Past and Present History
By: Dr. Joseph Hitti
19 Jan 04
This past summer I took the Boston-New York train with my daughter Sarah on a trip to
Ellis Island, that small outpost in New York City harbor. For all the years that I have
been in the US, I never visited New York City's major attractions. I also wanted Sarah,
who was born in the US, to see New York City, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and
also the huge pit where the World Trade Center towers once stood. To tiny Ellis island,
whose low-lying buildings seem dwarfed by the soaring arms of the Statue of Liberty
nearby, huge transatlantic ships brought millions and millions of immigrants from the
Mediterranean world to the United States at the turn of the 20th century.
Among the many immigrant artifacts, documents and photos, displayed at Ellis Island, there
is a huge mural photograph depicting an extended family from the village of Mashghara in
Lebanon, one testimonial I thought to myself to those early immigrants from Lebanon who
built this country side by side with people from other countries. The Mashghara family had
come to America some time around 1914-1918 and settled in the town of Methuen, north of
Boston, Massachusetts, to work in the textile mills of New England. Visitors to Ellis
Island can even query a computer terminal about their ancestors and family members who may
have entered America through this gate. Though I knew of no one from my immediate family
who had come here – most of them had gone to Latin America – I typed my last
name and waited. To my pleasant surprise, the computer spit out the name of one Joseph
Hitti, immigrant from Mount Lebanon, as a passenger on the manifest of one of the ships
who had made his way through Ellis Island circa 1920. So here I was, confronted in a split
second with the convergence of my present history with that of a man who bore my name and
who, for reasons probably not unlike my own, came to this far and foreign place about a
century ago.
As World War I was afoot in the early 1910s, the Ottoman Turkish government in Istanbul
abrogated the autonomous status (Al-Mutassarifiyyah) of Lebanon that had been in effect
since 1861, and the Turkish army re-occupied Lebanon and imposed martial law and forced
conscription. It confiscated food, animals, and every available resource. It executed by
hanging in downtown Beirut every free patriot – Moslem and Christian alike – who
called for an end to the occupation and the independence of the country. And as if the
Turks were not enough, the locust descended on Lebanon in 1916 and finished off every
tree, garden and field. Growing up in Beirut, I heard stories from those years. Stories of
hungry people walking behind mounted Turkish soldiers to pick up grains to eat from the
droppings of the soldiers’ mules and horses. Stories of cannibalism. Stories of
entire villages that disappeared from existence because everyone in the village packed up
and left for America. One can see the clusters of crumbling stone houses that once made up
those villages still dotting the Lebanese hills to this day. These remnants of once
prosperous and ancient villages stand still from the moment the last family member walked
out the door to never return to the land.
The question in my mind is whether for all these immigrants the reason to leave their
homes is more to escape a particular reality than to reach out for something new. Is it
because he just can't bear the difficult present any longer that one packs and leaves? Or
is it because he wants more out of life, even if the present is painful but bearable? I
suspect the answer lies somewhere in between because to live as an immigrant is to live in
between two worlds, never really settling the dilemma of belonging at once to two worlds.
Immigrants like me always idealize the places they left behind. With the passage of time,
they seem to erase from their memories all the negative images of war and hunger that may
have pushed them to leave in the first place, and instead keep alive the positive images
of beauty and longing for the old country that should have kept them there. I have heard
it so many times from immigrants from all countries, of all ages, and no matter the years
they have spent in this country: They all say they are going back one day, even as they
find a job, marry, buy a house, settle down, and grow old. If you ask them on their
deathbed, they'll tell you: "I am going back".
During the years leading up to and including World War I, what drove the Lebanese people
to leave are pretty much the same conditions that push the young Lebanese people today
into leaving: no jobs, no prospects, no hope in the future, despair, the humiliation of
living under foreign occupation, and yes, hunger and want. When you deprive people of
their basic material and spiritual needs, when they can't vote with their hands, they vote
with their feet. They just pack and leave.
As we all – resident Lebanese and the Diaspora – struggle to balance on one hand
our desire to see people stay in Lebanon to reaffirm its identity and prevent its
annihilation, and on the other hand our recognition that conditions in Lebanon are so poor
that anyone in their right mind should leave, we need to remember that Lebanon has been
there before many times in its history. We need to remember that no evil lasts forever and
that one day our people will be free again. That even if those who leave are a loss to
Lebanon, they also become Lebanon's ambassadors in their new countries, creating strong
and lasting cultural and economic ties that will serve Lebanon for many decades to come.
In this global age of easy communications, leaving is no longer like leaving in the early
1900s when people never went back because the trip by sea was long and dangerous. Leaving
today is only a few hours by plane. In this period of Lebanon's history, more than at any
time before, the past and the present are closer than we ever thought. Same wars, same
troubles, same losses, but times have also changed, and it has become much easier to
return. As I think of that Joseph Hitti who came to America in 1920 and who probably never
went back, I think this Joseph Hitti who came here for the same reasons will certainly go
back.
We all have our war stories. Three stories I want to share with you are from World War I
vintage, only to show that the people of Lebanon have previously been through difficult
times in their history. Yet somehow they always managed to recover and bring Lebanon back
to life again.
On my mother’s side, my great-grandmother Yehudit, like many famished and desperate
Lebanese during WWI, took the train from Beirut to Damascus searching for work and food.
Syria apparently was spared Ottoman brutality and famine during WWI, and unlike Lebanon it
had plenty of food and jobs, probably because it was ruled directly by an Ottoman Turkish
Wali (governor) whereas Lebanon had achieved autonomy since 1861. With her on the train,
Yehudit took two of her sons, and left behind her third son, Youssef, and her two
daughters Adele and Rougina (who is my own grandmother). On the train, Yehudit fell sick
with typhoid fever and woke up in Damascus to find that her two sons were not by her side.
She was never to see them again. She returned mad to Lebanon, and I still remember her
walking down the street of our Beirut neighborhood cursing the Turks, the Syrians, the
Sultan, and sometimes even God himself.
My paternal great-grandmother Mariam also boarded the train to Damascus around the same
time to see her son Khalil who, having been forcibly conscripted into the Turkish Army,
was based in Damascus. On the trip back to Beirut, she either lost her ticket or did not
have one, so the inspector kicked her off the train in Saoufar, and she had to walk from
there all the way to Damour on the coast, where she died of exhaustion on her arrival.
Finally, here are excerpts from a letter written by a Lebanese father to his children who
had left their parents to go to America. The letter is dated 1926, a good eight years
after the end of World War I.
Zahle, August 2, 1926
Our dear children,
… In a previous letter you sent us twenty-five American riyals (dollars). We received
them and we thank you from the bottom of our heart and express our unlimited gratitude. We
ask the Almighty to grant us the opportunity to see you. May He keep you for us, our
support and succor.
… We repeat our pleas to you not to stop writing to us because our thoughts are
always with you.…As to the condition of our country, I think you know it better than
we do thanks to the free newspapers of your country. Here it is a condition of agony and
near death, whether from the standpoint of jobs or the outrageous high cost of living.
People cry everywhere you go, and men can barely feed their families, especially those of
modest means and the poor such as us. Emigration continues such that between now and the
middle of winter there won’t be anybody left in Zahle because of hunger and lack of
work…