If you read my last posting, it makes you wonder what had happened that I become having a role and invited to such ceremony.... well, almost five years ago, I was living a peaceful detached life from my homeland and in particular in the first week of February 2005, I was in Tokyo giving a lecture savoring and enjoying my passion of teaching and traveling. Upon my return to the US and a week later, a heinous assassination of prime minister Harriri of Lebanon took place... All of sudden a popular uprising too lace in Lebanon, Christians and Muslims united against the Syrian occupier. I was so taken by these events and my patriotic feeling was revived overnight...One day I received an e-mail requesting that all Lebanese to gather in front of the UN, at the corner of 49Th street. I took my daughter and my wife and we headed to the place of gathering dressed with red and white colors... to my surprise, the gathering was amazingly successful... over 500 people were standing in the cold and shouting: " Syria out"... I knew deep inside our liberation revolution is finally seeing the light.... I have been waiting for this moment since I was 10 years old...
The community here have established a committee that was called Lebanon Society and we started our activism... manifestations, mass e-mails, flags etc... and we started meeting with the Lebanese leaders of the Cedar revolution.... we started to call them March 14 alliance. I was an independent activist with no political affiliation and during our activism I met JG that was the head of the Christian party the Lebanese Forces (LF)in North America with an American lobby arm called the LIC (Lebanese Information Center) based in DC. I was very taken by his endless energy, his deep believe in the Lebanese cause, his history of being a fighter since he was 16 years old. He was exiled to the US early 1993, where he started to practice family medicine as a medical doctor. He was the reason behind reestablishing the Lebanese Forces in exile after the Syrian occupation in early 90's. I can write about him paragraphs and paragraphs and i will never give him enough credits t what he really does for Lebanon as a whole not from the sectarian angle of being a Christian. I realized that working in a party is a more structured work and more efficient.... Slowly, i saw myself getting more and more in helping JG, in participation in multiple conferences in DC and especially during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006, he had put up meetings in the Congress under the sponsorship of congressman Issa and Boustany.
I became at a cross road of either I become a full member or I stay as a sympathizer... Deep inside I wanted to make a difference and I saw that through this party I can achieve it... There was a lot of reservation from my side and of a lot of Lebanese Chrisitian on the past of the party and its leader Samir Geagea.That's why I need to describe what I have discovered about this party and why nobody can eliminate it. It's only becoming bigger and bigger... I decided to become the LIC director of the UN liaison office and I have re-organized the LF chapter in New York and put it back in the lime light of the Lebanese-American elitist society...
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Impressions from my trip to Lebanon on Christmas 2009
Here I am back to continue the story, re-energized after a trip to Lebanon. During that trip as usual did my political activism and sure enough I lived this tumultuous live of everyday Lebanon which is a cross road between different civilizations that intertwine between each others every second of the day, which makes Lebanon a unique Phenomenon that can make you understand how this intricate world work.
It was Christmas time and it happened that Ashoura commemoration was going the same time. I was invited by a very pro eminent independent Shiite leader who is an anti-Hizbullah, for one of the majaless of Ashoura, meaning a wake, were a mullah will come and tell a story in a crying voice that will make everybody cry. It was on Christmas evening. I was very worried because he is a vocal anti-hizb leader, I took with me two armed guards and took my own gun (that I have never used nor I will intend to use)and put it under my belt in my back and covered by my jacket.... the sad part is that my daughter saw me putting my gun and asked me why I am taking my gun with me. I responded, I hope you will never have to worry about that, my love. Kissed her on her forehead and proceeded. It was an interesting small adventure, I had to give my car specification and wait in front of Alssayad building in Hazmieh. A black SUV with dark windows pulled up and dialed my cell number, I answered and he said, Hakim(doctor in Arabic) please follow me. He stepped on his gas pedal and it was an exhilarating pursuit, until we reached a building in Hazmieh in a downhill. We were directed to a closed parking, that was full of armed guards, my escort became little bite agitated, I reassured them, that we are with friends...deep inside my heart was racing... I put my hand in my pocket, touched my rosary and said deep inside, "ya Rab" (dear God) and the kiss that I gave my daughter on her forehead came to my mind.... I went up alone escorted by two of there guards carrying walkies-talkie, a complete mafia style movie... we went up in the elevator and was guided to my friend's office. It was designed like a Colorado ranch, closed barricaded windows to protect him from snipers, he lives secluded....we had a nice chat, and the time to start the ceremony has arrived, and we walked to the main room were the public was gathered. we were seated on a coach facing the crowd, and the photographers and video cameras are rolling and you feel like you are a star but in reality deep inside I was thinking how the Hizbullah intelligence are recording all these pictures and adding them up to my own file...As long as you don't get involved in their business, you can say whatever you want, but things change when you start getting involved in their turf...The interesting part of that evening, he invited a moderate Sunni Sheikh from Tripoli who is the right hand of the Mufti of the North, and he gave a talk in Islamic theology explaining the Sunni side of the events, he was talking and talking and you can see the crowd are in a different spirit of mind, quickly he figured it out, and he turned his hatred on Zionism, Israelis and the Jews.... and Goodness the whole crowd got wild-up...I got a squeeze in the heart and all I thought about is that how naive and played by this mass of crowd facing me.... what a shame to blame all of their faults and division and reunite over the hatred to the other... this was a moderate gathering, I kept imagining what would they say deep in the southern suburb of Beirut the enclave of Hizbullah...the crowd kept shouting, Allah Akbar on every insult directed to the Jews.. deep inside I couldn't stop thinking of my Jewish friends in New york that I work with and that we shared together good and bad moments.... it was a torture to hear the hatred on the Jews it made me think how easy they can turn their hatred on us the Christian Lebanese, their partners in the homeland.... I left the ceremony traumatized and saddened how the West is so naive in understanding this Islamic uprising and how killing and martyrdom in the name of Allah is ingrained in the mass of Muslims....the whole time they were replaying the epic of martyrdom of Hussein, how this latter has sent his only son Ali to fight his enemies and how he came back from the battlefield cut in pieces bleeding asking his father Hussein to give him the blessing to pass away, Hussein answers him go back to battlefield and your grandfather Mohamed will take your spirit back to him....couldn't stop thinking about my son, that it is impossible to conceive to send him to his ultimate sacrifice and for what??? for more bloodshed... Again, in Arabic there is a saying, "don't judge any one's belief, God will do it for you"....Poor God how he has been carried so many human ailments and shortcomings...so many people have died and will die in his name and for what??? Actually, we had a great disturbing comparison of Hussein to Christ which it is a blasphemy for a Christian.... that took me back to 1996, where I was moonlighting on the week-ends n Brooklyn in Kips Bay where there is a substantial presence of Muslim community. It was Ramadan and people were not coming for treatment, because blood will make them break there fasting... I met this guy on the corner going to a deli/butcher place called restaurant of Peace (Mattaam al salam), where inside its everything except peace. All the people inside talk about there hatred for America and the Jews...I met this guy who I have treated in the past of a Muslim Shiite faith, Hizbullah have done some terrorist act of some sort, I told him I don't believe that any religion really promote killing and hatred. I said look at Christianity, if you got hit on