Before I Forget: My life and involvement with concerns of the American University of Beirut

By Nabil Dajani

Before I Forget is more of a medley than a memoir. It chronicles the affairs of the American University of Beirut during an under studied period comprising and following the Lebanese civil war. In recording his perception of selective periods in his lifetime the author focuses on his AUB experience and documents his text with email exchanges with university officials.

He exposes his personal experience as a student, an administrator and faculty member of AUB during a period that spans over the administration of fourteen presidents (from John Paul Leonard to Fadlo Khuri), several of whom he was closely associated with. During this period, he served in central capacities including: president of the Faculty Association, President of the Worldwide Alumni Association, Assistant Dean and chair of the Senate Steering Committee. In his engaging style the author draws attention to what he considers an association of AUB with US interests.

The book also chronicles the difficulties and strivings the author faced since his family was forced to leave his homeland. It discusses the changes the author experienced moving from Lebanon to the US as a foreign student as well as the lifestyle adjustments he had to undergo when returning to Lebanon after graduation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398496330

Nabil Dajani

Dr Nabil Dajani is an emeritus professor of media studies at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He holds a PhD degree in communication from the University of Iowa. He served, between 1971 and 1975, as a member of UNESCO’s International Panel of Experts on Communication Research. Dr Dajani has been on the faculty of the American University of Beirut for the past 50 years and has served as an Assistant Dean of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and chairperson of the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences. He is the author of several manuscripts and books and over 50 articles in professional journals.

Book preview

About the Author

Dr Nabil Dajani is an emeritus professor of media studies at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He holds a PhD degree in communication from the University of Iowa.

He served, between 1971 and 1975, as a member of UNESCO’s International Panel of Experts on Communication Research.

Dr Dajani has been on the faculty of the American University of Beirut for the past 50 years and has served as an Assistant Dean of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and chairperson of the Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences.

He is the author of several manuscripts and books and over 50 articles in professional journals.

Dedication

To my wife whose unspoken love and devotion moulded my life and gave me two wonderful children, Tarek and Dana.

Copyright Information ©

Nabil Dajani 2023

The right of Nabil Dajani to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398496323 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398496330 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Acknowledgement

I thank AUB for approving my purchase of the hard drive of my old office computer that was destined to be junked. This allowed me to retrieve valuable exchanges that helped refresh my memory.

BEFORE I FORGET:

My life and involvement with concerns

of the American University of Beirut

Preface

What I relate here is more of a medley than a memoir. I have ventured into this project upon the prodding of many colleagues and friends at the American University of Beirut, as well as the urging of my son, Tarek, and daughter, Dana, who continue inviting me to tell them about the part of my life that is not known to them: my early childhood and career challenges that were usually kept outside family worries.

My hope is that what is presented here will meet the anticipations. What I submit now represents my perception of selective periods in my lifetime happenings with a focus on my AUB experience. Of course, I cannot claim to be unarguably objective in what I relate. To allow my reader to judge my account, I try to document my story with email exchanges whenever these are available.

This may be boring to some, but I maintain that they are appropriate as a record for future researchers about affairs during my period at AUB. This period spans over the administration of fourteen presidents (from John Paul Leonard to Fadlo Khuri), several of whom I was closely associated with.

I thank the university for approving my purchase of the hard drive of my old office computer that was destined to be junked. This allowed me to retrieve valuable exchanges that helped refresh my memory. What I consider to be important pre-AUB electronic exchanges will be deposited in the Jafet Library archives in the form of printed material.

While this book covers selective periods in my life that I consider worth rendering, it misses a significant period when I was an active and outspoken member of the university senate. I would have documented this period with official records and the text of my exchanges with officials and senate members, but it is beyond the scope of this book.

