THIS IS HOME

I keep thinking about the small porcelain plaque packed safely in a chest in our house on Jones Road.  It's an Irish dollar-store classic I must've bought at a souvenir shop in Galway years ago.  But it's special to me.  I didn't bring it to Beirut because I didn't want it to get broken; it holds a thousand memories of Gramma and her Irish home.

But maybe I should've brought it.  Porecelain can always be glued.

Under a decal of a blurry Irish cottage it says "Home Is Where the Heart Is."

I just returned from a month in the U.S. to finish some long and tedious dental work.  (Can't scare little kids anymore by taking out my front tooth.)  I spent most of that time in the comfort and quietness  on Jones Road, sleeping in a familiar bed, having my boys drop in, listening to the owls at night.  It didn't matter that the house was nearly empty, that there were no familiar touches to speak of--unless you consider the telephone on the kitchen counter.  I felt soooo at home. 

But I also felt at home on Carlinda Avenue with Gwennie, in the coolness of her basement guest room, hearing the click of Bailey's nails on the floor upstairs and the airport traffic rumbling in the clouds above that.  It's where I spent precious time with Gramma.  It's where I enjoy the company of Gwennie, of family.  It's still home for many memories.  

For the sheer fun of it, I also spent a weekend with Erina and Ehren in their "hobbit hole" in D.C. sleeping on an air mattress in the corner.   It was cozy.  It was filled with touches of Erina's "home" making.  It's their place, but it's so comfortable for me too.  So easy.  Just like home.

How natural, then, for me to sigh with relief a few days ago as I slid my suitcases across the gray marble of our home here in Beirut, "I'm so glad to be home."

This is home.  With each return it becomes more so as we unpack the extra duffel bag of TJMaxx window sheers, Krusteaz waffle mix, Curel lotion, Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter, and Ziploc quart bags.  This is where we bring things from "home" to make home.  But more than that, this is where our hearts rest at the end of a day.  It's not fancy.  But like Erina, I have enjoyed "touching" it with a few of my special treasures, my taste.  Each week or so I add something new, something to make it more "home."

Don't you even THINK of stepping in the mud before
entering. It doesn't come off.  Easily.

We've added the touch of a small plastic patio table, 
two plastic chairs...mainstays, all-occasion furnishings, 
in this region.

By the end of summer the geraniums are lush, hanging
low and full from the windowsills.

Stay the night.  The couch flattens as a bed, the two
chairs flatten and connect as another sleep unit. The
morning sun through the patio doors will wake you up.

A special feature of our new home...a dining room
table that doesn't sway and that doubles as a cluttered
study when company isn't expected.

The benefit of built-in cupboards that cover
one wall:  All you need is a bed.

If not a dream kitchen, the four burners and miniature
oven can still make fixins' for 25.

We are unusually blessed here, living in a little villa of our own--a luxury by any Lebanese standard.  Very, very few in all of Beirut live in a single-family dwelling.  A house.  Fewer still enjoy trees on all four sides, and even fewer have their own clear driveway; it doesn't matter that we don't have a car to park in it!  Considering the congestion surrounding us, we live in the luxury of open, unheard-of space, within the reach of bird songs and wind and rustling trees.  The city sounds that still envelop us--buses and trash trucks, cranes and sirens, fireworks and gunfire, amplified prayers and neighbor's sound systems--don't detract from our blessing. They simply remind us of the world around us and the purpose we're here.

With so much given to us, we have so much to share.   We are at home; we are blessed with a place of peace.  And for our world here, peace is a precious commodity.   Our home is open.

IT WAS A SUMMER

For most of you, summer is long gone.  But here in Beirut the new school year is just beginning.  We've gotten our first rain of fall and I turned in the last assignment for my summer classes on Thursday night.

It was a summer.

The last blog I wrote was just a few days before summer intensives began.  That’s when I fell off the comfortable ledge of leisurely writing.  I can’t remember thinking deeply about any ambitions or goals for myself when we moved to Lebanon, but I did tell Larry some time late spring that I had decided—as I was speaking—that I would begin the M.A. in Islamic Studies in the summer.

I had no idea what I was saying.

