Tuesday, January 29, 2008

My sister, Mirvat, sent me this: "(Ammo [Uncle] Naji told me this long time ago), my mother remembered (as it was in 1958 during the "revolution"[in Lebanon] and mom and dad were in Tyre..Naji refused to study medicine in USJ as his father (our gradfather wanted). So he escaped to Jordan to Habash who sent immediately a telex to my grandparents to tell them not to worry and that their son is in Amman and will be back in a month to study later in Egypt journalism as he was not meant to be a doctor. While Habash accompanied Naji in a tour in Al-Wahdat camp, he introduced him to Wadi Haddad. After two months, while Habash was visiting Haddad, he was surprised to see my uncle still with thim, so he asked him immediately: Why are you still there? You were supposed to be back as I promised your parents? So my uncle answered that Wadi Haddad convinced him to stop his studies to be an activist (mounadel) with the Palestinian resistance. So Habash summoned him and ordered him to go back home immediately asking him to continue his studies. And that what happened! In the late seventies, while my uncle was in UNESCO, I took him to see Habash the great leader of our time, so modest, so nice, so warm and so polite."