Americans line up to leave Beirut

BEIRUT -- Jeannette Luna Naim 's four children say they have learned a lot over the last week while waiting anxiously in a half-furnished apartment to be evacuated from Beirut, and to return home to Brookline.

They learned that white smoke means an explosion, and that black smoke means fire. At the airport last week, expecting to board a flight, they learned during the morning Israeli air raid that it's safest to take shelter inside the terminal, beside a support column.

Now the Naims are among an estimated 60,000 foreigners desperately awaiting evacuation from Beirut. Some European countries, including France, began evacuating their nationals yesterday, as Israel permitted two passenger ships to leave Beirut's harbor. But most foreigners who want to leave are still waiting.

``I don't know about politics. I just know that I want to get out of Lebanon, but I can't," Jeannette Naim said.

Some, like the Naim family, were caught in Lebanon on vacation when war broke out. Others are Lebanese nationals with dual citizenship who were living here. But all of them were terrified to risk the uncertain road to Syria, which has been subjected to Israeli bombings almost daily.

They have turned to their governments to get them out. But in the quickly changing environment of Israel's air campaign against Lebanon, foreign governments have taken several days to get evacuations under way.

Many Americans in Lebanon have complained that the embassy is hard to reach, that its website offers little information, and that US officials prompted further outrage by announcing that Americans would have to reimburse their government for the evacuation.

As of midnight local time last night, the US Embassy website instructed American citizens only to ``ready themselves immediately and await further instructions."

By some estimates, there are 25,000 American passport holders, 20,000 French, 10,000 British, and several thousand other foreigners still in Lebanon.

Many Lebanese have dual citizenship.

The US Embassy is hoping to begin evacuating citizens today by sea, said a spokeswoman, Juliet Wurr.

Because Americans are targets for attack, the United States has been particularly careful about its plans, even if that means sustaining criticism for foot-dragging by some impatient to be evacuated.

``What's most important for us is to make sure we can get Americans out safely," Wurr said. ``Safety and security must be a primary concern."

Already, 62 Americans with humanitarian needs have been evacuated by helicopter to Cyprus, Wurr said.

The French government chartered a Greek ferry boat, diverting it from its regular run of tourist hot spots in the Aegean.

Yesterday evening, hundreds of French and Europeans -- and a handful of Americans -- boarded the vessel, the Ierapetra, in Beirut's port.

Israel had bombed the port three days earlier, and the Greek crew members said they were nervous. ``Do you think they'll bomb us?" one crew member asked glumly while French evacuees boarded the boat.

The French consul general, Joël Godeau, said that this first boat would take 1,200 evacuees, one-third of them not French. Priority was given to children, the elderly, and pregnant women, he said.

Maya Najm, 38, was one of them, pulling her two-year-old by one hand and patting her belly, seven months pregnant, with the other.

``I was very scared when the war started," said Najm, a Parisian of Lebanese descent who was on vacation. ``I wanted to leave to Syria, but the road was being bombed."

French citizens have been informed that boat evacuations will take place regularly until all who want to leave can do so. Americans, however, have yet to receive a solid schedule.

At the American University of Beirut, students on summer programs lined up to register for the evacuation yesterday.

``I've always known that the Middle East has its problems, but until you go through something like this yourself, you don't really think it's going to happen to you," said Brennan Berry, 20, from West Hartford Conn., a student at George Washington University who spent his spring semester at the American University of Beirut.

A few miles away, in the Christian neighborhood of Ashrafiya, the Naim family was still waiting.

Jeannette's 17-year-old son, Sami, was scheduled this week to be finishing up his treatment for two strokes he has suffered.

Instead, Jeannette, who is from Puerto Rico, her Lebanese-born husband, Wadih, both of them dentists, and their four children while away long days listening to the distant sound of bombing, visiting Wadih's mother upstairs, and checking their e-mail messages for any word from the embassy.

Paola, 11, already jokes about the bombs, provoking a wince from her father who lived through almost a decade of Lebanon's civil war before emigrating in 1984.

``I'm surprised the Americans haven't done more to get us out," Jeannette said. But she counts her family as lucky.

The war, which her husband called a ``moral outrage," has killed hundreds and has displaced tens of thousands; next to that, Jeannette Naim said, her family's discomfort was minor.

``We had the best vacation," she said. ``We're just hoping we can get back."

Globe correspondent Andrew Lee Butters contributed from Beirut.