your right cheek, turn the left, which is the sign of forgiveness, that is something so difficult for the Middle Eastern to do... He looked at me and said, Hakim, do you know really why he said that? I said please explain it to me, he said the sword is placed on the left side!!!! At that point, I thought I am dealing with few ignorants, this trip have made me realized that its a generalized problem that is becoming fundamental. The debate during this Christmas time was comparing Hussein to Christ... advocating that Hussein was crucified,decapitated by his own as Christ and he was a Martyr like Christ. Let's take a moment and analyze the differences far from our religious belief, otherwise we should stop it immediately for the only reason that Christ is the son of God and Hussein is nothing than a normal person who was a leader of an army, but let's look at it from a perspective of no believer in Christianity... Christ advocated love, peace, forgiveness and never led an army nor killed anyone, on the opposite, he healed the sick and risen the dead and saved the prostitute Marie of Magdalene from being stoned to death and said to her stoners: whomever between you who has no sin to throw a stone on her... They say he is revolutionary, it is true but the only act of violence is when he entered the front yard of the temple and smashed the vendors that were exposing their goods in front of the temple, saying that this a pure place and money shouldn't be present... When the Romans came to arrest him, he asked his disciples not to resist and to accept the written.... Hussein is an army leader, who wanted to take the leadership of the Muslim world called AL Calif, he led a war and sent his son to fight along his followers and he never risen from the death and his shrine still stands in Karballa. I don't understand how can we compare these two men putting aside the divinity of one versus the other. So, as we can deduct, there is a fundamental problem right now in Islam, and the accommodating speech is not helping and the blame is on the educated and on the ones in that faith that reject violence to stand up as my friend did in front of this fanatics and force the masses of Islam to go into moderation and throwing off violence and everyone who calls for it... the change has to come from within. Islam needs to go to reformation as all other religions went through, Christianity, Judaism and all others, and this should happen now and quickly for the peace of the world... the Muslims and the Muslim Arab in particular have been unable to move forward because of so many humiliation that they succumbed to cite few Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the dissemination of the Arabic identity. I totally sympathize with these humiliations, but look at the strength of the rest of the world, they succumbed to huge loses learned from them, stood back up and moved forward. The living example is both Germany after WWII and Japan.... or the Chinese post-WWII and the Russian communism...The Muslim world has not been able to free itself from it defeats and humiliation of the modern history and still wants to conquer the Judeo-Christian world which doesn't exist other than in the history books....the Muslim have to learn to live with the other who doesn't share with him the belief in Muhammad, take the example of the Christian Copts right now in Egypt or the Christians in Iraq who have disappeared completely or the Christians in Palestine and in particular in Bethlehem and Nazareth the place of birth of Christ.... Tolerance and acceptance of the other is something inevitable and the faster they come to term with it, it's better for the new generations to come in the Middle East. Demonizing everyone and blaming everyone but themselves for the failures is a failure by itself.... Liberate yourself, accept the failures that happened in your history, learn from it and move forward, show the world your intelligence (for God sake you discovered the trigonometry, the west learned Medicine from the Arabs), integrate in your new countries of immigration and accept the separation between state and Church because it is the only salvation to your future and the future of this global world....Every time you make a mistake, you should be punished with the same violence you inflicted, eye for an eye as you believe... your independent and progressive between you should be profiled and harassed in order to rise against the fanatic and extremist to liberate these ignorant masses that each one of them can turn to a suicide bomber.... I am a victim of harassement and profiling although I am not from Muslim faith but share the same origins as the Muslims and I blame the moderate between them for their complaisance and complaining that to civil liberties movements instead of facing the real culprit of their demise which is the extremist. The moderates are big talker as the elitist we have in the Obama administrations and cowards... they need to stand up and fight for the future of their children and their own dignity and stop living in denial that one day this will go away, and guess what one day you will wake up and the world is taken by the extremist and you will be left out in the cold with no civil liberty movement nor a free world were you can blosom as it happened in Iran....Wake up, stand up and fight for your own freedom and don't count on the others to solve your problem...
It was Christmas time and it happened that Ashoura commemoration was going the same time. I was invited by a very pro eminent independent Shiite leader who is an anti-Hizbullah, for one of the majaless of Ashoura, meaning a wake, were a mullah will come and tell a story in a crying voice that will make everybody cry. It was on Christmas evening. I was very worried because he is a vocal anti-hizb leader, I took with me two armed guards and took my own gun (that I have never used nor I will intend to use)and put it under my belt in my back and covered by my jacket.... the sad part is that my daughter saw me putting my gun and asked me why I am taking my gun with me. I responded, I hope you will never have to worry about that, my love. Kissed her on her forehead and proceeded. It was an interesting small adventure, I had to give my car specification and wait in front of Alssayad building in Hazmieh. A black SUV with dark windows pulled up and dialed my cell number, I answered and he said, Hakim(doctor in Arabic) please follow me. He stepped on his gas pedal and it was an exhilarating pursuit, until we reached a building in Hazmieh in a downhill. We were directed to a closed parking, that was full of armed guards, my escort became little bite agitated, I reassured them, that we are with friends...deep inside my heart was racing... I put my hand in my pocket, touched my rosary and said deep inside, "ya Rab" (dear God) and the kiss that I gave my daughter on her forehead came to my mind.... I went up alone escorted by two of there guards carrying walkies-talkie, a complete mafia style movie... we went up in the elevator and was guided to my friend's office. It was designed like a Colorado ranch, closed barricaded windows to protect him from snipers, he lives secluded....we had a nice chat, and the time to start the ceremony has arrived, and we walked to the main room were the public was gathered. we were seated on a coach facing the crowd, and the photographers and video cameras are rolling and you feel like you are a star but in reality deep inside I was thinking how the Hizbullah intelligence are recording all these pictures and adding them up to my own file...As long as you don't get involved in their business, you can say whatever you want, but things change when you start getting involved in their turf...The interesting part of that evening, he invited a moderate Sunni Sheikh from Tripoli who is the right hand of the Mufti of the North, and he gave a talk in Islamic theology explaining the Sunni side of the events, he was talking and talking and you can see the crowd are in a different spirit of mind, quickly he figured it out, and he turned his hatred on Zionism, Israelis and the Jews.... and Goodness the whole crowd got wild-up...I got a squeeze in the heart and all I thought about is that how naive and played by this mass of crowd facing me.... what a shame to blame all of their faults and division and reunite over the hatred to the other... this was a moderate gathering, I kept imagining what would they say deep in the southern suburb of Beirut the enclave of Hizbullah...the crowd kept shouting, Allah Akbar on every insult directed to the Jews.. deep inside I couldn't stop thinking of my Jewish friends in New york that I work with and that we shared together good and bad moments.... it was a torture to hear the hatred on the Jews it made me think how easy they can turn their hatred on us the Christian Lebanese, their partners in the homeland.... I left the ceremony traumatized and saddened how the West is so naive in understanding this Islamic uprising and