Youth in War 3

When the civil war started in Lebanon, everybody thought it will be a two weeks ordeal and things will go back to normal.... The stay at my uncle's house lasted six months. A cease fire was set up and we moved back to Baabda. Unfortunately the kidnapping did not stop, on the contrary it became a good business. The first floor in our building was occupied by a local militia called Al Ahrar... their local leader Joseph Asmar was a complete thug very well known in the area and he started imposing protection fees in our area on the rich families... He never been able to touch my father directly but he used a different approach. He took the first floor for his thugs and he the gangster took the second floor and moved in with his family. As a young child, on the contrary I found it exciting, guys walking with AK-47 known as kalashinkov, for me it was the ultimate thing... I wanted to grew up and become strong like them, carry arms and lead a gang... I started hanging with them behind my father's back... I used to borrow these beautiful machines...I was in heaven... they had a reddish piece of wood in front part around the barrel and a shoulder metal arm support that folds underneath the belly of the machine gun turning it in a short piece, a great invention at that time.... fascinating for a young child.. I learned to take it apart and put it back in less than 3 minutes a record time...only if my dad knew...

One late afternoon, with a beautiful sunset, I heard a lot of commotion down stairs with people yelling orders... I ran downstairs and I saw a taxi car a red burgundy Mercedes of the 60's I never forget that car, it is funny how a child memory work, I was at the entrance of the building and the group of guys moved towards me... I was pushed to the side and I saw these two people eye folded and their hands tight behind their backs by a rope led to the first floor, and sure the guys on the side used to hit them while passing... it was an old guy and a young one arrested at a check point... I don't remember anything of the young one but for some reason I always remember the elder one passing in front of me, with his head down sobbing from fear...they were placed each one in a bathroom and locked in... the apartments had no jail cells.. the whole night we heard crying and a call for mercy.... My dad was furious had a fight with the gang leader Joseph and threatened him that he will teach him a lesson when the time comes...the next day he moved us to the mountains of Ftouh Kesrouan a village called Ghine, where he rented this old house typical Lebanese old construction that served in the peace time as a motel... It had six rooms in the back lined up, that all opened to a vast room that served as a living room. On the side a dining room with two very long doors painted white.... The house was surrounded by a garden...

My dad was always for me this powerful man, handsome with blonde hair and intense blue eyes typical of the area were he was born in the North close to the Cedars of Lebanon. Never feared anything, he was like a rock, always dressed elegantly with a suit and a tie from a very famous store in Beirut called "Joseph Eid", had this specially designed Fleet wood Cadillac that he bought just before the war started....very charismatic, charming and always had his long Monte Cristo cuban cigar in between his fingers... I remember his hand even now after he had passed away 13 years ago, beautiful, clean and majestic...My mom say I have his hands i hope I do, but I guess darker color because none of us me nor my brother came out to be fair skinned like him except my two sisters.

My dad was a self made one, he grew up in a large poor family up in the North in a small village called Metrit... My grand father Youssef that I have never met nor seen a picture of him... as a young teenager he fled the town where he was born Barkacha from being taken by the Ottoman (Turkish) army as a conscript at the time, a practice very commonly done by these barbarians especially towards the Christians...he ended up in Mexico...This story fascinates me and I wish I was able to hear it from him how as a young guy he did this long trip by himself on a boat to a destination that he didn't know. After reading on that subject and some of these elderly, the immigrants used to get on the boats not knowing where their final destination will be... a lot of them ended in Dakkar Africa on their way to South America, this how a big community of Maronite Lebanese ended up in South Africa... My grand father Youssef, ended up making a fortune at least that how story goes, he married my grand mother Martha, who was born in Argentina from Lebanese parents and moved back to Lebanon at the turn of the 20th century...There was no banks at that point, and he became a lender to people for a certain interest. The first war world started and Lebanon being under the Turkish occupation suffered from the embargo done by the Allies. Famine broke out caused by the embargo and by an attack of locust that decimated the wheat crop. The ottoman empire collapsed as a result of war world I and Youssef's fortune disappeared because the ottoman money became worthless... he had three children at that point, and to feed them he moved to a small village called Metrit that needed a priest, and he became the one...he became the judge, the dentist everything in that village and had all of his eight children born... but his misfortune had turned him in a sour person and ruthless...My oldest aunt who nobody talked about her ran away with a person she loved without my grand father consent... he cut her off... she had two daughters, one of them became a nun, a pretty woman with beautiful big blue eyes and a very fair skin... My runaway aunt contracted tuberculosis and died and my grandfather never went to her funeral nor allowed my grand mother to go...

He educated my oldest uncle whom became a teacher in a catholic school in Aleppo. He sent my father to become a priest because he couldn't afford educating him... My father ended up being brother Felix in a small convent in the mountains of Italy...when world war II took place, my father was kicked out from Italy being a French citizen ( Lebanon was a French protectorate at the end of world war I). He used to tell me that story how the Italian Carabineri rounded them up and forced them in a train bound to Marseille where he took a boat and shipped him back to Lebanon...He became himself a teacher at the La Salle brotherhood schools...
My dad never felt the call of priesthood and one day he went to the superior of the school and told him he is resigning and leaving the brotherhood. At that time my oldest uncle moved to the suburb of Beirut and settled in Ain El Rammane in a neighborhood called the snoubra..he brought his oldest sister and were close to my father who used to teach in the Catholic school of Furn el Chebak known as the " Ecole des Freres" or " madrasset el freir"...

Becoming a civilian, he kept teaching at the freir and other schools and in the night he used to work as a telephone operator for the goverment called the "centrale". He used to sleep couple of hours and work around the clock, private lessons from 5 AM till 7 Am, go teach at the schools till 4 pm, give another private lessons till 8 pm, and heads to the centrale and work until 2 am, sleeps couple of hours and the routine starts again.... He told me a story one day after he finished his shift as a telephone operator, the streets were unsafe, plenty of drunk Australian soldiers beating the lebanese civilians and taking their money to buy alcohol, he was chased by a "John" as they used to be called by the locals... he cornered him and told my dad: "I need money I am not going to hurt you, I will give you in exchange my military sweater" my dad gave him his freshly earned pay and took that sweater that he badly needed because he didn't own one and it worth much more what he gave the soldier. He used to freeze the nights leaving the centrale...The Australian soldiers were famous for being drunk, hating the British and selling their British equipment for money....

My dad growing up was full of fighting, patience and determination.... he was a political activist in the Kataeb party and participated on the ground with the independence movement that led to the Lebanese Republic (RL). He was the right hand of the Sultan Salim a very pro-eminent politician at that time. But he gave up his political career for the sake of making his dream, opening the first non Catholic school in the midst of the Christian suburb... and he succeeded.. he and my oldest uncle took a chance and opened the school, they were the teachers, the bus drivers, the super-intendant,the secretary, book keeper and slowly slowly it became a huge school housing more than three thousands children and young men and women from all religions and from the best families of Beirut until the civil war broke up....and things never been the same for my father... but always he had his head up, strong and full of live, I do miss him and I always miss him telling me: "Son, you are a young man, you should never say you are tired".... I miss that....