Mr. Gallagher's Classroom

My Summer Vacation in a War Zone

by
Michael Makhlouf

I live in Westborough, Massachusetts and I graduated from WHS in 2009.  I have a lot of relatives in the United States from my dad’s side of the family. On the other hand, my cousins, aunts and relatives from my mom’s side all live in Lebanon. Lebanon is a very beautiful country. It has been called the Paris of the Middle East.  My dad arranged for my mom, two sisters and me to go to Lebanon for the summer.  We left for Lebanon by plane on June 24, 2006 and arrive there the following day.  Who knew I was going to be stuck in the middle of a war during my summer vacation!  This is the best example of how one never knows what to expect in the Middle East.

AP Photo taken summer of 2006 in southern Lebanon

My dad, my aunt and her husband took us to the airport. We said our goodbyes and we were really sad because we weren’t going to see them for two months. We stood in a very long line at the airport so we could go through security. While we were waiting to take off, we saw friends, who were going to France, also waiting for their flight.  After a short visit, we boarded the plane and got settled for the first part of our long journey to Lebanon.  Our flight took six hours from Boston to London.  We waited in London for four hours for our connecting flight to Lebanon on the Middle East Airlines. The plane ride from London to Lebanon took us four and a half hours. When we arrived in Lebanon, we had lost one bag in the trip.  It was my sister’s bag with all her clothes. After the mess with the bag and all the paperwork to fill out, we saw all our family members waiting for us. They greeted us with hugs and kisses since we hadn’t seen them for a long while. After gathering up our luggage, we left Beirut for a town called Zahle. This is a small town with many things to do in it. There are a lot of shops and a place called the Waadi, where you could hang out near a river and play games or go to restaurants.  It’s also a great place where you can watch all the soccer games during the World Cup.  In addition, there are lots of games and rides that you could go on. This hangout place is packed all day and all night.

During the first week of our vacation, we were really tired from all the traveling. Our relatives from the area would come and visit and keep us company. My mom slept at her mom’s house with my sisters and I stayed with my paternal grandpa at his house. My grandpa usually visits here once a year. He comes from the U.S. and stays in Lebanon. He likes Lebanon. Every morning I would wake up, take a shower, and then go down to see my mom who was still sleeping at her parents’ house. My grandpa works in a bookstore while he’s there, so I always wake up and find no one in the house. The first week, I would hang out with all my cousins who also live in the U.S. and also came to Lebanon for the summer. The first week was basically resting and walking around town. My cousins and I would go to a game place called The Network where we would play computer games such as Counterstrike. We were really tired this week because we were still getting used to the different time zone in Lebanon.

The following week, my cousins and I went to Beirut, which was known as the Paris of the Middle East. It is a beautiful city in which there are many tourist places you can visit. That day we went to meet our cousins who were already in Beirut. We were planning to spend a week at a beach on the Mediterranean Sea. We went to a resort called the Ocean Blue.  It is a beautiful place where there is a beach, pools, a restaurant and a nightclub right beside the beach where there are parties every night. Each day we would go to the beach and swim in the pool. One day I rented a jet ski, which was really fun. Every night that week, we would stay up until 4:00 or 5:00 AM in the morning at a party on the beach. We would have drinks, listen to music and dance. One night it was really packed with people. They had all come to watch the Germany versus Argentina World Cup match. When Germany won, everyone was really happy. Some of the people were really mad because a lot of the people were with Brazil.  They wanted to see Germany lose so it would be easier for Brazil to win in the finals. Soccer, which is called football in Lebanon, is a very popular sport that everyone watches. The people go crazy when their favorite team wins. The great thing about Lebanon is that there was no drinking age so it didn’t matter what you said you wanted to the bartender. It was so much fun, that we would do this every day and night. One day we went to a place called St. Charbel’s house high up in the mountains. It was chilly up there and the view was fantastic. Later we finished the night at the beach. It was a really fun week in Lebanon.

