3 MINUTES WITH...
Seven (7) questions for seven answers
I was at the Salesian School from October 1970 until the summer of 1976, in the American section; in other words from the 2nd grade until the 6th grade. I’ve lived in Lebanon since 1970, except for a six-and-a-half-year spell between 1985 and 1992, when I studied, then worked for a time, in the United States. I returned to Beirut to join a research center, the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, and later moved to the Daily Star in 2003 as opinion editor, though I also write for other publications. I’ve just finished a book on Lebanon, which serves as part eyewitness account of the period 2005-2009, after the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, and part introduction to Lebanon’s political culture. It will be released in the United States by Simon & Schuster on April 13 this year, coincidentally the 35th anniversary of the start of the Lebanese civil war.
What was Beirut like when you were at the Salesian School and what are your most significant memories from that time?
Beirut was a smaller place than today, more pleasant, and I don’t think it’s just nostalgia speaking. It felt more like a Mediterranean city than today, with less concrete around, more greenery, though never enough; also with more room allowing children to be children.
I have many significant memories, not least the kermesse whose photos are on your website. However, if I could focus on two related memories describing my final separation from the school: I remember that in 1975 the last day of school was cancelled because the civil war had started, or maybe things were particularly bad that day. In an instant, I lost contact with almost all my friends (as we all did), most of whom left the country soon thereafter. The disappointment I felt is still with me after all this time. My second memory is that the school reopened in autumn 1975 with only a handful of students. It was sad to be studying in a building now largely empty. In 1976, Father Paoloni was killed, and the school finally closed down. A teacher by the name of Spencer Ingerson kindly offered to finish the school year for three remaining students, in her apartment. So, along with two classmates, Munir Hamad and Doris Christensen, I take some pride in saying we were perhaps the school’s last students. But maybe there were others we didn’t know about … in other apartments.
In what ways have your years at the Salesian School influenced your life in general?
I’m not quite sure, to be honest, but that is not to say that that period was anything but unforgettable for me. At that age, a place like the school is an arcadia, a place of innocence, discovery, adventure, so that I still find myself remembering with more clarity events that happened then, not to mention the names of my comrades, than what I encounter daily.
Are you still in touch with friends met during those years?
Unfortunately not nearly as much as I would have liked. When I discovered your website, it prompted me to email the link to an old friend, Erik Elzerman, whom I hadn’t seen in 34 years and found through Google. I also wanted to share with him two photographs that I am sending you here, in which we’re both present. Last summer, Erik returned to Beirut for a visit with his brother Hans, also a student at the school, and his mother. We picked up where we left off. Over the years I also met or talked to other old classmates, including Munir Hamad, Doris Christensen, Mark Duley, Paul White, Irena Vodopija, and doubtless a few others, but it would be nice to be back in contact with more people. Would we recognize each other? Would we want to? I think yes.
What made you stay in Beirut during and after the war? Any regrets about not moving elsewhere?
I wasn’t really a foreigner in Beirut, as I am Lebanese by nationality (the other half being American). This was and is home. I studied and lived in the United States between 1985 and 1992, but always felt Lebanon was my real home. So, how can I regret not having left home?
Are you planning to remain in Lebanon for the foreseeable future?
Yes.
As a Beirut resident and a journalist how would you describe the city today?
It’s very different than the one with which most Salesian students are familiar. The war devastated Beirut, but in some respects it also froze the city, sometimes in good ways. Much of the charm is, unfortunately, going, as development has led to the demolition of Beirut’s older buildings and neighborhoods. The downtown area has been rebuilt, and I think the project is a success, but elsewhere, many of Beirut’s traditional quarters are being devastated, with only the uglier buildings surviving. We’re in the process of erasing anything that might offer mementos for a collective memory, with high rises turning our once-gentler maritime outpost into a sort of imitation Dubai, where the real is being displaced by the ersatz.
But not to sound too negative: the atmosphere in the city still manages to be special. Beirut continues to surprise, even astonish. There is a spirit to the city that the high rises won’t easily do away with. And professionally, as a journalist, it remains the only place I would want to cover the Middle East from; a rarity in a region where cities, in the image of the regimes that rule over them, can be colorless and suffocating.
Any suggestions for those of us who might eventually come back as tourists?
Come in search of invigorating imperfection, without prejudgment. Lebanon is fascinating as well as fun, but you often have to take it as it is rather than as you wish it to be.
Michael Young
Netmapit,
Everybody had lots of friends at Salesian… im sure they will find their way here or to the facebook site and tell you all about your brother and thems good times someday.
I just drudged up one of my best friends of all times but seems like he doesnt want to be friends anymore… so sometimes its a mixed blessing… Just cant tell whats going on with some people sometimes…. who knows. Of course our lives werent so simple as the times we had in Beirut. He was friends with me from 9th grade off and on till my first years in college in california and who knows whats going on in his head… he allways was a little spaced out lol. Or maybe its just that hes turning 50 and just had his first child… i dont know… but its amazing all the things happening here on the net. I am very happy theres a way for the people who knew each other to reconnect on here. Your brother reminded me of Barry and Michael Napper the other day in chat… i couldnt remember their names. They were almost as close as Simon and Nicky for me and I think Michaels on the right in the class pic… i also think i tickled Michelle in that pic and thats why shes laughing and you can barely see her face lol.. funny its like looking at a google map the more you look at the pics and read the stories the more comes back. Its like its all heen locked away up there in our minds and these little sessions are the key to freeing them.