how killing and martyrdom in the name of Allah is ingrained in the mass of Muslims....the whole time they were replaying the epic of martyrdom of Hussein, how this latter has sent his only son Ali to fight his enemies and how he came back from the battlefield cut in pieces bleeding asking his father Hussein to give him the blessing to pass away, Hussein answers him go back to battlefield and your grandfather Mohamed will take your spirit back to him....couldn't stop thinking about my son, that it is impossible to conceive to send him to his ultimate sacrifice and for what??? for more bloodshed... Again, in Arabic there is a saying, "don't judge any one's belief, God will do it for you"....Poor God how he has been carried so many human ailments and shortcomings...so many people have died and will die in his name and for what??? Actually, we had a great disturbing comparison of Hussein to Christ which it is a blasphemy for a Christian.... that took me back to 1996, where I was moonlighting on the week-ends n Brooklyn in Kips Bay where there is a substantial presence of Muslim community. It was Ramadan and people were not coming for treatment, because blood will make them break there fasting... I met this guy on the corner going to a deli/butcher place called restaurant of Peace (Mattaam al salam), where inside its everything except peace. All the people inside talk about there hatred for America and the Jews...I met this guy who I have treated in the past of a Muslim Shiite faith, Hizbullah have done some terrorist act of some sort, I told him I don't believe that any religion really promote killing and hatred. I said look at Christianity, if you got hit on your right cheek, turn the left, which is the sign of forgiveness, that is something so difficult for the Middle Eastern to do... He looked at me and said, Hakim, do you know really why he said that? I said please explain it to me, he said the sword is placed on the left side!!!! At that point, I thought I am dealing with few ignorants, this trip have made me realized that its a generalized problem that is becoming fundamental. The debate during this Christmas time was comparing Hussein to Christ... advocating that Hussein was crucified,decapitated by his own as Christ and he was a Martyr like Christ. Let's take a moment and analyze the differences far from our religious belief, otherwise we should stop it immediately for the only reason that Christ is the son of God and Hussein is nothing than a normal person who was a leader of an army, but let's look at it from a perspective of no believer in Christianity... Christ advocated love, peace, forgiveness and never led an army nor killed anyone, on the opposite, he healed the sick and risen the dead and saved the prostitute Marie of Magdalene from being stoned to death and said to her stoners: whomever between you who has no sin to throw a stone on her... They say he is revolutionary, it is true but the only act of violence is when he entered the front yard of the temple and smashed the vendors that were exposing their goods in front of the temple, saying that this a pure place and money shouldn't be present... When the Romans came to arrest him, he asked his disciples not to resist and to accept the written.... Hussein is an army leader, who wanted to take the leadership of the Muslim world called AL Calif, he led a war and sent his son to fight along his followers and he never risen from the death and his shrine still stands in Karballa. I don't understand how can we compare these two men putting aside the divinity of one versus the other. So, as we can deduct, there is a fundamental problem right now in Islam, and the accommodating speech is not helping and the blame is on the educated and on the ones in that faith that reject violence to stand up as my friend did in front of this fanatics and force the masses of Islam to go into moderation and throwing off violence and everyone who calls for it... the change has to come from within. Islam needs to go to reformation as all other religions went through, Christianity, Judaism and all others, and this should happen now and quickly for the peace of the world... the Muslims and the Muslim Arab in particular have been unable to move forward because of so many humiliation that they succumbed to cite few Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the dissemination of the Arabic identity. I totally sympathize with these humiliations, but look at the strength of the rest of the world, they succumbed to huge loses learned from them, stood back up and moved forward. The living example is both Germany after WWII and Japan.... or the Chinese post-WWII and the Russian communism...The Muslim world has not been able to free itself from it defeats and humiliation of the modern history and still wants to conquer the Judeo-Christian world which doesn't exist other than in the history books....the Muslim have to learn to live with the other who doesn't share with him the belief in Muhammad, take the example of the Christian Copts right now in Egypt or the Christians in Iraq who have disappeared completely or the Christians in Palestine and in particular in Bethlehem and Nazareth the place of birth of Christ.... Tolerance and acceptance of the other is something inevitable and the faster they come to term with it, it's better for the new generations to come in the Middle East. Demonizing everyone and blaming everyone but themselves for the failures is a failure by itself.... Liberate yourself, accept the failures that happened in your history, learn from it and move forward, show the world your intelligence (for God sake you discovered the trigonometry, the west learned Medicine from the Arabs), integrate in your new countries of immigration and accept the separation between state and Church because it is the only salvation to your future and the future of this global world....Every time you make a mistake, you should be punished with the same violence you inflicted, eye for an eye as you believe... your independent and progressive between you should be profiled and harassed in order to rise against the fanatic and extremist to liberate these ignorant masses that each one of them can turn to a suicide bomber.... I am a victim of harassement and profiling although I am not from Muslim faith but share the same origins as the Muslims and I blame the moderate between them for their complaisance and complaining that to civil liberties movements instead of facing the real culprit of their demise which is the extremist. The moderates are big talker as the elitist we have in the Obama administrations and cowards... they need to stand up and fight for the future of their children and their own dignity and stop living in denial that one day this will go away, and guess what one day you will wake up and the world is taken by the extremist and you will be left out in the cold with no civil liberty movement nor a free world were you can blosom as it happened in Iran....Wake up, stand up and fight for your own freedom and don't count on the others to solve your problem...
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Youth in War 5
I have lost the momentum of writing these tails of horror.. but I encountered a very interesting person that I will respect anonymity that told me that he read my blog. I thought that I can't be traced, obviously I was naive. I was very touched that he read it and liked the story, and here I am more encouraged on continuing. It is not easy to open these wounds that you work hard on burying them....
Back to Ghineh, a small town with 900 m elevation from sea level. This part of the country was living a normal life except from time to time seeing military cars passing by. we lived across from a vineyard which probably influenced me early in loving all the extract of this generous fruit... and used to play with my neighbors, biking back and forth uphill where there was a water fountain that later on in my life, when I visited Rome and saw all of these " fontanas" couldn't from remembering the water fountain of Ghineh.. People used to park there cars and come fill up water tanks for there family drinking needs and also it was the place where young couple used to meet, exchange smile and gossips... it was a peaceful and innocent place considering the savagery going on down in Beirut....For us children at that time it was funny to observe this interaction and use to tease the young men by telling them I will tell your dad or mom, and used to run after us throwing stones on us, while we biking as fast as possible laughing until we got caught by them and get beaten up, than no fun anymore... I kept living these peaceful days playing until summer was ended and fall came and still no end for our civil war. My dad started teaching at home everyday French, Arabic, Mathematics etc.. I hated it all I was thinking about was chopper bike and my friends. I guess I was fortunate that my father owned a school that my education didn't end like the other children...
