With a cigarette perched between his teeth, Ghandi Abu Samara pulled the freshly baked Lebanese flatbread out of the oven, meat still sizzling on top, and dropped it on the counter.
Throwing a glance over the cash register and the small wooden crucifix above it, Abu Samara tried to explain the fear that permeates his hometown.
“If anyone who comes here is a stranger, we ask them if they have party affiliation and if they do, we asked them to leave,” he said. “We are not with Hezbollah or anyone else, we are only with the army.”
Ghandi Abu Samara, left, pictured with his friend Farid Mahara, runs a bakery less than three miles from the Israeli border
OLIVER MARSDEN
Abu Samara’s little restaurant sits on the edge of Qlayaa, but the predominantly Christian towns of Marjayoun and Qlayaa, just a few miles from the Israeli border, blend