But when you’re only permitted to work four hours a day.  When there’s no chauffeuring responsibilities because there’s no car and no kids.  When there’s not much to cook in a girls’ dorm room and certainly only a few dustballs to pick up occasionally.  When the days roll lazily from one gorgeous evening to the next. (The air quality may lack a lot for clean lungs, but sure makes striking sunsets.)  Well...

Sundown over Beirut, the docks, and the sea.  Photo by Renata

When I'm looking for something engaging, enriching--that’s when the prospect of some academic adrenalin looks like fun!

So I tackled what I never even considered a few months ago.  And I have learned so much.  

I feel enriched.  I'm inspired.  It’s an unusual experience to immerse yourself in something you never even thought about before.  A new and intriguing world.  It was an eight week cultural journey, a reaffirming spiritual experience, that I shared with 15 others from seven different  countries.  I was the only American, twice the age of most of the class and the only one who didn't already know when Muhammad was born.    

It was intense.   It was engaging.  

The experience wasn’t wasted on Larry either.   The other 30 students involved in summer school—most of them working on their B.A. in theology or M.A. in Islamic Studies—took comfort in the fact that the dean had a personal perspective of their stress!   While Larry was jumping close-range hurdles himself, preparing for classes he’d never taught before, I was catching my breath between book critiques, exams and research reports.   Only once did I throw my books across the room and declare I was going to quit the program.   

Our last Sabbath together before everyone returned to their countries, I made dinner for them and remembered.  Seven professors,  a couple thousand pages of reading and nearly 200 pages of writing later, I realized what a journey I'd been on with four South Sudanese pastors, a TV producer from Korea, an Egyptian office manager, an Iraqi translator, an Armenian Bible teacher and a Lebanese pastor.  We had weathered theology of mission, Islamic history and thought, comparative studies of Islam and Adventist Christianity, approaches to the Muslim mind.  Not only did I gain a tremendous respect for a whole different thought-world, but I realized I had learned as much from my classmates as I had from the professors or the books or the movies.  

Speaking of movies.  The professor charged with providing us with a comprehensive and non-biased history of Islam assigned us a nightly full-length movie.  Most of them were documentaries.  Nearly all of them were created in the wake of 9/11.  Ten or eleven years later...

...the scripts sound dated.

As I've critiqued the message of those early post-9/11 productions, I have been struck with how fast and how thoroughly our world has changed.  Islam has left a footprint of one shape when it is in minority, a contrasting footprint where it comprises a majority, and a thousand different prints wherever it settles.   Islam is not a cohesive whole, but the Islamic world and its claims to our attention are constant and forceful.  

There is so much to learn and so much to understand.  After only 18 hours of class credits, I can't claim to know a whole lot.  But I'm intrigued to wrestle with the tremendous paradoxes I've met and the challenge to my thought, the contrast to my belief system.   In even these early steps, I feel great patience towards those who believe differently than I do.  But I am strengthened by the balance and beauty of what I believe.  I  understand better why there is so much chaos in spiritual things, but my faith is clearer than ever.  I know why I came to live in Beirut.

A view of Beirut and north to Jounieh...washed by the evening sun...on a clear day. Photo by Renata.

HOME SWEET HOME

I'm learning that home is a relative thing.  It can stretch across the world.  It can collapse into a dorm room.  It can settle in among other peoples' belongings.  It can be built from 8 suitcases.  And it can be alive and hopeful and inviting right inside your imagination.

If you can imagine as vividly as I've learned to, you're invited to go on a tour of my new home with me.  Ignore the rocky yard, the ladders, the piles of dirt and dried cement.  This place in Beirut is special.  In many ways.   And I've been living in it in my imagination ever since last November.  

I first saw "the little villa" on our pilot visit to Beirut.  I was terribly sick with the flu, but Leif (our MEU president) wanted me to see the home they were preparing for the Dean of...whatever.  I shuffled out of the dorm for Leif to drive us further up the hillside to a little tile-roof house that was being re-created from a small, abandoned bungalow.   Standing inside the ancient gloomy cinderblock, I remember looking out a jagged window hole and surveying the ranks of apartment buildings that shared the view of Beirut.  In my imagination I saw so much potential. "I like it," I told Leif  I was sure of it.   I cried and went back to bed.

Of course, he could've known right then that the decision was made.  The Lichtenwalters had begun their Journey to Beyrouth.

But in the days and months since then, what is more touching to me even than the simplicity and character of what we've come to call "our little villa," is the assurance it gives me of why we're here.