My sister and brother were living there teenage life by sneaking out and watching movies and gossiping. My brother stayed mostly in Beirut around the fighting with the guys... and used to come visit and stay a week and go back. One day, I remember they were all excited with there friends about a movie that just came out and they were going to watch it... when they came back the joy on their faces and in their eyes was overwhelming... the movie was " Saturday night fever". My sisters started showing me the moves and wanted me to dance with them.... I was their male partner and that lasted for long time and I guess it did me good in my adult life....
One day my dad had for lunch on a Sunday the two local leaders of the rival Christian parties of town of Hadath. They were fighting for turf control as one can expect. The lunch went fine and they shook hands at the end. the head of the Hadath Ahrar party Joseph Asmar, took his glass and looked at me and called me by my nickname saying I want you to join the Ahrar, I looked at him and responded swiftly over my dead body...everybody started laughing.... later on I understood if I I was an adult and I have told him that than my life would have been short, imagine a head of mafia and you challenge him like that what would have happened.... I guess when you are 7 years everything is accepted. After the head of the Kataeb party Dr. K came to me and took from his neck less the emblem of the kataeb and gave it to me and I kept it around my neck for years. Years went by and I reconnected with his nephew, also goes by the name Dr. K, who was recently a cabinet minister and I told him the story and we started laughing about it....telling me well it was a good move you still on the same political path.
Our Christian areas were filled with Palestinian refugee camps that our forces militias surrounded them and cleaned them up... you can imagine when militia forces enters a succumbed areas with civilians to kick out.... I am not here to judge anybody action but in the Middle East emotions can go high and usually civilians pay the price.... everybody succumbed to this path even the US forces, and before them the French, Brits and all the people who passed through our lands.... The big decisive battle was Tel-al zaatar, the camp was on a hill surrounded by valleys... a lot of people lost their lives trying to take it over... My brother went in just after it fell and took a lot of pictures that still make me sick to my stomach till today...but war is war and people will die but you can't stop thinking of the family left behind, did they find out about their lost ones or are they still waiting for them....
On other hand, the Palestinian forces and their Muslim allies took over a Christian town and committed one of the most horrible massacres killing children, women in a town called Al-Dammour. Due to this atrocity, the Arabic countries and under pressure by the US and the French made that Arabic force and that fulfilled the Syrian dream of occupying Lebanon.A cease fire was achieved after the neighboring Syria went in with its army as part of the" Arabic Force of order" known in Arabic "elradeeh". The canon were finally silenced after two and half years.
We went back to Baabda and my dad went to open his private school that was turned into a military Fort by the Syrian army.... Our school had basement all underneath the 10,000sqm of buildings and all were filled up to the ceiling with ammunition, the play grounds had the trucks and those scary T-62 Russian made tanks and the classrooms dormitory for the soldiers....it was a difficult negotiations that my dad had to go through with the Syrian commander and a lot of bribery, but they vacated the school and it reopened its doors for the students. I will always the happy face of my dad with his big smile welcoming them back, I could feel what he feels now that I have responsibility myself, that weight was relieved of his shoulder, his family is safe, his school is back, it must been for him a nightmare that ended on a good note, but little he knew what the future is hiding for him....
Back to Ghineh, a small town with 900 m elevation from sea level. This part of the country was living a normal life except from time to time seeing military cars passing by. we lived across from a vineyard which probably influenced me early in loving all the extract of this generous fruit... and used to play with my neighbors, biking back and forth uphill where there was a water fountain that later on in my life, when I visited Rome and saw all of these " fontanas" couldn't from remembering the water fountain of Ghineh.. People used to park there cars and come fill up water tanks for there family drinking needs and also it was the place where young couple used to meet, exchange smile and gossips... it was a peaceful and innocent place considering the savagery going on down in Beirut....For us children at that time it was funny to observe this interaction and use to tease the young men by telling them I will tell your dad or mom, and used to run after us throwing stones on us, while we biking as fast as possible laughing until we got caught by them and get beaten up, than no fun anymore... I kept living these peaceful days playing until summer was ended and fall came and still no end for our civil war. My dad started teaching at home everyday French, Arabic, Mathematics etc.. I hated it all I was thinking about was chopper bike and my friends. I guess I was fortunate that my father owned a school that my education didn't end like the other children...
My sister and brother were living there teenage life by sneaking out and watching movies and gossiping. My brother stayed mostly in Beirut around the fighting with the guys... and used to come visit and stay a week and go back. One day, I remember they were all excited with there friends about a movie that just came out and they were going to watch it... when they came back the joy on their faces and in their eyes was overwhelming... the movie was " Saturday night fever". My sisters started showing me the moves and wanted me to dance with them.... I was their male partner and that lasted for long time and I guess it did me good in my adult life....
One day my dad had for lunch on a Sunday the two local leaders of the rival Christian parties of town of Hadath. They were fighting for turf control as one can expect. The lunch went fine and they shook hands at the end. the head of the Hadath Ahrar party Joseph Asmar, took his glass and looked at me and called me by my nickname saying I want you to join the Ahrar, I looked at him and responded swiftly over my dead body...everybody started laughing.... later on I understood if I I was an adult and I have told him that than my life would have been short, imagine a head of mafia and you challenge him like that what would have happened.... I guess when you are 7 years everything is accepted. After the head of the Kataeb party Dr. K came to me and took from his neck less the emblem of the kataeb and gave it to me and I kept it around my neck for years. Years went by and I reconnected with his nephew, also goes by the name Dr. K, who was recently a cabinet minister and I told him the story and we started laughing about it....telling me well it was a good move you still on the same political path.
Our Christian areas were filled with Palestinian refugee camps that our forces militias surrounded them and cleaned them up... you can imagine when militia forces enters a succumbed areas with civilians to kick out.... I am not here to judge anybody action but in the Middle East emotions can go high and usually civilians pay the price.... everybody succumbed to this path even the US forces, and before them the French, Brits and all the people who passed through our lands.... The big decisive battle was Tel-al zaatar, the camp was on a hill surrounded by valleys... a lot of people lost their lives trying to take it over... My brother went in just after it fell and took a lot of pictures that still make me sick to my stomach till today...but war is war and people will die but you can't stop thinking of the family left behind, did they find out about their lost ones or are they still waiting for them....
On other hand, the Palestinian forces and their Muslim allies took over a Christian town and committed one of the most horrible massacres killing children, women in a town called Al-Dammour. Due to this atrocity, the Arabic countries and under pressure by the US and the French made that Arabic force and that fulfilled the Syrian dream of occupying Lebanon.A cease fire was achieved after the neighboring Syria went in with its army as part of the" Arabic Force of order" known in Arabic "elradeeh". The canon were finally silenced after two and half years.