During the second week, I went back with my mom and sisters to our town. The first day that week, we went to have lunch at a restaurant called Café Faridi. We would have chicken, meat, tabooli, hummus, baba ghanooj, and fatoush. Tabooli is a salad of chopped parsley and tomatoes mixed with olive oil and lemon juice. Hummus is mashed chickpeas and tahini sauce with garlic and lemon juice. Baba Ghanooj, meaning spoiled daddy, is made of freshly roasted eggplant that is also mashed up with tahini sauce, garlic and lemon juice. Fatoush is also a kind of salad, which is mixed vegetables, lettuce and toasted flat bread. These types of foods were basic and eaten daily in Lebanon. There were also other special dishes that are really good. It was a very good lunch. It was the first time we went to a big restaurant and have mazza. Later on during the day, my uncle who lives in the U.S. and was also visiting Lebanon called us. He told us that he was coming to pick us up to go to Beirut again. He has his own beautiful there house next to the sea. So the next day he came and picked us up in the morning. We went to his house, fixed up our rooms and then we went off to tour the city. We went to a place where we rode a lift to go  all the way up the hillside to a tour site that is called Harisa. This place has a big St. Mary statue and a very big church called Our Lady of Lebanon. “Lady” is referring to St. Mary. The next day we spent the day at a place called Rio Lento. This place was filled with water rides and pools.

Photo of Beirut from the air. www.habeeb.com

At night, we were trying to find a nice restaurant, but we had made a big mistake. We needed to have made reservations at any restaurant or bar in Beirut. They were all packed because France was going to play Portugal in the World Cup. There never seems to be a place for you to go and eat when there is a World Cup game going on. In the end, we just went home and watched a movie. The next day we went to a restaurant high up in the mountains. It was really cold up there. Later, we went to a different mountain to visit the Cedars. The Cedars are a type of pine tree that are found throughout Lebanon. These are a specific kind of Cedar in Lebanon called Cedrus Libani. It was really fun visiting the area around the cedars. We toured half the time by foot and half the time on four-wheelers going up and down the mountainsides. Eventually our week had ended and we headed back to our hometown Zahle. We took the mountain route instead of going through the cities and towns. My uncle drove up and down the mountain of Lebanon. It was really cold at the top of the mountain where we saw a little bit of snow and a lot of ice. When we got to Zahle, I was very tired.

We had a lot planned for the following week. We were planning to go to a wedding ceremony in Zahle. My Grandpa’s nephew was getting married. The wedding parties are usually so much fun in Lebanon. There is a lot of music with dancing, people getting drunk and a lot of talking and laughter, and of course a lot of excellent food. This was the week we were all getting ready for the wedding. My Grandpa and my uncle who lives in Beirut was planning to pick up the bride and the groom in their car to go to Zahle where the wedding was going to take place. So when my Grandpa went to my uncle’s house, they had planned to bring the bride and groom the next day to Zahle. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out so well. Israel had attacked Lebanon with fury. The first day and all through the night, you could hear bombs and jet fighters in the ski flying all around the towns of Lebanon. They didn’t hit our town that day. My Grandpa got stuck in Beirut and they cancelled the wedding. The war brought so many concerns and basically ruined every single person’s vacation in Lebanon. It was really scary, but I wasn’t scared at all. I knew that Israel wouldn’t hit our town Zahle because we were all Christians and also Zahle had nothing to do with hiding any of Hezbollah weapons.

Photo of Zahle, Lebanon. lebanon.photos.22.zahle.html

We spent the week after the first day of the bombing going out and walking just in our hometown. We would go to our relatives’ houses and have either lunch or dinner. Not a lot of bombings happened in our town. A couple were dropped on the borderline between our town and a neighboring town. My mom and my sisters were really scared the first week. After that, we kind of got used to hearing the bombings every night, morning and all throughout the day. Baalbak is a town right next to ours that Israel bombed badly. Everything had closed down in Zahle. Only a couple of markets were open. All the clubs, restaurants, and playgrounds were all closed. The Israelis bombed all the roads. Many people lived in Beirut or other places and had to go to work in Zahle, but they couldn’t because the roads were all destroyed. In addition, another bad thing was that the big pick-up trucks that used to come down to Zahle to bring the food and vegetables to be sold in the markets stopped coming because of the war. The gas prices went way up in a couple of gas stations, and there was no more gas left at the rest of the gas stations. The trucks couldn’t come from Beirut to fill up the stations. Beirut was the main source where many of the towns got all their resources. It was really dangerous because many of the people in Zahle were worried about the Israelis hitting our town. No one worked at all during the war. All the people sat on the streets smoking, drinking and joking around all day and night. In addition, a lot just stayed in their houses watching the news all day and also all night. When the war had started the news on TV was on all the time. If I went to someone’s house, the news would be on TV and everybody would be watching it. The news told us everything that was happening in Lebanon. It would tell us where the Israelis had bombed.