* * *

It was a steaming Sabbath morning 27 years ago this month, maybe even this week.  While much of those chaotic mothering years are lost in my memory, the details of that day are vivid.  Larry had gotten a ride to first service at Village and I was dragging myself through a sticky breakfast with Ehren, 2, who was spreading Cheerios, bananas and milk around the high chair  tray.  Erich, 4, was sitting across the colonial-style dining room table gleefully agitating for whatever attention he could draw out from us.   We had been pastoring Village for a year.  We still were looking for permanent housing.

We were doing the best we could in a "borrowed" house while we searched and prayed for somewhere to live.  I knew I should be thankful; the owners had gone on vacation for three weeks and had given us their key.   But I didn't know that we'd be housesitting two more homes over the summer, dragging our suitcases and toys and stroller and highchair along with us.  Everything else we owned was stacked into one room of the Bender's, who'd so graciously rented to us for a year while they traveled the States in a trailer.  

That Sabbath morning I didn't know what was ahead for us.  All I knew was that it had been a rough week behind us.  Larry had spent hours poring over 17 grievances that had gathered during our first year at Village, presented to him by the head elder; how could we help but wonder if Berrien Springs might be a short-lived ministry.   But through a few quick and unusual developments, Larry had also shaken hands with a contractor to finish a partially built home on Jones Road that we wanted to buy--with no willing bank, no loan in hand.   Seeing how God had seemed to be working, we decided that he would announce in church that morning that we'd found a home and were putting down roots in Berrien.  If that wasn't enough, he was also planning to announce publicly that our family was increasing.  GASP.  "They can hardly manage the two active boys they have..."  

If it was unnerving to be so open with so much when I felt so unsettled, we'd already learned that personal information was a commodity with some in Berrien Springs.  If we shared early and publicly, the market value of the gossip dropped drastically.  

But I'm sure you won't blame me for saying--more in a silent cry than a prayer--"Lord, it's really hard to go to church today.  This is not what I expected.  All I asked for when we moved  here was for You to give  my little family a home."  And there I sat stifling in someone else's  house, reeling with morning sickness and the thought of a bigger family than I ever dreamed (see below**),  and  wondering if we had any good reason to dream of a gorgeous home on a prime piece of property in Berrien Springs.

Many times since then I've come to recognize a very personal, very real encounter with God that has given me immeasurable assurance and focus.  But that morning was a first.  My own thoughts stopped; my mind went silent.  As clear as if I heard an audible voice, God expressed Himself in my thinking.  In first person.  He told me, "I have confirmed your calling."  

That was all.  No discussion.  No explanation.   God doesn't directly talk a great deal to any of us, but He knows just what to say, when to say it, so that it expresses more than can be put into words.  Enough was packed into those words to assure us for 26 more years whenever we walked up that driveway after a quiet midnight walk, or came home after a long trip, or felt the storms of church life challenging our calling.  One doesn't turn from His calling on a whim.  One only listens for His next calling...

The thousand-piece puzzle that had been jumbled in my tired mind suddenly poured out of the box and assembled itself: The move to Berrien, the unfinished house on Jones, unknowns of ministry, the 17 grievances, the baby coming.  A place for my family.  God had all the pieces and He knew how they fit.  I didn't see the full picture, but I saw Him putting it all together.  

Yes, I'd waited a year. Yes, I was suspended in transitions of all kinds.  Yes, I would eventually live in five "homes" before I'd be able to walk into 11166 Jones Road and call it mine.  And, no, I had absolutely no more inkling of what was ahead than I did what I sat down to breakfast.   But I knew God knew.  And I knew it was all in His hands.  What I saw was not a heap of broken puzzle pieces, but a picture of His care.

So.  How could that possibly be related to "the little villa" in Beirut, Lebanon, 27 years later?

Unlike back then,  before we even decided to come I saw in my imagination a place I could very easily call home.   I heard the confirmation that would carry us through a decision, an enormous change, and a new faith-investment.   But just like on that hot Sabbath morning, I don't have the details of my life.  I don't know when I will have a home.  Or how long I will call it home.  Or what experiences it will hold.  Or how I will grow.  

But I KNOW, after shuffling through it last  November, that God gave me the privilege of imagining myself "at home."  And that is enough right now to move me along into His will!

