04-06T08:32:53","slug":"photographer-reunited-with-woman-whose-image-symbolised-lebanons-disintegration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/?p=611","title":{"rendered":"Photographer reunited with woman whose image symbolised Lebanon’s disintegration"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For nearly 33 years, Samar Baltaji was the one-legged mother in the photo, holding the hand of her maimed daughter, Nisrine, as they walked through a landscape of Beirut at war.<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/header>\n
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In a simple skirt and blouse and with a transistor radio on her hip, she stared straight into the camera of a young photographer, Maher Attar, who was covering clashes near the Sabra Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. His photo made the front of the New York Times, capturing Lebanon\u2019s disintegration like few other images in the 15-year conflict and launched his career.<\/p>\n

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In the decades since, the stillness of mother and daughter under a stark summer light remained a defining image of the civil war \u2013 one of simple dignity in the face of carnage and prevailing against formidable odds.<\/p>\n

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Last week, the photographer and his subject came face to face again. Maher was going to a gym in Beirut\u2019s Verdun district. Samar was begging nearby. Now a double amputee \u2013 her second leg was lost to bone disease 12 years ago \u2013 the pair said they instinctively knew each other. \u201cI said \u2018I\u2019ll give you a clue – smile,\u201d Attar said. \u201cAnd she replied straight away: \u2018Maher\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

Samer remembers that moment in time, 2 June 1985, as a rare ceasefire after days of fighting between Palestinian factions and the Shia militia group Amal. \u201cThey caught Maher and beat him up,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was taking pictures from the car window and he dropped his camera. I gave it back to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samar slowly forgot about the brief encounter. She had a young family to raise in a city that was not functioning. The threat of another rocket, like the one that took her leg in her living room, remained very real. Her health steadily disintegrated until she lost her second leg. With four children to feed, and with little state support for her or any of Lebanon\u2019s estimated 150,000 civilians wounded by war, she took to the streets.<\/p>\n