Tag Archives: Lebanon

Stories of Lebanese on the Titanic – Part 5: The People of Zgharta & Choueir

For part 1, click here. For part 2, click here. For part 3, click here. For part 4, click here.

Sarkis Moawwad was a 35 year old man from Zgharta, preparing his papers to travel to the United States. While on an excursion to Tripoli, a palm reader told Sarkis he’d die drowning. Believing the superstition, Moawwad almost stopped his travel plans, which involved a ship. His friends, however, convinced him otherwise by reminding him that the ship he was boarding, the RMS Titanic, was supposedly unsinkable. God himself cannot sink this ship, they said.

Aboard the Titanic, and on the night of April 14th when it hit the iceberg, Moawwad raced to the ship’s deck and was faced with a dilemma. One part of him told him that women and children ought to go on the boats first. The other part of him begged him to get on a boat – every shred of him was begging to fight for survival. Moawwad succumb to the latter part and got on one of the rescue boats.

The captain of the Titanic looked at him. Within a few seconds, the captain had held his gun and shot Moawwad, killing him instantly. The palm reader was not right. Sarkis Moawwad didn’t drown. He was shot, leaving behind a family of four.

Sarkis Moawwad

Another man from Zgharta was Tannous Keaawi, a 21 year old married man. Tannous was a fighter. When in 1912, some Ottomans raded his friend’s farm and took over his cattle, it was up to Tannous to get them back. So he took a riffle and, with his blood boiling, raced to where the Ottomans lived and waited for them until the got home. Once they did, he held the riffle to their heads and asked them to give back the cattle. They refused. So he shot them one by one.

After his actions, Tannous couldn’t stay in Lebanon so his friend gave him enough money to secure a trip to New York for him and his family. On their way to the Titanic, his family got held up in Marseille because his daughter had chickenpox. His wife decided to stay behind with their children while he continued.

Once on the Titanic, Tannous also tried to get on a rescue boat, along with Sarkis Moawwad. And he met the same fate as Sarkis, at the hands of the same gun by the same man.

Of the three men from Zgharta that were on board the Titanic, only one survived. His name was Hanna Makhlouf. Hanna also tried to get on a rescue boat with his two other friends. The difference was that he was lucky enough to have found a large enough skirt for him to hide. And hide he did and watched both his friends get shot before the boat was lowered into the water and taken away to sea. He later on went to Waterbury, CT where he settled down.

Mona, the wife of Tannous Keaawi

In another side of Lebanon, in the Metn town of Dhour el Choueir, Adele Kiame was summoned by her father to join him in New York where he had started a silk-work company. In a letter that her father, Najib, sent to Lebanon to ask to send his daughter to America, he asked her to bring with her some Turkish carpets which are much better in Lebanon. He also asked her to get him some fancy tobacco seeing as the kind he was smoking in New York was nowhere near as good.

Adele left her hometown with a woman named Latife Beaaklini who also took her daughters with her, to follow her husband who had opened a pharmacy in the United States.

One of the letters that Najib Kiame sent

Once news of the Titanic sinking reached them, Adele, Latife and her daughters went to deck and got on a rescue boat. However, Adele decided to go back to try to rescue whatever she could of her belongings, including some amount of money she had hidden in socks. She didn’t stop with at the socks. She tried to get some dresses and other belongings with her. The crew refused and threw them all away.

Adele

Meanwhile, Latife took her daughters and put them in waterproof bags that she dangled off the sides of the rescue boats. A man gave way for Latife to get on the boat and he helped her tie her daughters to the side. He then went back to the ship where he drowned. When Adele returned, the boat was full. So Latife started shouting, as the boat was being lowered, for them to stop and let Adele on. She was screaming in Arabic. The crew couldn’t understand and there was nothing they could do – the boat was already full.

Adele, stood stranded on deck: a 16 year old minor who didn’t know the language.

She caught the eye of the person you’d least expect: John Jacob Astor, the ship’s wealthiest man. So he carried Adele and gave her to his bride whom he had secured on one of the recue boats. Astor’s wife then took off her coat and gave it to Adele who was afraid and shivering.

Once they reached New York, Adele’s father hosted the survivors. Latife’s youngest daughter, Eugenia, contracted pneumonia due to the cold that night and died soon after. Latife then gave birth to a boy named David, on January 28th, 1913. She raised her family and died year 1962.