He has confirmed our calling, and I'm at peace.

Unlike other staff homes lined up along
the rise of Sabtieh Hill, the villa is backed
 up against the hillside.

Standing in the private parking area you look towards the rise of
Sabtieh Hill on the left and a neighboring ridge on the right.

Welcome! This picture was taken before a beautiful,
deep brown front door was hung over the front patio.

Coming in the front door, you see the kitchen on the left,
the sliding glass door leading to a tiled side patio and
the dining area between--which is holding kitchen cabinets.

Turning around to face the front of the house, you look out the living 
room windows that overlook a hillside of apartments and Beirut below.

The kitchen from the dining room!  On our request, another five feet
of counter and cupboards have been hung on the opposite wall.
The laundry room...and the back door are beyond.

A miniature but well-placed laundry room gives
access to the clothesline in the backyard.

The back door looks into the stone wall which circles
around behind the house and holds up the side 
of Sabtieh Hill!

An unusual feature of the little villa:  Three toilets for approximately
1,000 sq. feet.  This half bath now features a very small sink 
that allows the door to close.

The smallest bedroom--likely to be furnished
with an ironing board and exercise mat.

The main household bath features an opportunity to relieve oneself,
 brush teeth and wash feet in the shower simultaneously. 

The largest and brightest bedroom offers room
for guests. Bring your own bed. 

A picture  of the THIRD toilet.  After losing two feet 
to the bathroom, the bedroom room still fits a 
queen-size bed and a path to the door.  

** It's a sign of how incomprehensible motherhood was to me and of God's clever patience that He would send me two more sons and many more children in my life before I realized the most important thing I could ever do in life is to be...a mother.  A subject for another long, long blog.

A BEAUTIFUL HOSPITALITY

Tomorrow Larry and I will pack up our summer clothes and a few bags of toiletries to return to a room in the girls' dorm for a few more weeks.  Our little villa is still under construction and our absent hosts, who have blessed us with a comfortable home for two months, will be returning from their annual leave in two days.

I don't mind at all. 

We arrived with 8 suitcases and two carry-ons two months ago. That represented the things  we considered necessary and non-replaceable.  Our pilot visit in November tipped us off to a few things we might want to bring:  My favorite vegetable peeler.  A generous supply of volumizing shampoo and mousse for fine hair.   Twenty bars of Ivory soap.   My Cutco knife set.  Two 1/8 size violins.  Two!  Their value is still under question, as I've comfortably transitioned into a far different livelihood.  But there they sit taking up good space, yet to prove their worth!

But with the possibility of being placed in an empty apartment to wait, we've also acquired a room full of Lucky Home purchases.  Iron and ironing board.  Drying rack and clothes hampers.  Hangars and trash cans.  Seasonings.  Dishes and glasses and kettles and hotpads and...

Never heard of Lucky Home?  Walmart has just met some stiff competition.  But since WallyMart probably will never get within a few thousand miles of here...

Lucky Home is a hard-to-beat housewares store packed in under one of the nearby apartment complexes--the Dollar Store of everything kitchen/cooking/eating/serving.  It could boast of the best prices and the thickest congestion of  household products in the neighborhood if it did any advertising. But evidently it doesn't need to.  All of Sabtieh Hill--and beyond--know about Lucky Home.  And that's enough to keep a contingent of staff busy finding places for customers to park.   Most retailers have a fellows on the street to "handle" customer parking, as open parking lots are absolutely rare among the never-ending apartment complexes.  And only the western-style malls in the area have parking garages.   A slight hesitation of a passing car will tip of the parking staff of a potential customer.  Without hesitation he will offer to take your keys and double park you anywhere nearby that will allow at least a single lane to cut between apartment buildings.  If you're willing.  If you look  frightened he'll just cut his hand through the air in disbelief,  "Not worry.  I work here.  Why I take your car?"  If you're independent-minded like one friend I was with, you double park yourself and pull a large cardboard out from under the seat with your cellphone number scribbled on it and perch it on the dashboard.