We went back to Baabda and my dad went to open his private school that was turned into a military Fort by the Syrian army.... Our school had basement all underneath the 10,000sqm of buildings and all were filled up to the ceiling with ammunition, the play grounds had the trucks and those scary T-62 Russian made tanks and the classrooms dormitory for the soldiers....it was a difficult negotiations that my dad had to go through with the Syrian commander and a lot of bribery, but they vacated the school and it reopened its doors for the students. I will always the happy face of my dad with his big smile welcoming them back, I could feel what he feels now that I have responsibility myself, that weight was relieved of his shoulder, his family is safe, his school is back, it must been for him a nightmare that ended on a good note, but little he knew what the future is hiding for him....
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Youth in War 4
Yesterday Friday I had a day off and I met a young Lebanese man the initials of his name NAC. He came to do an LLM at Columbia University. A bright young man 11 years younger than me. He came from a very politically active family and he himself is an activist and rightly so. He was in his early 20's when the Cedar revolution started and he participated intensely. He had his share of abuse from the authorities at that time... He is carrying a scar on his left hand from enduring a physical attack from the repressive Intelligence Services of the time and he is very proud of it and rightly so. while listening to him, it reminded me myself when I was around that same age and I put a military uniform on and fought and got hit on my left hand as well.... It is comforting to see that generation after generation of participation of the young elite led to an independent state at the end. I will get to it later on hopefully.
The funny part, because of that encounter with NAC, it brought back to my memory one more step in my family in country movement during the war.... it was between 1975 till 1978. three years of my childhood, from when I was five till I was over 8 years old.
My father's brother had a house in the middle of Kesrouan called Mazraat kferdabian...it is a beautiful village the bottom of a valley with at that time a very dangerous one way windy road that had to accommodate two cars in two different directions... on one side a very steep cliff and the other side the wall of the mountain. My dad had this big long fleetwood American car that filled up the road... it was some journey that almost cost us all our lives... I know my new friend who is originally from their, is not going to like the stories of our stay in Kfardabian. It was a different time, a different age, a lawless time that he was lucky that he was not born at that time to experience it's ugliness.
while we are making our way to the village and my dad all uncomfortable driving that road, a car was coming up from the opposed direction very fast, the coincidence is we me at one of the many turns, I think he got shocked seeing this humongous car of my dad and made a quick turn to the left stopping at the edge of the cliff. My dad stopped the car and stepped out, only to see an enrage person with a gun pointed to him mad and cursing him. He asked for all of us to step out of the car and lined us up on the wall of the mountain saying he wanted to kill us all because we were going to kill him... completely mad guy... all of sudden the cars coming down and up started gathering and people came out of them and some recognized him and came to him trying to calm him down which eventually he did.... one of the bystanders came to my dad and told him to give him 200 Liras (lebanese pounds) at that time it valued almost $100... they were big money papers blue color, I never forgot my dad handing it to him...
one of the cars escorted us driving in front to lead the way and finally we made it down to the village safe where my brother and two sisters have been there from one day earlier... we ended up staying in a hotel in the vilage square called Hotel Salame...
I made friends with the local kids and spent my time playing in the fields of grappes and i remember there was a tree of berries in a closed field but part of it was leaning over the fence to the small concrete walkway, me and the kids used to pick them and eat them until the owner used to see us and come running with a big wood stick towards us... being the son of a stranger, the owner used to come and complain to my dad and my dad used to pay to get him off his back... afterward my dad comes and play with my auburn hair and kiss my head and say have fun...My mom never agreed with him and used to say you are spoiling the boy... typical mediteranean mother...
My brother and my cousins were in the age of teenage the age of revolutionnary, and each one followed a political party... My two cousins of my dad side joined the Ahrar, My cousins from my mother side joined the Kataeb, and my brother instead of joining the Kataeb joined Heras Al Arz (The Gardians of the Cedars)... My brother being an intellectual not a fighter, he used to write for it's newspaper... the HQ of that party was in Achrafieh, in Beirut called nazlet el sioufi... One night of severe fighting, a mortar shell fell at the entrance of that villa that served as the HQ...Three young man were killed and my brother's car who he loved was completely shrapnel riddled... when he saw the guys killed that close, he decided that was not for him and he came to join us in Kesrouan.
One day my brother got in an argument with the wife of the Hotel owner, I don't remember the reason and something happened, he slapped her or he pushed her, the bottom line we left and moved further up to the ski resort of Ouioun el siman...and stayed in a beautiful Chalet... with a fire place and very cool neighbors. A lot of young friends for my brother and sisters of the same age... Every night all the young crowd used to gather in our chalet because my dad being very strict didn't allow my two sisters to leave and party... I used to stay with them and observe them because at that point n more children my age to play with... one of them used to play the guitar and they used to sing all of the songs of that time...I used to wait for the potatoes to be backed in the fire place wrapped in the aluminum foil... it was the most fascinating thing for me...
One day we got two men barging into the chalet demanding to take my brother back to Mazraa to apologize publicly from the wife of the hotel owner...I remember one of the guys had this french made paratrooper machine gun a very advanced weapon for that time. My parents asked me to go out and play and my mom whispered to me to tell our driver outside what is happening... I did his name was Antoine that I don't know what he ended up after all of these years... Antoine took his car and went to a nearby checkpoint of the Kataeb and all of sudden a have brigade came over and surrounded the building, I was fascinated how they spread all around so quickly... it is funny when you are six of age how small things fascinates you... the commander of that team which I cant remember his face very well barged in with three militiamen and arrested the guys. My God how much beating these three men got... the commander talked to my father and he told him that the HQ of the party sends you there regards and that this matter will be resolved swiftly... and sure enough the next day, the owner of the hotel, his wife were escorted with two beaten men to our chalet and they apologized... at the end of this episode my dad moved us to Ghineh to the house that I have described in the earlier chapter.... I never been in Mazraa anymore, but I promise my new friend that I will do that journey and check the hotel if it is still exist and specially that road... hopefully by now it has been widened and made more secure....
The funny part, because of that encounter with NAC, it brought back to my memory one more step in my family in country movement during the war.... it was between 1975 till 1978. three years of my childhood, from when I was five till I was over 8 years old.
My father's brother had a house in the middle of Kesrouan called Mazraat kferdabian...it is a beautiful village the bottom of a valley with at that time a very dangerous one way windy road that had to accommodate two cars in two different directions... on one side a very steep cliff and the other side the wall of the mountain. My dad had this big long fleetwood American car that filled up the road... it was some journey that almost cost us all our lives... I know my new friend who is originally from their, is not going to like the stories of our stay in Kfardabian. It was a different time, a different age, a lawless time that he was lucky that he was not born at that time to experience it's ugliness.
while we are making our way to the village and my dad all uncomfortable driving that road, a car was coming up from the opposed direction very fast, the coincidence is we me at one of the many turns, I think he got shocked seeing this humongous car of my dad and made a quick turn to the left stopping at the edge of the cliff. My dad stopped the car and stepped out, only to see an enrage person with a gun pointed to him mad and cursing him. He asked for all of us to step out of the car and lined us up on the wall of the mountain saying he wanted to kill us all because we were going to kill him... completely mad guy... all of sudden the cars coming down and up started gathering and people came out of them and some recognized him and came to him trying to calm him down which eventually he did.... one of the bystanders came to my dad and told him to give him 200 Liras (lebanese pounds) at that time it valued almost $100... they were big money papers blue color, I never forgot my dad handing it to him...
one of the cars escorted us driving in front to lead the way and finally we made it down to the village safe where my brother and two sisters have been there from one day earlier... we ended up staying in a hotel in the vilage square called Hotel Salame...