During this period, some twenty years, I served in central capacities including: chair of the Senate Steering Committee; chair of the ad hoc committee to draft the new university bylaws; chair of the Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs, and senate representative to the Board of Trustees. Electronic documentation was not implemented during the early part of my involvement in university affairs; thus, I am forced to rely here on a failing memory and the few paper exchanges that I happen to preserve. With the introduction of the electronic retrieval system, however, I am able to include what I consider to be important exchanges that I believe to be relevant to my narrative. These are included as appendixes to related sections.

At the end of the memoirs, I have included the responses I received to my announced retirement. This may be viewed by some as an ego boaster, but actually this satisfies my desire to acknowledge my thanks and appreciation to those who valued my interaction with them as well as to note their presence in my lifespan.

Nabil

December 2021

One

Early Childhood

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

Omar Khayyám

My early childhood was marred with traumatic and intense events and while growing up I experienced sudden change from a state of material affluence and security to that of scarcity and uncertainty. I am the second in a family of four children: a girl and three boys. I scantily remember the childhood events I went through in Jerusalem, where I was born in 1937, and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, where my family sought refuge. I presume that the difficult circumstances that I went through clogged my memory.

My father was the youngest of a family of six: four boys and two girls. He became an orphan by the age of two. A brother and a sister who already had children his age raised him and took care of his affairs.

He was sent to a boarding school in Alley, Lebanon, but I am told he was not happy there and wanted to pursue an acting career. He managed at one time to run away to Cairo, then the centre of Arab movie industry. His older brother, Daoud, went after him and brought him back to school. The family decided that the best way to keep him away from seeking an acting career was to get him married. As was the tradition those days, his two sisters selected a suitable wife for him. She was 16 years old, and he was 22. My father related that he saw her before marriage through the keyhole of the door.

father, 1940s                                      mother, 1940s

My father shared an inherited villa in Lower Bak’aa with his eldest brother, Fahmi (Abu Mufid), but as the widow and children of his older brother Hassan Sidki were living in that part of the villa before his marriage, he and my mother lived on the ground floor of a two-floor villa of his sister, Um Adnan, who raised him as a child. The villa was in Upper Bak’aa and had a beautiful large garden. I am told that my mother, then a teenager, had a miscarriage and lost her first child because of jumping rope with my aunt’s grown-up daughters in this garden.

Our villa in lower Bak’aa with an Israeli flag raised on its balcony

(sneaked shots by my cousin)

Um Adnan had six grown-up daughters, four of whom were my mother’s age. She was blessed with a son, Adnan, after the marriage of my parents. Um Adnan was a strong and demanding woman; she managed my mother as she did her daughters. We later moved to a nearby flat near my school.

My mother was the second child in a religious family of four girls and two boys. Her father, Sheikh Muhamad Murad, died several years before she got married. He was the mufti of the city of Haifa. I remember my maternal grandmother having long hair that almost touched the ground. She was the daughter of a prominent Lebanese religious figure in Sidon, and her young brother, Salim Jalal Eddin, became the Mufti of Sidon. We developed close bond with my grandmother’s family and used to visit them regularly in Haifa and Sidon. I reminisce spending a pleasant summer vacation with them in the south Lebanese village of Hasbayya.

My mother’s older sister, Um Samir, was married to a Lebanese who was a partner in a shipping firm in Haifa. She became an outspoken and active member of the Palestinian Women movement in Lebanon. Her youngest sister, Nahla, was less than 4 years old when my parents got married. She used to spend a lot of time with us and therefore I looked up to her as a friend rather than as an aunt. Her younger brother, Abdulrahman, graduated from al Azhar and became an important religious judge in Haifa and later in Syria. He married my father’s first cousin and lived in Damascus. The other brother, Ali Issam, became an established broadcaster and journalist. He lived with us in Jerusalem before moving to Lebanon where he married a Lebanese radio broadcaster. I enjoyed eavesdropping on his chats with his colleagues and to listen to his extensive collection of disks of foreign music.

