Is it possible to survive a war bunker unscathed?
Thousands of ‘quasi refugee’ children from Lebanon landed in Australia in the eighties. Thanks to the government of the day and the sponsor families, a whole generation was given a fresh start.
But there was unfinished business.
While half the heart was full of hope, the other half was haemorrhaging from scars, phobias and nightmares.
But there was no time for a PTSD diagnosis.
As a social worker in the middle of this ‘wave’, I was ill-prepared to recognise then what is obvious now: untreated trauma cannot be buried with the dead. It torments like a heavy passenger in the vehicle of life, and sometimes usurps the driver’s seat.
The Bunker Diary is the culmination of dozens of testimonials from this generation who had their innocence robbed. The story weaves together the threads of their underground bunker experience, set near Beirut’s Green Line that became the red line between religion.
Lightning, candles, canned food, sea ports, crashing waves, electricity blackouts and antennas are constant triggers for haunting flashbacks. Young survivors develop chronic stomach cramps because eating is futile without a toilet, and this mutates into eating disorders in adult life. A parent being asked ‘what were you like at my age?’ can unhinge a luggage full of traumas.
This is the long-overdue and untold story of a chapter that shaped a generation, encouraging survivors to finally reconcile with the demons of their past to avert trans-generational trauma in the future.
Joseph Wakim was born in Lebanon, worked with these ‘refugees’ as a social worker in the 1980’s, before becoming an award-wining human rights advocate. After a 40-year silence about his own childhood ‘demons’, he was finally forced to face his PTSD, enabling searing insights from a lived experience.