Â§hria's Spot

But seriously folks. War is a really bad thing.

Just ask my friend Oussama.

Oussama Makari was born on Halloween in Beirut, Lebanon. He grew up in the late 70s on the Green Line in Beirut. He fell in love with a girl named Mona, strangely enough the very girl his family had decided he would one day marry. He did well in school and was good brother to his sisters, grandson to his grandmother (who raised him).

As was the custom, at the age of 16 Oussama got his first machine gun and joined a ‘party’ in his neighborhood. As was Oussama’s custom, he couldn’t do what everyone else was doing and join the hard-line groups that were killing a lot of people. He joined the Mirabitounen. They mostly ran guns and such through the Green Line between the Christians and Islamic groups. They didn't fire a lot of rockets and Oussama said he usually managed to get through the night without having to fire his gun.

For a teenaged boy in Beirut, Oussama had a ‘normal life’.

He told me about it during the many nights I spent talking with him in his apartment on Pim Street. Neither of us could ever sleep during a full moon, and he couldn’t sleep in a bed between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. Sometimes we would sit on the floor beside the bed, on the side away from the window, where he was most at ease.

“No one in Beirut sleeps on a bed at this time,” he said. “That’s when the rockets come and, if you’re smart, you stay over here so the broken glass hits the mattress instead of you.”

He told me about bad mornings when he would have to skirt the rubble of freshly blasted buildings and bodies of the fallen on his way to school. He told me how, every time you say goodbye to your friends in Beirut, you know there is a good possibility one of them will be a body you step around on your way to school the next morning. He told me that it changes the way you feel about life, about relationships and what’s really important. He told me and he showed me and then he would say, 'Sleep Hajique, sleep' as he finally drifted off for a few hours sleep before school.

Throughout the 20 year civil war, people in Beirut fell in love, got married and had children, much like they do here. They pinned their hopes for the future on their children as we do and they believed in the future and a better life for those children. They believed desperately, fervently and intensely. They even kept on believing and striving when they cradled the dead bodies of some of those children to their breasts after a blast came home.

Suicide was unheard of in Beirut, said Oussama. He told me that when people couldn’t handle it anymore they got stupid and got killed. Anyone that out of their head just didn’t live long enough to kill him/herself.

So, when the Mirabitounen lost their territory and its members were being hunted down and executed, Oussama’s uncle with the big moustache pulled some strings. He got Oussama into a program that took him out of Lebanon and into Sault College to be trained as a refrigeration technician. To the uncle it was like putting Oussama in the bank for later, when things got better.

Now Oussama is a project manager for a major tool and die manufacturer in southern Ontario. He sends most of his money home to his family so they can rebuild, now that there is so much less war. He recently visited Beirut and said he doesn’t even recognize it at all. He said it’s being rebuilt with the most futuristic and beautiful things and that there is newness, hope and joy everywhere.

So, maybe Oussama’s uncle with the big moustache was pretty smart after all. He’s still in Beirut with his refrigeration business flourishing and his family growing.

Oussama, on the other hand, was nearly killed when he returned to Lebanon in 1987 to try to get Mona out. They wanted to come to Canada and begin a family but he couldn’t get her out. She died and he has devoted his life to working and sending money home for the rebuilding efforts.

Maybe, taking the man from the land has taken too much of the land from the man. Oussama’s uncle with the big moustache lived through the pain and is fully partaking of the hope and joy from seeing things get better. Oussama is still very much there on the floor beside his bed and isn’t growing healthier with the land he left behind.

I suppose the moral of this story is that things can get better and we must remember to give ourselves permission to enjoy what others have fought so hard to protect for us. They weren’t just fighting for our freedom, they were fighting for our joy of life and we must honour our veterans’ sacrifices by appreciating and enjoying what’s really important… family, friends and other relationships.