In a tiny village in Lebanon’s West Bekaa Valley,
Racheed Nemer has a point to make. He retreats to his kitchen and returns,
brandishing a box of Philadelphia Style cream cheese packs. Waving it
forcefully to punctuate his words, he tells us how each summer he travels to
Cleveland to see his son, and returns with 75 boxes of cream cheese to get him
through the year. It’s a slightly surreal moment, one of many on this intense
journey I’ve embarked upon.
Racheed is
108 years old. He is the cousin of
my grandfather, Maflah, who grew up in this village, Aitaneet. I have travelled here to see what's
left of the community which produced both my grandparents, and so many of my
Cleveland relatives.
Three days earlier, my friend Mike and I arrived in
Beirut on a plane from London. There are only a handful of tourists among the
Lebanese families, but we’re not surprised. After all, Beirut isn’t the obvious
destination for a holiday. When
Mike told his father he was going to Lebanon, the response was a vague
"Oh, that's nice." When he later realized Mike would be staying in
Beirut he said "But Beirut sounds so much worse!".
Indeed, Beirut
has had a difficult time in the last quarter century. In the 1950s and 1960s it
enjoyed a reputation as a cosmopolitan playground, earning the oft-recited
sobriquet “The Switzerland of the Middle East.” But with the advent of civil
war in the mid-70s Beirut became increasingly synonymous with strife, terrorism
and kidnapping. After fifteen years of devastating war and a further ten of an
unsettled peace, it is only just beginning to once again become a place to
which people would voluntarily choose to go.
Our escorts in
Beirut are my father’s cousin Elias and his wife Norma. They are our closest relatives left in
Lebanon. Since my grandparents emigrated in the early 1900s there has been a
steady trickle - often a flow - of Lebanese to other countries. In the 1950s, Elias moved to Cleveland
where he ended up spending ten years, first as a student at Johns Carroll, and
then as a French teacher in Brecksville. He returned to Beirut in the mid-60s
and, most would argue, paid a steep price. Elias and Norma purchased their
apartment in 1968 in a fashionable neighborhood in east Beirut. Seven years later the address was less
desirable - only hundreds of yards away from the "Green Line" - the
demarcation line dividing Beirut between the Muslim west side of the city and
the Christian east. Although his family had once owned a restaurant in West
Beirut, Elias and his family did
not cross the Green Line for the fifteen years of the civil war.
Elias shuttled
his wife and sons between the basement of his apartment where they spent
"many many nights" and a safe hotel retreat in the mountains. During
good periods they could come to their second home in Aitaneet. But even the
village itself was too dangerous during much of the war.
As they
approached college age, Elias was able to send his three sons to Cleveland;
they continue to live in the area. Elias has now finally received his own green
card, and he and Norma are making plans to move to the United States. I wanted to visit them in Lebanon
before they began their new life in Cleveland.
We get to know
each other over an enormous lunch, which Norma had been working on for two
days. I knew enough about Lebanese hospitality to arrive hungry, and we tuck in
with relish to the mezze that I've always loved. As a third generation
American, who never visited the country or spoke the language of my ancestors,
the cuisine is one way to connect with my background. I nobly rise to the
challenge, happily plowing through each of the lunch's ten dishes.
If you look
closely at the walls in the guest room of Elias and Norma’s immaculate
apartment, you can just make out the plastered-over bullet holes. Like Norma
and Elias, Beirut is now trying to hide from visitors the reminders of war.
Nowhere is the transition that epitomizes Beirut today more evident than in the
Beirut Central District. Once the hustling business and entertainment center of
the capital, it is now the site of the city's most remarkable reconstruction
efforts. The entire city center is being re-built by a joint-stock company
called Solidere, formed in 1992.
Elias and thousands of other property holders hold stock in the
company. But new Beirut has very
much an old look - many of the buildings are being built in the old Ottoman and
French colonial style. The reconstruction has also unearthed previously
undisturbed archaeological remains - three major excavations are now underway
in the area. The overall effect of the BCD is like a giant film set – brand new
buildings built in an old style, archaeological ruins, and a few bombed out
structures which have yet to be renovated or demolished.
Elsewhere in
Beirut, the many signs of affluence took us by surprise. Achrafiye, a heavily
French-Christian neighborhood in East Beirut, is the stomping ground for young,
upwardly mobile Beirutis.
From 10pm tables are full of groups eating and drinking - there are
surprisingly few couples - and in most restaurants you can hear a blend of
Arabic, French, and English. On the Corniche, the several mile long boardwalk
along the coast, every child of ten seems to have a new scooter.
Beirut is
poised to take on substantial tourists, but so far few have come, not least
because of worries about safety. Although the civil war ended in 1990, Lebanon
is still a pawn in the complicated chess board of Middle East politics. Walking
around Beirut in brilliant sunshine, high rises and all the bustle of any big
city, it's difficult to imagine you are in any danger. Apart from the many
bombed and bullet-damaged buildings, the most visible evidence of unrest is the
military presence - soldiers in camouflage, usually carrying machine guns. Many
are posted at checkpoints throughout the country. Syrian soldiers are numerous - riding in a taxi along the
coast one day I was startled to realise that there were scores of soldiers
crouched in the grass, guns ready to defend against an invasion by sea.