I made friends with the local kids and spent my time playing in the fields of grappes and i remember there was a tree of berries in a closed field but part of it was leaning over the fence to the small concrete walkway, me and the kids used to pick them and eat them until the owner used to see us and come running with a big wood stick towards us... being the son of a stranger, the owner used to come and complain to my dad and my dad used to pay to get him off his back... afterward my dad comes and play with my auburn hair and kiss my head and say have fun...My mom never agreed with him and used to say you are spoiling the boy... typical mediteranean mother...
My brother and my cousins were in the age of teenage the age of revolutionnary, and each one followed a political party... My two cousins of my dad side joined the Ahrar, My cousins from my mother side joined the Kataeb, and my brother instead of joining the Kataeb joined Heras Al Arz (The Gardians of the Cedars)... My brother being an intellectual not a fighter, he used to write for it's newspaper... the HQ of that party was in Achrafieh, in Beirut called nazlet el sioufi... One night of severe fighting, a mortar shell fell at the entrance of that villa that served as the HQ...Three young man were killed and my brother's car who he loved was completely shrapnel riddled... when he saw the guys killed that close, he decided that was not for him and he came to join us in Kesrouan.
One day my brother got in an argument with the wife of the Hotel owner, I don't remember the reason and something happened, he slapped her or he pushed her, the bottom line we left and moved further up to the ski resort of Ouioun el siman...and stayed in a beautiful Chalet... with a fire place and very cool neighbors. A lot of young friends for my brother and sisters of the same age... Every night all the young crowd used to gather in our chalet because my dad being very strict didn't allow my two sisters to leave and party... I used to stay with them and observe them because at that point n more children my age to play with... one of them used to play the guitar and they used to sing all of the songs of that time...I used to wait for the potatoes to be backed in the fire place wrapped in the aluminum foil... it was the most fascinating thing for me...
One day we got two men barging into the chalet demanding to take my brother back to Mazraa to apologize publicly from the wife of the hotel owner...I remember one of the guys had this french made paratrooper machine gun a very advanced weapon for that time. My parents asked me to go out and play and my mom whispered to me to tell our driver outside what is happening... I did his name was Antoine that I don't know what he ended up after all of these years... Antoine took his car and went to a nearby checkpoint of the Kataeb and all of sudden a have brigade came over and surrounded the building, I was fascinated how they spread all around so quickly... it is funny when you are six of age how small things fascinates you... the commander of that team which I cant remember his face very well barged in with three militiamen and arrested the guys. My God how much beating these three men got... the commander talked to my father and he told him that the HQ of the party sends you there regards and that this matter will be resolved swiftly... and sure enough the next day, the owner of the hotel, his wife were escorted with two beaten men to our chalet and they apologized... at the end of this episode my dad moved us to Ghineh to the house that I have described in the earlier chapter.... I never been in Mazraa anymore, but I promise my new friend that I will do that journey and check the hotel if it is still exist and specially that road... hopefully by now it has been widened and made more secure....
Sunday, October 18, 2009
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....
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....
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Youth in War 2
we moved to our new home under the bullets of snipers that day, leaving our furniture behind in our old apartment at Galerie Semaan... we slept on newly bought mattresses layedon the floor. Two days later, the movers brought our furniture while a cease fire took place. It was an interesting event for me as a youth to see the movers hoisting up our beds, coaches etc... through the balconies because the stairs were too narow to be used... fascinating to see these men hoisting all of these furniture that I couldn't even move on the floor...
The cease fire didn't last long and the house that my dad bought next to the presidential palace turned to be a strategic mistake. The building was built recently by a Palestinian Muslim and being in the middle of a Christian area he had to sell his apartment which ended up to be bought by my dad.
I said the location was a strategic mistake... well that night that we were supposed to finally sleep in our bed turned to be one of the most memorable night of the conflict... A Muslim officer who defected to the Arab Lebanese Army made of all Muslim soldiers that left the main Lebanese army was highly trained by the US army in the art of artillery and that night under his command the Palace was bombarded and the story is that he bombarded every room in the palace to kill the president at that time, who by constitution is a Maronite Christian...
The next day the president had evacuated the palace heading north... the madness continued and the kidnapping continued... I remember behind our building there was a farm. I was playing on our balcony and I saw an ambulance driving into the farm behind us escorted by a four wheel drive jeep from the National Police ( Gendarmerie Nationale). All of sudden, I hear a woman screaming and crying on top of her lungs running towards the parked ambulance outside her shack.... a body inside a bag was taken from the ambulance and delivered to the family... it was the body of her husband a father of young children decapitated by the Muslims and their Palestinian allies because he was Christian and his unfortunate luck made stop at a check point manned by above mentioned factions...
In our areas they were doing the same... I remember one day, the crowd was cheering outside when handcuffed and blind folded Muslim Lebanese/Palestinians were paraded by our Christian militias and people were hitting them, spitting on them while passing in front of them... a woman came to one of them with a knife and started slashing his clothe and blood started staining his shirt screaming at him, you mother f... you decapitated my son, the other saying the same about her husband... the next day the same kidnapped guys were paraded but this time dead and pulled by their feet from the back of the militias cars and the same crowd was cheering.... it was a lot for a five year to handle... I started waking up in the night, sweating and screaming.... My parents were concerned for our mental health and starting looking for ways to move us away from Beirut...
My father owned a private school and couple of days later, we got news that one of his school buses was stolen and one of the drivers was kidnapped by the Palestinian factions... he was trying to reach some of his connections on the other side trying to rescue the driver, he never thought that a Muslim driver Muhammad who grew up in our house since he was five years old would be kidnapped by the Muslims...he was released finally but un-recognizable from the beating that he suffered... his eyes were swollen, bruises all over his body, and even worst they extinguished cigarette buds on his body... he told us his ordeal, when they stopped the bus that the school name was written on it. Being located in Hadath a Christian area, they started searching the bus, he had no ID's on him because he was from the most northern border area of Lebanon bordering Syria and he belonged to a bedouin tribe that they had no nationality... my dad kind of adopted him since he was young from his father who used to work for us as well.... they found the names of the student roster that the bus used to transport. The names were all Christians... they didn't believe him that he was Muslim... they asked him to recite a Muslim prayer but poor Muhammad grew up in our house and all he knew was " In the name of the Father..."
