Saada Allaow reported this story from Qana to the Lebanese daily Assafir.
Attached are two pictures one of Hassan and another one for his sister Zainab.

Translated by Lina Khatib.

Hassan's Story

Four-year old Hassan Shalhoub opened his eyes and looked around him, and found a
little girl sleeping next to him, who was not his six-year old sister Zainab.
Then he saw a man and asked him, 'Uncle, why am I here?' The man, the family's
neighbor 'Uncle Salim', ran towards Hassan, hugged him and said 'Darling! You
are still alive?' taking him away from the side of the dead two year-old girl.
Hassan had been wrapped in a blanket, sleeping among the bodies of the children
who were killed in Qana on Sunday. One of the rescuers had thought he was dead
too; how could he hope there was life in the midst of all the death? Hassan had
spent the night, blood covering his face and head, next to a girl whose name he
did not know, scared of the shelling, and upset at his mother who 'had left me
on my own'; he stressed that 'had it not been for the shelling, I would have
followed her to our village', where he thought she had gone. Hassan's mother
Rabab had woken up in Qana, finding herself buried in rubble along with her two
children Hassan and Zainab. She managed to pick up Hassan from the rubble and
asked him if he was in pain, and he said he wasn't. So she handed him over to a
rescuer and started looking for her daughter and her disabled husband. She
couldn't find Zainab. She called her name but did not get an answer. Under heavy
shelling, Rabab was taken with her husband to another shelter in the village
where she stayed till the morning, knowing that her son was 'OK'; he had told
her so before falling asleep again. Her worry about Zainab was suffocating her.
She must have been killed, she kept telling herself. Salim entered the shelter
with Hassan and the story of Hassan's 'new life'. When Hassan saw his mother, he
blamed her for leaving him 'alone, sleeping with the neighbors'. Rabab has one
last memory of Zainab, who died suffocating under the rubble, and whose image
worldwide television stations broadcast as a man held her body to the cameras,
denouncing the Israeli aggression: 'I saw a small hand next to Hassan, where
Zainab had been sleeping. I couldn't drag it from underneath the rubble, so I
kissed it and said, please don't be upset with me, mama, I can not help you'. 
That is where Rabab left Zainab. Where Zainab died. Rabab did not see 
the photographs of Zainab in the press, 'I do not want to see them. I want to
remember Zainab as she is in my mind'.She was told that Zainab was not
disfigured, which pleased her. She told Hassan that Zainab went to Heaven,
'There is no Israel there. There, Zainab is happy'.

Saada Allaow Assafir 01-08-06