But as everyone
we spoke to was keen to point out, the soldiers are “peace-keeping” and there
is little that is dangerous in Lebanon at the moment. We marvelled throughout
at the friendliness of the people, and the lack of hassle or begging. Personal
crime in Lebanon is extremely low, and we never felt that we were unsafe.
With one
exception: the traffic. It's insane.
Beirut's traffic lights, destroyed during the war, have not been
replaced, and driving is intimidating and chaotic. The first time I get in a
taxi, I try to put on my seat belt and a cloud of dust emerges - the driver
admits, albeit sheepishly, that it had never been used. It's also not easy to
walk across streets - by the end of the week we'd learned to adopt a
passive-aggressive technique of forcing our way through slowly moving cars. The
pollution is more of a long-term danger -- leaded fuel dominates, and the air
is thick and pungent. Driving back into the city one day, Elias' asthma kicks
in. He wheezes: "When I start
coughing I know we are in Beirut!"
Outside of Beirut, driving, and life, is much calmer.
Lebanon is one of the smallest countries in the world, but its geographical
range is breathtaking - from the coasts to the mountain ranges of Mt Lebanon
and the Chouf to the beautiful Bekaa Valley. The country has an immodest wealth
of archaeological sites for its tiny size. North of Beirut we visit Byblos, a
picturesque port town dominated by a 12th century castle, now an engrossing
archaeological site. On the way back we take in Jeita Grotto, a huge cave
filled with stalagmites and stalactites. Used to store ammunition during the
war it is now one of the area’s most popular tourist attraction for vacationing
Lebanese families.
One day we head
south of Beirut, to visit the ancient towns of Sidon and Tyre, both heavily
battered during the war. Looming
over Sidon’s port stands an impressive Crusador sea castle. After exploring its
many hidden vantage points we enjoy wandering unnoticed through a
bewildering labyrinth of ancient
souks – the covered small shops which still function as the market place for
locals.
But the
highlight of the trip, by far, is our journey to Aitaneet in the Bekaa
Valley. In the morning, Elias drives
us the 75 km journey from Beirut, the reverse of which my grandfather walked
more than ninety years ago to eventually make his way through Ellis Island to
Cleveland. Nestled in the mountains overlooking a blue lake, it’s as
picturesque as I had imagined; a relief after the seemingly endless concrete
structures which blotted much of the countryside in the first part of the
journey.
It's a
beautiful sunny day, and the few villagers we encounter greet us effusively. I
tentatively use my hastily learned Arabic greeting, and then quickly lapse into
silence when met with a stream of sounds which, although seemingly familiar, I
cannot begin to understand. My grandparents’ tongue.
I’m given a
tour through the house where my grandfather was born. The original building is
now used as a stable, eclipsed by a large, lavishly decorated addition, where
the family who owns it live. Two minutes’ walk away Elias points out the site
where my grandmother was born, until recently occupied by Muslim squatters.
It’s overshadowed by a concrete house that was accidentally bombed during the
war.
One woman we
meet scolds me for not knowing Arabic and then energetically explains to Elias
what she knew of my grandparents. I learn a lot about my family that day. Elias
tells how in 1947 my grandfather returned from Cleveland with his eldest
daughter, Essine, to visit his parents, in a Chevrolet purchased in the States.
He remembers the car vividly, and the stir that it made in the village. During
that visit Essine fell in love with Aitaneet’s mayor, Shibley Shibley. After
marriage and a year living in Lebanon they settled in Pepper Pike to raise
their family (their four children run Cleveland’s Yours Truly restaurants). He
points out the house where Uncle Shibley lived before beginning his new life in
the US.
It’s clear from
walking through Aitaneet’s deserted single street just how few people are left.
At its peak in the 1950s, Aitaneet had a population of over a thousand. That
number has dwindled to a couple hundred, mostly through emigration. Many landed
in Cleveland, mostly settling on the East side -- there are more than four hundred families in the
Cleveland area alone on the Aitaneet Brothers Association mailing list.
Those who
weren’t able to emigrate legally often went anyway. Racheed, my 108 year old
cousin, tells us how in the 1930s he turned a US visit into a ten year stay,
living first in Cleveland with my grandparents and then in Chicago. His face
brightens at the memory.
Two days before
our trip to Aitaneet, a radar site a half an hour away was destroyed by an
Israeli bomb - the first inland target in several years. The peace remains
uneasy, and in such instability, Lebanon’s future remains uncertain. "You
have to plan month by month,” Elias sighs. His wife Norma, after so many years
living in Beirut, is sanguine: “Lebanon: you either love it or you leave it.”
And sometimes you do both.
© 2001 – All
rights reserved to the Author Mrs. Carole Nahra