Lucky Home, like many of the retailers in town, is staffed by all men--at the cashiers, on the floor, in the stockroom, on the street, everywhere.    If you indicate you're equipping a household, you get a personal assistant who will follow you around explaining, suggesting, pricing, and carrying your goods.  And he knows his housework.  Which brooms pick up dirt the best.   Which kettles will burn your food.  The most efficient tea kettle.  Which toilet cleaners will match your bathroom.  At first I thought he was just throwing out random suggestions, but evidently he listened to know my colors, style preferences, price range, taste....and probably even figured out my personality to.

All that to say...we bought Lucky Home out last week.   Now, with a dorm room instead of an apartment, we have to store all of it while we wait for our little villa.  So instead of eight suitcases, we have a room filled with unwieldy, unpackable housewares.  We had to replace all the trivia we sold at our yard sale a few months ago!   Luckily (for Lucky  Home) we spent less here replacing everything  then it would've cost to ship. 

So I don't mind at all.  

When people inquire if I'm impatient to get settled, I just tell them that since I spent 27 years in one place I can move several more times in the next few months and still hold a good average!   These two months have been an unusually pleasant, restful blessing.  We accepted the McKenzie's offer readily and we've enjoyed every bit of their beautiful hospitality.

That's because, in addition to a panoramic view of the Mediterranean and breezes that blow above much of the city pollution, we've enjoyed a beautiful garden setting.  Evidently the staff family who lived here when the house was first remodeled after the war were avid gardeners.  The pictures below capture only some of their investment and don't include the flaming bougainvillea or apricot blossoms that were in bloom when we first moved in.  Or a thousand snow-white droplets that covered the lawn in early spring.  The pictures were taken before the  gardenia bushes out front gave way to high-class aroma-therapy for anyone sitting on the front porch.  The pictures also don't show the  late-blooming bougainvillea that will soon cover much of the front of the house. Or the small daisies that will be scattered across the hillside behind us.  There's still a show before a dusty, parched summer sets in.

Waiting to look like home.

As I look at all that someone invested years ago--choosing the colors, planning the blooming times, placing each artistically along terraces and walks, and watering faithfully through Lebanon summers--fully aware others would get to enjoy it all--I know I've received a "beautiful hospitality." Because a flower stands for so much that is....home.

Is that why I already have 20 geranium plants waiting to live in window boxes at my new little villa?

Whether I know the name of the flower
or not, I've enjoyed several enormous
 bushes of solid pink, red, and wine.

Could this possibly be lavendar? 
A handful of crushed leaves seem credible to me!

Intense oranges, yellows and pinks edge 
walls and walks.

It's a larger honeysuckle blossom than on
Jones Road--aroma therapy that is strong
enough to cover the exhaust of Beirut traffic
that can reach up Sabtieh Hill on a smoggy day.

A rose is a rose is a rose.  And they're everywhere...

...but mini-roses catch my attention.

Iris enjoy Beirut as well as Berrien,
and remind me of home...
the best kind of hospitality!

WILD AND WEEDY

If a slower pace of life doesn't turn me into a green thumb, it will at least make the most of my free time.

IN all my leisure, the weeds of Middle East University have caught my attention.  It's not that I need time to notice a weed; I've spent years harboring the obsessive-compulsive behavior  of never entering  the Village Adventist Church in Berrien Springs without at least one handful of weeds.  Even on a mid-summer Sabbath morning.  It was an act of service.

Middle East University has unwittingly hired on the same service and given me a great deal of  fulfillment.

When I'm on my early morning walk and think no one's looking, I dive for the thickest, most gnarled thistle mocking me from under a bush or wall, hiding by a fence, or standing crassly in the middle of the campus lawn.   Facts are, the university maintains some naturally lovely grounds that are the envy of the neighborhood--and that have been graciously offered for their enjoyment.  Sabtieh Hill residents are free to use the parking lot for laps, the tennis and basketball courts, the soccer field or children's playground.  And the grounds are well kept.   

A stand of wild beauty breaks 
the boredom a field of dry grass

So whatever I do is only incidental and for my own pleasure, including helping out the gentleman that's hired to keep the grounds free of empty water bottles, candy bar wrappers and the classic tissues that are used here in place of napkins, paper towels, hand towels and handkerchiefs.  The local folk I meet in the process seem genuinely appreciative, especially when I tell them this is what I did on our dirt road in Michigan on Sunday mornings after the beer parties in the woods.  I like to own my own quirks.

But because I have pretty much collected at least a full season of trash from a few of the unseen corners of the campus and filled a few dozen trash bags, I'm now left focusing on the weeds.  It's a conflicting option, though.

