My Father

This story is by Sophia Medawar and was part of our 2024 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

My father looked at me from across our kitchen table and blinked. “When the war started?” he said, repeating the question back to me. “Where was I…” His head cocked slowly to one side as his face fell into a frown. His eyes fixed on something behind me, as if he was watching a world now lost to him reappear over my shoulder. I’ve heard stories from his childhood all my life, but only ever fragments at a time; he didn’t like talking about it, so my siblings, mother, and I simply learned not to ask. After a moment, my father took a deep breath, and slowly he spoke: 

“We were in the West quarter,” his frown deepened, “me and my cousin Abdo. This is where the Palestinians lived, the Muslim area.”

“What were you doing there?” my sister asked meekly from the other side of the table. My father’s trance broke as a mischievous, boyish smirk cracked across his face: “We were there buying parts for my motorcycle.”

My father and his six siblings were raised in the Promised Land. But Lebanon is a country with far more than milk and honey; rolling green hills, and sparkling beaches along the Mediterranean; groves of fruit and olive trees carved into the sides of the mountains; trellises of figs and dates; gardens of oregano and zaa’tar. He learned to swim by following his brothers over the lips of waterfalls, and learned to run by leaping between the rooftops and fire escapes of downtown Beirut. The mountains were their haven, the city their playground, and the proud, strong arms of the cedars protected them. Their wild and carefree life came to an abrupt halt when my father was nineteen. 

La guerre des autres, or “the war of others,” is what they called the civil war in Lebanon. For decades, the various religious sects—Lebanese Maronites, Druze, Palestinian Muslims—were known to coexist quite peacefully beneath the outstretched arms of the cedars; until the shadow of Israel, Iran, and Syria clouded their sky. The Lebanese army fractured. Independent militia groups formed. The beautiful garden of olives, figs, and dates started trying to choke each other out. Unfortunately, my father and Abdo happened to be caught on the wrong side of the city when the bombing began. 

“They were loud,” my father said, like he could still hear them. He made a noise with his mouth resembling the sound of cracking open a can of beer, followed by a piercing whistle as he traced an arc in the air with his finger— it ended with a deep grumble in his throat, while his cupped hands mimed the clouds of an explosion. “We had to get to the east side of the highway.” 

In their car, my father and Abdo whizzed through the narrow streets of the camp while crowds of people ran for cover. Exits started shutting down all around them and independent military checkpoints were quickly being erected. As they turned a corner and came out from the shadow of the buildings, their escape was in view. My father stepped on the gas and revved straight ahead, when the car directly ahead of them suddenly stopped— their vehicle was overtaken by a crew of men dressed in all black, with covered faces and machine guns in their fists. In a matter of seconds, my father’s road home was blocked by a new military checkpoint; as the men yelled for identification, they pulled anyone who was Lebanese from their cars, and killed them on sight. If they were obtained, my father knew there would be no chance of survival—the boys quickly realized they were next. “We knew,” my father recalled, “since the war had started, they were catching anybody who’s Christian, and—” sharply clapping his hands, “—dead.” 

My father slammed on the brakes. The car skidded into the terrorists’ fingertips. An armed guard turned his AK-47 in their direction and began hustling over. “They check your ID, to see if you’re Christian or Muslim—and that’s when I get out of the car.” 

My father did the only thing he could think of to save Abdo and himself: he jumped out of the car while screaming in desperation at the sky, “Alleh, Alleh, Muhemmed, why-nehk!”

He explained: “I yell for Muhammad and Allah in their Muslim accent, so they think I’m one of them. Back home, the Palestinians stretch the end of almost every word. ‘Why-nehk,’ instead of ‘why-nuck,’ like we say in Lebanese… I get back in the car and make U-turn, speeding back into the camp. Then, I took off.” 

My father whipped the car around, racing down the streets of the Muslim quarter. He avoided everything from pedestrians to accidents, to tanks and other checkpoints, until he and Abdo finally found the highway through a different route, promptly making their escape. “Again, the guard thought I’m one of them,” he emphasized. “Otherwise, if we had come to the checkpoint, we would have been slaughtered. Slaughtered.” 

The Hezbollah had gained control over the airport in Beirut. They would close it for months on end to prevent anyone from escaping. There were small windows of opportunity where the airlines were running and if you were lucky enough, you could potentially make it out. 

My father’s oldest brother had already escaped to the States with his wife and children. Now from across the globe, he was working on rescuing his little brothers from their deteriorating homeland. He instructed my father to board a flight to Jordan, where he would be able to rendezvous with their youngest brother, Pierre, and together they could make their way to the States. When the window of opportunity cracked, my father urged his taxi to go “faster, faster”— but he was too late. When he arrived at the airport in Beirut, his flight to Jordan had already taken off. 

Going home was not an option. The Hezbollah could close the airport again within the hour. Nobody knew when/if they’d open it up again. Left with no time to contact his brothers to change plans, my father rushed to book the next flight out of the country—into Syria—where he would have to take a taxi into Jordan, and somehow find his brother Pierre. 

When my father landed in Damascus a few hours later, he learned the flight he missed to Jordan had exploded in mid air. 

“Wait, what?!” My sister and I gasped, our eyes wide in horror. “What happened?!” 

But our father didn’t know. All he knew was that nobody survived. My sister and I looked at each other in shock, and then back at our dad. “You were almost on that flight!” 

“I was almost dead in the ocean” he said. 

On the ground in Syria, my father had to hire a cab to bring him over the border into Jordan. He was loaded into the back of a van with other migrants, packed like sardines. Finally arriving in Ammon, my father and his brother Pierre shared a single motel room for several nights; the “rooms” were separated by only a curtain. 

“How did you find Uncle Pierre?” I interrupted. “In that entire city— you didn’t have cell phones, he must’ve thought you were killed on that flight!” 

My father cocked his head again, staring off into space like before, hoping the memory would resurface. He finally shook his head. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “Ask Uncle Pierre. He’ll remember.” 

Finally, my father and Uncle Pierre were able to board a flight from Jordan to the United States. They wound up with their eldest brother in southern California— surrounded again by rolling green hills, fruit trees, and the ocean; each of the brothers have admitted at different times how much it reminds them of home.

While my father recounted this story, his soft brown eyes slowly filled with water. It wasn’t until he was finished that he allowed himself to blink hard, finally letting the hot tears fall. He wiped his face with his open palms and laughed as he held out one arm to me and my sister: “See? Even after all these many years.” We could see his arm hair standing straight up, his skin covered in goosebumps. Instantly I was reminded why we don’t ask Daddy about the war.

My father says he doesn’t like to remember these stories. But Abdo makes him remember; every few months, they talk on the phone.

“Every time when we talk,” my father says about Abdo, “he say, ‘Philippe, I get goosebumps that we still alive. I don’t know how did you come up with this; speak their language?!’”

Same thing with Uncle Pierre. “Philippe, I can’t believe you’re alive, I can’t believe God made you miss that flight!” 

My father rubbed the remaining moisture from his eyes and looked at me from across our kitchen table. “Did you have more question about home?”