Latife, in the 1940s

Adele, on the other hand, got married in Brooklyn and had two children: Mitchel and Layla. She then fell ill and died, at the age of 26. The year was 1924.

The story of the people from Dhour el Choueir is not this simple. Doubts arose over the years about whether Adele went back to her cabin because she was stingy, as people had said, or because Latife had asked her to. Moreover, some doubt that it was really John Jacob Astor who saved her.

Either way, we can never be sure of some things when it comes to stories that are over a hundred years old. Both women went on to live for years and have families.

The New York Times & Beirut Love Affair – A New Article: Beirut, the Resurgent Haven for Arabs

The picture used by the NY Times

If you felt that the NY Times is writing way too many articles about Beirut lately, you’re not mistaken.

A new article which appeared online yesterday talks about a resurgent Beirut, becoming a haven for the whole region. The point of the article is to show Beirut as a safety zone for the Arabs of the region, escaping the woes of their own country.

Of course, the backdrop of this safety zone is a cosmopolitan city that’s reborn where women strut on yachts in heels and Louis Vitton bags – I’m not kidding, this is how the article starts.

Sure, Beirut is among the safest cities in the Middle East today. But does talking about the safety of Beirut necessitate briefly taking about the fragile political status quo of the country and focusing more on the importance of Zaitunay Bay and Cafe Younes in harboring those seeking shelter?

In a way, I think the article is too superficial, making the city look, from the perspective of Arabs this time, as a place where they can escape the torment of their regimes and the situation of their countries by sunbathing and going shopping and laughing about the situation where they’re form.

Call me critical but I think a Syrian spending her time in Zaitunay Bay and an Egyptian taking a break from the political suspense of her country are not representative of the people in their corresponding countries, most of whom cannot afford to call Beirut a haven. Perhaps if the NY Times had bothered extending its scope from the few rich Syrians enjoying la dolce vita in Beirut, ignoring whatever’s happening in their country, they’d look at the thousands in refugee camps in the North, afraid to go back to their country and not exactly sunbathing on a boardwalk?

I love that Beirut is a safe city. I love that we’ve been in a state of peace for more than 4 years now, with very minor hiccups along the way. But this very narrow journalism and drawing conclusions based on very limited observations isn’t the best way to showcase Beirut.

I guess it’s what people like. Either way, we are sure proud of our little safe haven here.

A Flashmob in Hamra, Beirut To Commemorate The Lebanese Civil War

You know what’s funny? The guy with the iPhone thinking he was filming a fight he’d be sharing with his friends afterwards. I’m sure he didn’t know he’d end up with something even better.

Check it out:

Also the look on that guy’s face in the car… priceless.

This was organized by the NGO CityAct.

IDM Unlimited Nights: Fail!

I had a DSL subscription with IDM for the whole year last year. I had to stop it during December because I moved out of my Achrafieh house and my grandparents didn’t need it.

I had unlimited hours from 11 pm to 7 am that I used extensively and it was great. However, I recently called IDM to install a subscription because the need for internet in the Achrafieh household arose. While discussing the details, I asked if I get unlimited nights and they said yes. So naturally, I subscribed to one of the smaller packages offered because I wouldn’t need a big quota if I can get unlimited quota at night.

5GB per month it was.

I activated the DSL this past Sunday and behold, I don’t get unlimited quota. IDM was closed on Monday so I called on Tuesday and apparently they hadn’t discussed unlimited nights with me. I was making stuff up. And if I had asked them, they would have told me they couldn’t offer it because the “central” didn’t have enough open ports anymore.

So now to get unlimited internet at night, I either have to wait two or three weeks until the governmental decree goes into effect. And if that doesn’t happen, which you know is very likely in Lebanon, I’ll have to cancel my subscription and re-apply again, hoping I’d get a port. It’s a matter of luck apparently.

The saga doesn’t end with me. Twitter user Rabih faced the same thing with IDM while installing DSL at his house in Bsalim. He filed in all the paperwork and went to make sure he got unlimited nights. They said no. So he told them he didn’t want a subscription anymore. They replied that they’d see what they can do.

A week later, IDM contacted Rabih telling him that they have secured a port for him and that he will be getting unlimited nights. However, once his DSL got installed, he didn’t get unlimited quota. The reason? They didn’t activate his port because everyone would be getting unlimited nights in a month.

