One Day at a Time: Diaries from a Palestinian Camp

The agonies of 20,000 Palestinians besieged in a Lebanese camp by warring factions are recorded in this diary, kept by heroic, much-decorated Scottish nurse Wighton--who worked in a clinic between 1986 and July 1988, when the camp was destroyed. The immediacy of the daily entries intensify the shattering impact of her tale of unremitting privation and cruelties, including kidnaping, torture, mutilation and death, visited upon the inmates--many women and children among them--and upon the staff of international medical volunteers. After six months of blockade and shelling, mounting casualties--including the author's shrapnel wound--and the dwindling of sanitation, water and power facilities and of medical and other supplies, the media finally took note of desperate appeals sent by Wighton and other staff members, which helped bring about the lifting of the siege and temporary cessation of hostilities. Photos. (Oct.)