Lebanon's best weeds produce beautiful flowers.  They're not the kind you want to pull.  So one day I took a camera on my morning walk instead of a trash bag.  We're at the end of spring here and the warm days have coaxed up miniature beauty in the most unsuspecting places.  I suspect a few are leftovers of someone's long-ago garden gone wild.    

An overgrown ditch can be a small garden.  A drain pipe can spill out a trail of miniature blue jewels.  A wild vine might weave itself through a tree and add its rich, orange flowers among its branches.  And the rocky site around the little villa where I'm waiting to live is cluttered with splinters of building tiles--and delicate, yellow wild flowers.  Even the vine eeking an existence out of the dirt in a rain gutter offers miniature blue flowers.  I'm pretty sure they're cousins to Forget-Me-Nots.

A whole bouquet thrives among the
construction debris of our little villa

Unruly but dainty color trims a garden wall

These glorious spring weeds may not last the blistering, dusty summer.  But the statement is enough:  A weed can be beautiful.  Even though some of them are nearly microscopic, often hidden and temporary, they still add to my climb up through the pines to our temporary home, or my walk down to work, or my early morning jaunt around the campus.

They remind me to be careful of the value I place on weeds...and people.  

The unruliness I detect in someone's life may be the very opposite of the beauty God is nurturing.  The dysfunction that I might want to straighten out may really be an essential step in the growing process.   I don't want to uproot what God is doing.  If I pull it out, no one will ever see the bloom.  Everyone will miss His handiwork.

But as far as picking up trash and pulling weeds, I think I'll still stuff my jeans pocket with empty plastic grocery bags when I head out for my morning walk.  But I'll leave the people-work completely up to God.  

A garden of hundreds like this bloom
 along the stairs down to the campus

I can let these weeds be--at least 
until summer.

Too bright to hide

A poignant reminder of a generation
who had to leave their flowers
to the war...untamed and uncared for.
But beauty still grows inspite of it all.

P S   Evidently my trashy past-time is not real secret; someone just gifted me with a package of disposable gloves.  

LOSE YOUR HAT IN LEBANON

Evidently we were the first tourists of the morning when our driver braked and swerved into a few strategically placed parking spots along the mountain road.   Someone pointed out a sign that advertised the most original castle in the world.  The driver explained that each stone in the small castle had been designed and hand-carved by the same artist, a stone mason of a very special sort.  He had been at it 60 years; it deserved a few minutes of our time.  Real quick.  If we had been maneuvering up the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia I would've known the place was a well-contrived tourist trap.

A castle's record

But if tourists had any reason to pay attention, this nameless artist deserved the benefits of a livelihood to accompany his humble journey.  Every stone was a visual statement.  A study.   Some of them recorded personal experiences.  Others commemorated political events.  Some were a social statement.   Others a commentary on life.  Some had the likes of a royal coat of arms.  Others looked like cartoons.  And each one came out of the chisel of one man's life.

Even before I stepped into the shadowy wax museum that the castle housed, I admired this man for his transparency and emotional honesty in a world full of pretense and effects.  His willingness to be open gave him a certain strength:  Even the front door was his statement to any who had ever dealt him a tough blow.  The cruel schoolmaster, the taunting classmates, the old girlfriend would have to bow very, very low to enter the four foot door into his life!  

Lebanon's pride:
Taking the Phoenician alphabet to the world

It seems the artist, a sensitive soul, had found school difficult.  The structure of the classroom had been hard.  He was often the brunt of the teacher's wrath and his classmates' bad humor.  School told him he was nothing and would amount to nobody.   Then, as a young man, he fell in love.  The beautiful young thing left him heartbroken because it was known he would go nowhere in life.  He could not provide.  

Everything hurt.  Life was a failure.

And so, young and determined, with finally a loyal woman alongside him who must've invested every bit as much as he did, he began a lifelong project of proving that he would make something of his life:  If nothing else, he would create a three-dimensional record of how everyday life had shaped him--a commentary on one's choice to be a victim or builder, to bemoan one's life or create something from it.   The results?   An engaging, honest autobiography of a wounded but emotionally resilient and creative soul.

