Lebanon.....
Things are changing rapidly in the Middle East, due in no small part to an aggessive policy on the part of our present government that has gotten things off of center at long last. The 3000+ deaths in our country on 9/11 and the 1000's more casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan will have a positive legacy if democracy spreads in the region. And today it is, this time in Lebanon where the Syrian backed government has resigned under pressure and citizens are taking to the streets to show support for democratic reforms.
I have had a soft spot for the Lebanese for decades now...since 1976 actually. In that year, having just returned from the army, I had taken a job as a stock broker with Bache&Co. in Dallas. After months of "in office" training I was on my way to the headquarters in New York City for three months to acquire further skills and to take the test to gain my NYSE license.
By chance we had a commodities broker visiting from the Beirut office who would be in Dallas for a few months, the same months that I would be absent, so we worked an arrangement whereby he and his wife would sublet my apartment while I was gone. Rafic Hassam and his wife were lovely, gentle, kind and well educated people and I learned much about life in Beirut from them. The city at the time was known as the "Paris of the Middle East" a beautiful seaside cosmopolitan place as charming and economically well off as any city in the world.
When I returned from New York early in 1977 the Hassam's had already gone back to Beirut so I never saw nor heard from them again. But what they had left in my apartment stunned me. They had completely stocked my usually vacant refrigerator with all manner of delicacies. My cupboards were stocked with canned goods which were arranged like a supermarket...by category, type and size of cans. All my clothes had been washed and pressed and neatly arranged in the closets, socks folded and arranged by color in the chest of drawers. Likewise in my bathroom the guylike stock of 2 towels had been added to greatly and folded neatly away on the newly added shelf paper.
Of course what happened to Beirut in subsequent years is one of the great travesties of the century, ground into dust by warring factions, sects and governments. I often wonder what happened to Rafic Hassam and his wife. I may never know, but if they are still alive and in Lebanon, now perhaps they'll have a chance at a better life.
Things are changing rapidly in the Middle East, due in no small part to an aggessive policy on the part of our present government that has gotten things off of center at long last. The 3000+ deaths in our country on 9/11 and the 1000's more casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan will have a positive legacy if democracy spreads in the region. And today it is, this time in Lebanon where the Syrian backed government has resigned under pressure and citizens are taking to the streets to show support for democratic reforms.
I have had a soft spot for the Lebanese for decades now...since 1976 actually. In that year, having just returned from the army, I had taken a job as a stock broker with Bache&Co. in Dallas. After months of "in office" training I was on my way to the headquarters in New York City for three months to acquire further skills and to take the test to gain my NYSE license.
By chance we had a commodities broker visiting from the Beirut office who would be in Dallas for a few months, the same months that I would be absent, so we worked an arrangement whereby he and his wife would sublet my apartment while I was gone. Rafic Hassam and his wife were lovely, gentle, kind and well educated people and I learned much about life in Beirut from them. The city at the time was known as the "Paris of the Middle East" a beautiful seaside cosmopolitan place as charming and economically well off as any city in the world.
When I returned from New York early in 1977 the Hassam's had already gone back to Beirut so I never saw nor heard from them again. But what they had left in my apartment stunned me. They had completely stocked my usually vacant refrigerator with all manner of delicacies. My cupboards were stocked with canned goods which were arranged like a supermarket...by category, type and size of cans. All my clothes had been washed and pressed and neatly arranged in the closets, socks folded and arranged by color in the chest of drawers. Likewise in my bathroom the guylike stock of 2 towels had been added to greatly and folded neatly away on the newly added shelf paper.
Of course what happened to Beirut in subsequent years is one of the great travesties of the century, ground into dust by warring factions, sects and governments. I often wonder what happened to Rafic Hassam and his wife. I may never know, but if they are still alive and in Lebanon, now perhaps they'll have a chance at a better life.