At that point my mother called her brother who lived up North in Naccache and drove us all their to escape from this madness... I was excited, because were my uncle lived was still virgin at that time plenty of forest and his older son Joseph had children my age... all I was thinking about was how much playing I will be having, after all some of the five year old childishness was still alive in me... After settling in Naccache, my father and older brother stayed in Baabda to take care of the school and the house.... one day my older cousin Joseph who became a commander of the Military Police of the main Christian party came home from the front escorted by some of his soldiers... for me he was the essential coolness... tall, body built plenty of strength and handsome.. I wanted to grow up and become like him... to fight the war and get ride of our enemies... that night me and his son George we started fighting who was going to sleep with the machine gun of his father an M-16... to make us both happy, he dismantled the gun in two pieces I got the barrel and his son the shoulder piece... hey better than nothing...
The next day, my cousin Joseph drove us north towards the beach to a resort called Tabarja Beach.. on the highway just across from the famous " Casino du Liban", there was a beautiful bridge and people were lined up with there cars parked on the highway... we all stepped out from the car and walked towards the crowd to see what they were looking at... when we got there and as soon as I peeked over the siding of the bridge, I saw corpses burning of the kidnapped people, me and my two sisters turned and started running scared and with tears in our eyes...
what kind of madness are we living my two sisters were sobbing .....
The cease fire didn't last long and the house that my dad bought next to the presidential palace turned to be a strategic mistake. The building was built recently by a Palestinian Muslim and being in the middle of a Christian area he had to sell his apartment which ended up to be bought by my dad.
I said the location was a strategic mistake... well that night that we were supposed to finally sleep in our bed turned to be one of the most memorable night of the conflict... A Muslim officer who defected to the Arab Lebanese Army made of all Muslim soldiers that left the main Lebanese army was highly trained by the US army in the art of artillery and that night under his command the Palace was bombarded and the story is that he bombarded every room in the palace to kill the president at that time, who by constitution is a Maronite Christian...
The next day the president had evacuated the palace heading north... the madness continued and the kidnapping continued... I remember behind our building there was a farm. I was playing on our balcony and I saw an ambulance driving into the farm behind us escorted by a four wheel drive jeep from the National Police ( Gendarmerie Nationale). All of sudden, I hear a woman screaming and crying on top of her lungs running towards the parked ambulance outside her shack.... a body inside a bag was taken from the ambulance and delivered to the family... it was the body of her husband a father of young children decapitated by the Muslims and their Palestinian allies because he was Christian and his unfortunate luck made stop at a check point manned by above mentioned factions...
In our areas they were doing the same... I remember one day, the crowd was cheering outside when handcuffed and blind folded Muslim Lebanese/Palestinians were paraded by our Christian militias and people were hitting them, spitting on them while passing in front of them... a woman came to one of them with a knife and started slashing his clothe and blood started staining his shirt screaming at him, you mother f... you decapitated my son, the other saying the same about her husband... the next day the same kidnapped guys were paraded but this time dead and pulled by their feet from the back of the militias cars and the same crowd was cheering.... it was a lot for a five year to handle... I started waking up in the night, sweating and screaming.... My parents were concerned for our mental health and starting looking for ways to move us away from Beirut...
My father owned a private school and couple of days later, we got news that one of his school buses was stolen and one of the drivers was kidnapped by the Palestinian factions... he was trying to reach some of his connections on the other side trying to rescue the driver, he never thought that a Muslim driver Muhammad who grew up in our house since he was five years old would be kidnapped by the Muslims...he was released finally but un-recognizable from the beating that he suffered... his eyes were swollen, bruises all over his body, and even worst they extinguished cigarette buds on his body... he told us his ordeal, when they stopped the bus that the school name was written on it. Being located in Hadath a Christian area, they started searching the bus, he had no ID's on him because he was from the most northern border area of Lebanon bordering Syria and he belonged to a bedouin tribe that they had no nationality... my dad kind of adopted him since he was young from his father who used to work for us as well.... they found the names of the student roster that the bus used to transport. The names were all Christians... they didn't believe him that he was Muslim... they asked him to recite a Muslim prayer but poor Muhammad grew up in our house and all he knew was " In the name of the Father..."
At that point my mother called her brother who lived up North in Naccache and drove us all their to escape from this madness... I was excited, because were my uncle lived was still virgin at that time plenty of forest and his older son Joseph had children my age... all I was thinking about was how much playing I will be having, after all some of the five year old childishness was still alive in me... After settling in Naccache, my father and older brother stayed in Baabda to take care of the school and the house.... one day my older cousin Joseph who became a commander of the Military Police of the main Christian party came home from the front escorted by some of his soldiers... for me he was the essential coolness... tall, body built plenty of strength and handsome.. I wanted to grow up and become like him... to fight the war and get ride of our enemies... that night me and his son George we started fighting who was going to sleep with the machine gun of his father an M-16... to make us both happy, he dismantled the gun in two pieces I got the barrel and his son the shoulder piece... hey better than nothing...
The next day, my cousin Joseph drove us north towards the beach to a resort called Tabarja Beach.. on the highway just across from the famous " Casino du Liban", there was a beautiful bridge and people were lined up with there cars parked on the highway... we all stepped out from the car and walked towards the crowd to see what they were looking at... when we got there and as soon as I peeked over the siding of the bridge, I saw corpses burning of the kidnapped people, me and my two sisters turned and started running scared and with tears in our eyes...
what kind of madness are we living my two sisters were sobbing .....
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Youth in War
On April 13, 1975, the civil war in Lebanon started by an unfortunate incident. A bus full of Palestinians civilians escorted by a car with PLO members with there guns sticking out from the windows made its way through the Christian suburb of Ain El Remaneh, shooting and wounding the escort of a major Chrisitan leader Pierre Gemayel. The spirits at that time have been full of anger over the last six months and waiting for a reason to explode, especially that few weeks before this incident, a four members of the Kataeb (main Chrisitian party) were ambushed by the Palestinians guerillas and killed.
The rumor was that the leader Pierre was assassinated by this passing by car of Palestinians. You can imagine how the mob of people gathered down on the streets wanted revenge.... the mob was boiling of anger and by "mistake" this innocent bus full of Palestinians civilians passed in the middle of this mob.... they were all fourty shot down, children, women, elderly... like a spark in a dry grass, the civil war ignited.... militiamen filled up the streets and check points were established and people were kidnapped based on there religion and identity background.... you can imagine that most of the kidnapped were killed and never made it back home....