It's also the only engaging wax museum I've ever visited.  (By the way, I've come to the conclusion everyone should plan a wax museum of their life.  Even if you can't produce it, it's excellent therapy to identify the events that shaped you...and give the world around you the opportunity to share it with you.  Some who see it may take responsibility!)

Some of the wax figures really moved.  Many didn't.  But they all were alive with emotion, interaction, commentary--nostalgia as well as regret, memories to remember and some to forget.  Every scene was supported with a  mass of original, authentic props, detailed and expressive of the artist's Arabic-Turkish-Muslim-Orthodox-and-more world:  His parents.  The family home and the market place.  The cleric's visits and prayer time.  Holiday gatherings and contraband sips from the keg.  Childhood games, mischief, sweethearts.  And school.  

Memories have feelings

I stood by the school scene, struck by my own urge to grab the scowling school master's muscled arm and shush the taunts of the grinning guys around him.  It's not like a movie, where the camera cuts from trauma to relief.  It's a frozen moment pressed onto a child's world.  A moment--probably one of many--that shaped his life and that he spent the better part of his life rising above.

Evidently he chose to do that by inviting the rest of the world to share those shaping  moments.  I found myself confirming the injustice.  Validating everyday sort of pain.  But he didn't stay there.  As  the scenes changed, I realized he had better to share! 
  
The very process of capturing the difficult moments must have released him from them, because he carried us away from that shame to humor, gentleness, curiosity.  And mischief.   Even the ending was a whimsical experience, a live love song in the trappings of old Lebanon, delivered with the personal Lebanese touch.  

"Do you love me?" with tea

It didn't take much to read between the lines.  A middle-aged gentleman accompanied himself in a three-note harmony as he crooned in heavily accented English:  "Do you love me?" 

I couldn't help but think that the only one who might have a problem answering that would be the old girlfriend who thought he'd come to no good.

We laughed about the subtleties of the artist's message and shared the ambience at the end with a gregarious group of young Australian Lebanese visiting their cousins in Beirut.  (So happened, after sharing notes on Sydney and Beirut, we met up with them four more times as we moved up the mountain to the cedars of Lebanon.  By the end of the day, we were fast friends!)

Friends worthy of a pose.

But....getting ahead of the story...on the way out of the castle, a rush of whispers informed us that the artist himself was coming to visit us.  The advantage of being first in the day.  

It was classic Lebanese--a personal museum experience where introductions and explanations and connections are established like we deserved to leave as part of the family.  Whether it was a marketing ploy or not doesn't matter:  The old artist showed up at the door to bid his guests off.  (Does the Smithsonian offer that touch?)  But in the cordial mix of being introduced, he singled out a geologist in our group. Maybe it was because in a crowd of tall Americans, they could look each other in the eye.

Translated:  I appreciate you more than the hat

"I like your hat," the grinning artist said in accented English.  

The geologist, a transplanted European with a few Middle Eastern friends himself, patted his head like he was trying to remember what he was wearing.  Then, without breaking for breath, he lifted the khaki canvas off and extended it ceremoniously.  "Here, you must have it!"  

The artist grinned, looked around with satisfaction.  "I am honored!"  The trade took place.  In real Lebanese fashion.  In typical Middle East tradition.  That's what you do when someone tells you they like something of yours.  It's an expression of your friendship to give them what they admired.  The meaning was not lost on either men.  

The artist inspected the flimsy khaki hat with obvious pleasure.  Why shouldn't he?  He'd said he liked it!  And by anyone's standard, the hat matched his jacket and pants far better than the stiff white canvas hat.  It fit perfectly.  As for the geologist?  He now owned an artist's hat.  And he could claim a hug.

In the end, everyone's better off.

It was an endearing exchange for any two strangers.  But it carried even more meaning because of the person we'd gotten to know within the castle museum.

Not a shabby exhibit at all.  Not a tourist trap either.  Especially when the slow kid in school could say to himself, to his wife of 60 years, and to a circle of curious Americans stopped on the side of the road, "See.  I'm not a nobody.  I have a new friend...and a new hat!"

We all have different ways we express our value.  We all have been blessed with different resources to use.  But in Lebanon a nice hat, a shiny car, and a beautiful villa are a significant measure of what a person has accomplished with his life.   Even from across the valley, the artist's life looked impressive.

Not shabby:  Castle on the left.  Home on the right.  The hillside is his.