Thanks to all those who responded to this interview. Because of it I am now in touch with the Whites, and have just come back from a delightful weekend in London where I saw Paul, John, and Dominic. One clarification, however. At the Salesian School I was known by my second name, Dominic, hence the confusion about whom I am (or might be). I apologize for this.
Hi Michael,
I think it’s my younger brother, Pasakorn, just at the edge of your photo on the left, his hand up with a victory sign (it seems). I remember he used to have a good friend called Michael, but I had the impression that this Michael was older than he was and was from the Lebanese section. This Michael used to called my brother Kamikaze because Pasakorn liked to run around with his arms spread out making the sound of a plane on attack.
Pasakorn passed away when he was 34. He tragically got infected by a bacteria in the remote south of Thailand and didn’t receive proper treatment in time. My pictures of him in Beirut are few of the memos I have of him. We had grown distant as we grew up because my older brother and I had to leave home and go to University in the capital.
Pasakorn stayed in the provinces with Mom until the last two years of his life when he had decided that he wanted to be more independent. He was, in a way, a troubled young man and couldn’t make up his mind about what he wanted to do in life. He had big dreams but found it difficult to put in the hard work to achieve them. I think it was partly because he was the youngest and had it easier than his older siblings did. However, as the younger sibling, moving away from Lebanon when we did, he found it harder to adjust to Thailand. It was difficult for him to pick up the Thai language since he was three when we moved to Lebanon and English had become his dominant language over the nine years we spent there. That disability put him behind in Thai schools for many years.
I hadn’t revisited my photos of Pasakorn as a young boy for a long time because it was painful to look at the face of a brother I could have made more effort to try to understand and support as we grew older even if we were apart. He spent some six months living with me in Singapore where I was posted during that time that he decided to become more independent. I was too involved with work and my own life crisis.
Coming across this website, looking at his happy face again (I had to look up old pictures to scan and post…on the Facebook site), I not only regained a fresher memory of my own childhood but also see a brother I loved dearly. I know we had great times together.
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I don’t know if you were the Michael that called Pasakorn ‘Kamikaze’, if you were it’d be nice to hear your memories of him. If you weren’t, but were his classmate and knew him even if you don’t remember him, well, it’s just nice to know someone who did once know him.
Reading your interview here, I’m happy to ‘personally’ know someone like you who could have left Lebanon and never gone back, who is totally convinced that he need not leave a country in its darkest moments. Living and leaving Beirut somehow had probably given me a displaced person’s syndrome. I find it hard to stay in one place for long, even my own country. I wish I had the conviction, strength and courage you have to stay committed to one place. With encouraging examples of people like yourself, I think that one day that conviction will catch up with me and I hope to return and do some good work for my own country which is at this moment of writing starting to fall apart in scary ways.
I checked out Chapter One of your book and would like to read it once I get my iPad and download Kindle on it. My best wishes for the success of the book, your career, and all that’s important.
Netnapit Tasakorn
what grade were you in Paul… We had a Michael too.. forget his last name lived down on Rauche we were great friends… Had a big birthday party that last year 74-75 a lot of kids there all from school most likely 8th grade as we were. Mike loved pepsi and i loved orange crush so we tried to see who could drink more… mike was a mans man and i just couldnt keep up with him… he had an older brother but i still havent located him in the yearbook pics.
At one point when the fighting was going pretty good in 75 i was on the phone with him and i just hung up and the phone rang and it was him and he was freaking out because a bomb had gone off in the building across the street from him.. he said there was a guy on the balcony but laying real still. Turned out he wasnt dead. He was security and someone had bombed a newspaper in that building. Crazy times… Michaels dad never seemed to be around but his mom claimed she was psychic and that on a trip delivering pipes on a truck she was asleep and dreaming and saw the whole thing and that he wrecked and the pipes came through the back window of the cab and would have decapitated him but she warned him and he ducked… she claimed this really happened her in Beirut asleep in that same apartment and him driving a truck in Libya or somewhere. Well of course we were skeptical. Michael had fallen asleep on the floor and there were about 3 or 4 of us still hanging out i was spending the night and she said everyone is psychic. Try this with me… everyone concentraate on Micheal… tell him to wake up… so we did. Suddenly Michael just wakes up stands up and walks to his bedroom and goes to bed… I dont know lol… Could have been some fun trick they like to play but it sure didnt seem like it.
Hi there,
I was at the Salesian School between 1970 (ish) to 1976. (War stopped play).
One of my best friends at the time was Dominic Young – his mother was Lebanese (maiden name Bacos). Used to have a great time with. I tried to keep in contact with from Britain but dropped when I moved to Germany. I did speak to Dom’s Grandmother Emily in California. Also remember great capers with the Slater brothers, then Arthur and Theo.
I am assuming Michael is / was Dominic? Bit lost there. Would be good to hear from some of you. Very sad to hear of the passing of Fr Leahey a great man always impressed by his cricket stories and him playing Baseball short stop with no gloves something he put down to cricket
What was the surname of the Scottish Paul?
Paul White
Michael,
I spotted what I believe to be my brother Paul on the picture you posted and phoned him, he is surprised!
Guess you guys need to swap email address!
Shame this site wasn’t up in October 09, when I visited Beirut for the first time since we left in 1976. And wow what a change, to be expected of course!
I will have a dig around to see what photos I can find etc etc. And I will write more too!
Kind regards
Dominic White