"Galerie Semaan" were we used to live was not far away from were that incident took place. I was five years old at that time, totally oblivious to the events happening or the news leading to it... I was happy playing with this miniature red mini cooper that my parents brought to me as a gift from there recent trip to Italy.... I was fascinated by the details that car was built, the headlights looked like real, the doors opens showing a dashboard etc... I was dreaming of driving this car on the riviera like my older brother does every evening... war and killing were completely million miles away... but all this innocence was shattered at that point....My father came back quickly to the house bringing with him my two sisters from school and my brother a teenager at that point was at college and we couldn't reach him... I never seen my father so anxious before, he was always this strong full of life person, he was pacing him and my mom arguing... in those days, there was no cell phones, nor e-mails, they were helpless... they jumped at the balcony anytime they heard a car strolling on the street... the entrance door was open and people were coming in and out checking and telling us there stories about there family members... everybody was afraid and smoking heavily.. around seven in the evening, my brother arrived, he was white like a ghost and shaking... he told us what an ordeal he went through to make it back home... you can imagine being in the college campus at that moment, colleges are usually the place were revolution starts... it was a chaos upon hearing the news, everybody were running for there lives.. students turned against each other based on religion... he escorted two of his Muslim friends in his car to get them out of Achrafieh( heart of the Chrisitan district of Beirut). He strolled the narrow streets of Huvelin in his red sport Fiat 124, got to Hamra the Muslim area... but he didn't realize that the roads were full of killers having machine guns... our ID's states your religion even if your name was neutral... he dropped them there and by complete miracle he made it home safe. he was seventeen and a half years old at that time...
The loud noises of firearms and explosions were getting closer and rumors spread that the Palestinians are attacking from the refugee camps Sabra and Chatilla towards us...our building was owned by a druze, had Christians, Muslims ( shiites , sunnis), Jews even Americans and French living in it and in the neighborhood, thus the name " Hay el amerkin" (the american neighborhood).
The Muslims and Druze packed up and left because that area was predominantly Christians and they were afraid for there lives from revenge seekers....everybody was saying goodbyes, hugging, kissing and crying.... the Foreigners were evacuated by there embassies... we stayed in the building at that point.... things started to get worst, no electricity, no more phones....the nights were scary, we had to run to a shelter across the street in another building....
I came down with a flu... I had fever, shivering... I was afraid at that point... that was not a war world II movie that we used to watch in the theater, that was real...
one day, Dad came and told us to pack up we are leaving... he bought an apartment more inward in our areas, supposedly safer....that night was unforgettable...the bombs were exploding so close, the lights that it was making was out of this world... the cracking of bullets hitting the building was so frightening... we spent the whole night laying down on our bellys, with our hands covering our head, we couldn't make it to the shelter...the sound of windows crumbling was out of a horror movies....that night affected me psychologically... for two years, I used to stand up sleeping, screaming: "they are coming...." even now I am fourty years old, every time I remember that night I start shaking... trust me we had so many nights like this, but this night took my innocence away.... the next day, I transformed my beautiful, cool Mini Cooper into an armed vehicle and started building armed check points... I had a brilliant idea, I took the boxes of matches, the old enough between you will remember those small square boxes that had a drawer full of matches, I took one of the matches and stuck it out from the box mimicking the cannon of the tank that was posted at the corner up the road....by noon, we left the apartment and that was the last time I saw it in my life....
When I visit back to Lebanon I pass by the building were I was born but don't like to enter the first neighborhood of my life were I lost my innocence..... Time hasn't come to heal the past with the present because the present hasn't stopped the mistakes of the past.....
The rumor was that the leader Pierre was assassinated by this passing by car of Palestinians. You can imagine how the mob of people gathered down on the streets wanted revenge.... the mob was boiling of anger and by "mistake" this innocent bus full of Palestinians civilians passed in the middle of this mob.... they were all fourty shot down, children, women, elderly... like a spark in a dry grass, the civil war ignited.... militiamen filled up the streets and check points were established and people were kidnapped based on there religion and identity background.... you can imagine that most of the kidnapped were killed and never made it back home....
"Galerie Semaan" were we used to live was not far away from were that incident took place. I was five years old at that time, totally oblivious to the events happening or the news leading to it... I was happy playing with this miniature red mini cooper that my parents brought to me as a gift from there recent trip to Italy.... I was fascinated by the details that car was built, the headlights looked like real, the doors opens showing a dashboard etc... I was dreaming of driving this car on the riviera like my older brother does every evening... war and killing were completely million miles away... but all this innocence was shattered at that point....My father came back quickly to the house bringing with him my two sisters from school and my brother a teenager at that point was at college and we couldn't reach him... I never seen my father so anxious before, he was always this strong full of life person, he was pacing him and my mom arguing... in those days, there was no cell phones, nor e-mails, they were helpless... they jumped at the balcony anytime they heard a car strolling on the street... the entrance door was open and people were coming in and out checking and telling us there stories about there family members... everybody was afraid and smoking heavily.. around seven in the evening, my brother arrived, he was white like a ghost and shaking... he told us what an ordeal he went through to make it back home... you can imagine being in the college campus at that moment, colleges are usually the place were revolution starts... it was a chaos upon hearing the news, everybody were running for there lives.. students turned against each other based on religion... he escorted two of his Muslim friends in his car to get them out of Achrafieh( heart of the Chrisitan district of Beirut). He strolled the narrow streets of Huvelin in his red sport Fiat 124, got to Hamra the Muslim area... but he didn't realize that the roads were full of killers having machine guns... our ID's states your religion even if your name was neutral... he dropped them there and by complete miracle he made it home safe. he was seventeen and a half years old at that time...
The loud noises of firearms and explosions were getting closer and rumors spread that the Palestinians are attacking from the refugee camps Sabra and Chatilla towards us...our building was owned by a druze, had Christians, Muslims ( shiites , sunnis), Jews even Americans and French living in it and in the neighborhood, thus the name " Hay el amerkin" (the american neighborhood).
The Muslims and Druze packed up and left because that area was predominantly Christians and they were afraid for there lives from revenge seekers....everybody was saying goodbyes, hugging, kissing and crying.... the Foreigners were evacuated by there embassies... we stayed in the building at that point.... things started to get worst, no electricity, no more phones....the nights were scary, we had to run to a shelter across the street in another building....
I came down with a flu... I had fever, shivering... I was afraid at that point... that was not a war world II movie that we used to watch in the theater, that was real...
one day, Dad came and told us to pack up we are leaving... he bought an apartment more inward in our areas, supposedly safer....that night was unforgettable...the bombs were exploding so close, the lights that it was making was out of this world... the cracking of bullets hitting the building was so frightening... we spent the whole night laying down on our bellys, with our hands covering our head, we couldn't make it to the shelter...the sound of windows crumbling was out of a horror movies....that night affected me psychologically... for two years, I used to stand up sleeping, screaming: "they are coming...." even now I am fourty years old, every time I remember that night I start shaking... trust me we had so many nights like this, but this night took my innocence away.... the next day, I transformed my beautiful, cool Mini Cooper into an armed vehicle and started building armed check points... I had a brilliant idea, I took the boxes of matches, the old enough between you will remember those small square boxes that had a drawer full of matches, I took one of the matches and stuck it out from the box mimicking the cannon of the tank that was posted at the corner up the road....by noon, we left the apartment and that was the last time I saw it in my life....
When I visit back to Lebanon I pass by the building were I was born but don't like to enter the first neighborhood of my life were I lost my innocence..... Time hasn't come to heal the past with the present because the present hasn't stopped the mistakes of the past.....
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