No, we’re not nagging for the sake of nagging. When an area supposedly has the option to have unlimited night hours, you don’t expect some people to get such a thing and others not to, depending on how lucky they are. Either everyone gets unlimited night traffic in a certain area or no one does.

How much sense does it make that my neighbor in Achrafieh, who lives less than 20 meters away and who shares the same central has unlimited night hours and I don’t? How could they actually tell you: Oh we’ve run out of ports for you. Sorry. You pay the same amount as everyone else in your area except you don’t get to use the internet as much as they do?

Lebanese companies taking their customers lightly and treading on them needs to stop. What’s worse? They actually had the audacity to tell me that I haven’t really paid much so I shouldn’t nag. So dear IDM, if I had paid $1 to get a service you advertised, I expect to get that service. As a company that respects itself, you need to get a grip.

Stories of Lebanese on the Titanic – Part 4: Two Men from Toula & Zahle

For part 1, click here. Part 2, click here. Part 3, click here.

Toula is a small town in the Batroun region which had only one person aboard the Titanic, named Fahim el Zeanny. Seeing as his name is difficult for foreigners to pronounce, it was changed in Cherbourg to Fahim Kini before it changed, yet again, once he got to New York, to Philip el Zeanny.

Philip left Toula at the age of 23, leaving in Marseille his wife whom he married 4 months prior so he can settle down and start his own business in Cincinnati before she follows him. Philip wrote down what he went through on the Titanic.

Philip, 2 years before his death.

On the night the ship hit the iceberg, he was fast asleep. One of the passengers woke him up hastily and told him what was happening. So Philip started panicking, as was everyone around him. He then ran to the deck where, still panicking because of what he had heard moments ago, he got into a rescue boat. The officer, though, forced him off and threatened him with his gun, saying: women only.

Philip then used the chaos around deck to his favor and got into a second rescue boat. That same officer, however, saw him and forced him off again. Moments later, Philip got past that officer and hid under the seating flanks of one of the boats. That boat was lowered into the water. It only had two men who couldn’t row it away from the ship fast enough with more than twenty women on it. So Philip made his presence known and helped them take the boat away from the Titanic.

Then they waited and watched as the ship sank. The shrieks coming from the passengers who were thrown in the water were deafening.  Philip urged them go back but no one agreed. More lives could have been saved. As he looked around his rescue boat, Philip was apalled by one woman who brought her pet dog with her. The dog was big enough for another person to take its place.

Once the Carpathia arrived, the woman said sternly to Philip, whom she thought shouldn’t have been on board with them, to help her carry the dog as she got on the Carpathia. Philip refused, telling her that the souls of people are more important than those of animals.

Philip ended up passing away on 1927, fifteen years later, leaving a family of four children behind.

The descendants of Philip

On the other side of Lebanon, Zahle had the only Lebanese passenger not in third class. Nqoula Nasrallah and his wife, Adele, were both second class passengers. Nqoula left Zahle at the age of 28, to go to San Francisco where his uncle had started a successful movie franchise.

Seeking the fame and fortune that his uncle had already found, Nqoula took his wife and got on the Titanic. On the night the ship sank, Nqoula got his wife on a rescue boat while he jumped into the water and started swimming away, hoping like other swimmers, that the vests they were wearing would keep them afloat until the rescue boats arrived. His hope was out of place.

As Adele’s rescue boat moved away from the ship, she saw her husband swimming away. So she stood up and started shouting with every bit of strength she had for him to come on board. But amid all the chaos of all the people in the water around her, Nqoula never heard her. He kept swimming and swimming until he could swim no more.

On April 24 th, 1912, the MacKay-Bennett found Nqoula’s body which was thought to belong to the millionaire John Jacob Astor. The following description of the body was given:

Nqoula’s mother, Wardeh, was devastated by the untimely passing of her son. So she went out on Zahle’s very cold winters outside and sat, as snow piled up on her, so she can have a taste of what her son went through in the freezing water of the Atlantic. Wardeh’s granddaughter Emily told how her grandmother used to go outside and put her hands in a frozen pond just so she can feel closer to her son.

Adele was pregnant when she was rescued. She gave birth to a baby boy on December 9th, 1912. The boy died soon afterwards. Adele remarried and had a family of four children. She died on January 20th, 1970.

Part 5 will be coming tomorrow.