Saturday Aug 2nd, 2008

This will most likely be my last blog entry for all of you. I hope this has been something enjoyable and informative to read. I really enjoyed using this blog as a means to journal my time here in the Middle East. It has been quite the learning experience for me, and I will definitely take something home with me.

This past weekend I made the long-anticipated trip to Lebanon in search for some trace of ancestry there in addition to simply enjoying myself on my last weekend in the M.E. I was accompanied by one of my roommates, Tom, and a Syrian friend of his, Issa, whom he had met in a previous time in the M.E. In order to make the most of this trip I decided to skip a day of school to lengthen the amount of time we had there, meaning we left on Wednesday night. The Lebanese border was crossed with little hassle and off we were to Beirut to spend our first night.

We arrive into Beirut and I immediately feel the intense humidity from the Mediterranean, something I had not experienced in the Middle East until now. Damascus enjoys an extremely dry heat in the summer season (depending on whether you prefer dry or humid weather). We find a hotel not too far from Beirut’s port and a street famous for its nightlife. Aside from my companions, this was my first experience with dining in Beirut, and I was in search for a restaurant which serves Kibbeh Nayeh, an appetizer of raw lamb, bulgar wheat, onion, olive oil, and many spices and Lebanon’s national dish. Sadly, I was not able to find one place and wouldn’t find one throughout the entire trip. I have strong doubts that this is really Lebanon’s national dish when you can’t even find one place that sells it, although I was only there for four days and wasn’t able to see what the families cook in their homes. Nonetheless we picked a very traditional restaurant at which we were able to listen to a Arabic musical duo, one playing the Arabic stringed-instrument, the oud, and the other playing a Arabic drum. It was just as enjoyable to see the whole restaurant, made up of an almost entirely local clientele, dancing, clapping, singing, and doing all they could to enjoy themselves on this Wednesday night as it was to eat the food and see the night’s entertainment.

The next day we took an afternoon bus headed for Tripoli and got off where the road splits off towards north-central and north-eastern Lebanon. Our destination was in a mountainous region called “The Qadisha Valley.” It is in this region where my dad’s side came from in a small village called Tourza. We got a hotel in one of the bigger villages, Bicharré, which was home to the famous Lebanese writer Jibran Khalil-Jibran. After dropping our bags off at the hotel, we took a taxi to Tourza. It was so fortunate to have Issa around to translate, because little did I know how difficult it would be to communicate the long history of my dad’s family and actually obtain some results. After asking a store clerk in a Tourza shop, we were informed that my family name existed in Tourza but originally came from a village a little down the mountain called Nahr. Since taxi fares were quite expensive and rare to find, we walked by foot. When we reached this next village we were told by some of the locals that the “Neme” family actually was originally from another village called Sereel up on a mountain across the valley. Like before, we were forced to walk up hill for quite a long time in order to reach this village. Once we arrived, we found a young man whom we asked the now infamous question, “Is there a ‘house of Neme’ here?” and “Can you show us where it is?” This man actually replied, “I am from that family.” We later found out that our original family name “Majelli” contained many “sub” families, one of which was “Neme.” However he brought us and introduced us to a family by the name “Majelli.” We spent the remainder of the evening with this family discussing my quest to find remaining Lebanese relatives, coupled with their generous hospitality, typical of Arab families. At the end of the conversation the father of the family, now fairly elderly, mentioned to us that there was another Majelli family in another village called Aito not too far from there.

That night I expressed to Issa that I didn’t think it was necessary to make another trip to yet another village since, I figured we would arrive at the same conclusion: no one remembers my great-grandfather Tannus. I was not too surprised at this result, since it had been in the early 1900s when my great-grandparents left from Lebanon in search for work. So I had resolved within myself that this search for my roots would not exactly have the success I had hoped for. Nevertheless, Issa lectured me over dinner that night about how sad it would be for us to give up at this point, after all we had been through that day. After all, we now had another “lead.”

The next morning we headed off to Aito and met this family. Even though the conversation came to the same conclusion, it was a very nice to meet another hospitable Lebanese family from which I learned a lot.

On the way back home we needed to catch a bus from Tourza, so we took the opportunity to talk to another family from there. This conversation had something a little more promising. The man we talked to had heard the name “Tannus Majelli” and told us that he was also known by his full name “Abdullah Tannus Majelli.” I didn’t think this was my great-grandfather’s name, but this gives me something to investigate when I return home. All in all, this experience gave me feeling of accomplishment even though the result wasn’t exactly how I anticipated. I feel as though I’ve accomplished one of my life goals in this trip.

I know this has been long, but I wanted to share something that was very special to me in much detail. I hope to see all of you very soon. Please keep in touch and let me know how you all are.

In Christ,
Jonathon “Majelli” Neme