The war had ruined about three weeks of our vacation in Lebanon. We were planning to do so much more that would’ve been really fun in Lebanon. I got really mad when I heard they had canceled the wedding ceremony that would have been really fun to attend. My grandpa ended up taking a big risk after a week when the war started. He took a very long taxi ride back to his hometown Zahle. He took the back roads, which is a very long but beautiful trip between the mountains that weren’t yet bombed. I was really glad to see him because of the big risk he had taken. So for the rest of the weeks in Lebanon, I met new friends and hung out with them and my cousins on the streets. We went to the pool a couple times which we had a lot of fun doing. Everybody thought we were crazy because we actually took the risk of going to the pool. You never knew when they were going to bomb again. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted to go to the pool. I got really bored. At night, I would go to the Network, an internet café, and send emails, play games and chat with my relatives in the US. These days were the same routine everyday for the rest of my vacation in Lebanon. We spent a lot of time with friends and family, going to the pool and hanging out at the network places. One time my friend and I rented a four-wheeler for an hour and drove it all over Zahle; up the mountains and down the mountains. I even went to some of the places where the Israelis had bombed the roads and also where they had bombed a truck. They were very deep holes. I never told my mom that I had done this until I got onto the plane when we were leaving for London. It was a very dangerous thing to do. My mom had told me that my friend and I were crazy people. But anyways, it was so much fun. What else was there to do when there was a war going on? Everybody was depressed and worried of what was going to happen. In the end, it was time to leave. Everybody was sad that we had to leave, but on the other hand, we were glad that we didn’t have to stay in a place where war was destroying the beautiful country of Lebanon.  We planned to go to the airport in Syria. We had to cross the border between Lebanon and Syria. Then we had to stay a night in Syria, from where the next day we would leave from the Damascus airport to London.

So the next day, we said goodbye. Everybody was sad because we were leaving. The taxicab came and we were off to Syria. They had bombed the road on the border crossing of Lebanon and Syria. When we got there, it was a mess. We had to take all our bags and walk across the place where the Israelis bombed the road. The weather was really hot as the temperature reached 90 degrees. We were sweating really badly. The worst part was that Syria wouldn’t let us in the country because they needed to confirm with the U.S. whether it was ok to go into the country. We waited about 6 hours for them to confirm that it was ok. It was exhausting waiting in the sun. Our taxicab driver was a nice guy. He would go get us water and beverages to drink. I drank a whole bottle of water because I was so dehydrated. When we got to the hotel in Syria, we were really tired. We went in, took showers and went to bed. The next day we woke up at five in the morning and left to go to the airport. We took the Lebanese plane to go to London. All the planes that were supposed to be in Beirut were all in Syria. So we were on our way to London.

When we got to London, friends were waiting in the airport. We planned to stay at their house for 6 days. The first day we had a nice barbeque, all the food was delicious. I loved London a lot. There are a lot of tourists in London. We went to see a lot of touristic places in London. We went to see the Big Ben clock, House of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye and St. Paul’s Cathedral. The London Eye is the biggest ferris wheel in the world. We went on it and saw the whole city. Buckingham Palace was also a nice place to visit. This is where the queen of England lives. We toured London for the six days we were there. On the news, we heard that terrorists were going to hijack more planes leaving form London but thank God, they caught the terrorists. We were very lucky that we weren’t in the airport that day. We were returning to the U.S. the next day. The London airport wasn’t crowded.  I guess the people who were going on vacation didn’t want to take the risk of flying on a plane. We had to leave right away and try to get home as soon as possible. I loved staying with our friends in London. They were very nice people and made us feel like we were at home. The next day we left to the U.S. When we got to Boston, my dad, cousins, and my aunt and her husband were all waiting for us.  It was a special time for all of us given what we had been through.  We all thanked God.

We had finally made it back home. I was really sad that my vacation had ended, but everybody was happy that we had come back home safely. This was an experience of a lifetime.  Most American kids never experience living in a war zone and have no idea what it’s like for the people who do.  I was in a country where war was occurring; people were being killed by bombs, and everyday beautiful sites were being destroyed during my summer vacation. This past summer was a disaster for Lebanon. Many people had planned to go to Lebanon for a beautiful vacation, but it turned out to be a nightmare. My family would like to go to Lebanon again, but only if there is peace. Lebanon is a beautiful country, the only thing it needs is to have is peace. Without peace among the Middle Eastern countries, Lebanon is a very bad place to live.  I hope that the world will help the people of Lebanon rebuild their country and help the people who live there.  I don’t understand why this beautiful country needed to be destroyed.

oto Photo of Jounieh, Lebanon.