In Ibrahim Kanaan’s 1974 book, Lebanon During the Great War, we come across a section entitled “The Eater of the Flesh of Children,” which discusses the emergence of famine-driven cannibalism amidst the naval blockade imposed by the Allied powers in 1915. Specifically within Jabal ‘Amil (South Lebanon), reports recount the disappearance of four children from Damour, their severed heads discovered later in the dwelling of an individual who had roasted them for supper. Such accounts of child-related horrors are but a fraction of the eerie lore that continues to haunt the ‘Amili nights. Yet woven into this tragic lore today are new stories of children’s flesh consumed by fire, the result of Israel’s indiscriminate use of phosphorus munitions during its twenty-two-year occupation of Jabal ‘Amil and beyond. Southern poets have long captured this devastation in verses about ‘meteoric fires’—a metaphor for the relentless phosphorus rains that ravaged both bodies and landscapes without distinction. Aiming to undermine support for armed resistance, Israel’s “scorched-earth strategy” involved the destruction of roads, bridges, homes, and agricultural fields, rendering entire regions virtually uninhabitable. While human rights organizations produce detailed reports—tracking, mapping, measuring, and verifying Israel’s blatant misuse of weapons—this paper turns its focus to the deeper, lasting legacy of phosphorus on the people and landscapes of Jabal ‘Amil. By demonstrating how phosphorus has already woven itself into the modern heritage of southern Lebanon (influencing songwriting, literature, and weather prognostics), I argue that we need to acknowledge a new history, especially an environmental history, that falls outside the documented episodes of territorial expansion. To read it is to stretch these colonial outbursts so thinly, so delicately that they allow for glimpses into the struggles of those dedicated to the pursuit of life in the flames of imperialism.