I vaguely recollect the ten years of my childhood in Jerusalem. I was a spoiled skinny boy. My father was a successful merchant who loved fine living and generous spending. He was in the business of importing goods and sponsoring Egyptian movies and musical events. His work demanded making regular trips to Cairo where he had a circle of friends. One of his friends who was a relative of King Farouk used to stay with us when he visited Jerusalem. Having been trained as a psychologist, he was able to explain my having tantrums every time my parents went out at night: one of our house helpers, Nuzha, used to scare me about a "Ghool" and made me hide in the closet so as to have privacy while receiving her British soldier lover when my parents went out.

Another Egyptian friend of my father was the Egyptian singer, Leila Murad. My parents had a picture of her carrying me when I was two years old, during one of the singing events that my father sponsored in Jerusalem. I recall that when my father returned from his business trips, he used to bring gifts for us and our immediate relatives.

Parents in the 1960s

In one of my father’s long business trips in 1942, due to a mounting fear of the Germans marching to Palestine, he moved our family with him to Cairo. So as not to miss my schooling, I had to stay in Jerusalem most of this time at my father’s sister’s home. I vividly remember how terrified I was of her elder daughter, Shafika, who used to oversee my studies and eating sequences like a German general.

We had two house helpers, Nuzha and Tamra, whom my father brought from Jableh in Syria, and a Nubian cook. Nuzha eloped with a British soldier and Tamra stayed with us until we moved to Lebanon but then ran away with someone in Alley. I do not remember much about the cook except that he had an impressive white Nubian outfit and that he once scolded me when I asked him to beat a kid who hit me in school. He lived in a separate compound outside our house.

I vaguely remember my early childhood and school days. I recollect how scared I was of the school master, Shukri Harami, who used to gather us to observe public punishments of students who committed offenses. The offending student was to bend down to receive Harami’s intense, hissing blow with a long stick.

Of my childhood playmates I remember only my two cousins, Adnan and Shukri, with whom I spent good time playing in our garden. Being the youngest I often was the loser in whatever game we played. I also remember my maternal cousins, Samir, Suhair (Susu), Maha (Meme) and Usamah, with whom I used to spend pleasant times during our visits to their home in Haifa or their visits to Jerusalem. My communication with my maternal cousins became more frequent after our families moved to Lebanon.

Sometimes, I see flashes of my life in Jerusalem. I recollect my maternal uncle Ali Issam, who was living with us, ducking to the floor and hiding under the bed shouting, ’I surrender, I surrender,’ when heavy shooting took place near our house. As we lived on a road leading to a colony of Jewish immigrants, it was the practice of convoys of Jewish militias to shoot at houses on their route.

I also have flashes of happy events – my father and his friends drinking and cheering as they fed the house chimney with a very large log of wood, shouting, ‘Waqood’ (energy).

I recall the morning events of the Eid feast in Jerusalem, when I would go very early in the morning with my father to the family graveyard in the Nabi Daoud quarter where he and other family members would distribute lamb meat to the poor in the family, then we would go on visits to family elders who would extend their shaking hands to me. I was happy to kiss their hands as I would receive a Schilling (ten piasters) for every kiss.

I also recall the big garden party that my father threw in our garden to celebrate the victory of the Dajani football team when they won the Palestine football championship. I even remember until now the jingles my cousins and I used to shout during the Dajani football team matches, such as: "kalamantina janantina, hunen baradu wa nihna hmina" (It is maddening, how they fizzled down, and we are fired up).

Two

The Forced Exodus

The Israeli militia convoys passed our house more often and also their gunfire became more forceful. After the massacre in the village of Deir Yassin, when Israeli militias murdered old men, children, and women of the village, leaflets were distributed in our neighbourhood commanding us to leave or face the same fate. My father chose to move us to Lebanon for a while, until the British withdrew from Palestine and the Arab League forces restored order in the country, or so he thought.

My father rented a summer house in Alley, where he spent his school years, and arranged for a trusted driver to take us to Beirut. He stayed in Jerusalem to arrange for safekeeping of the valuable goods he used to store in his office in Jerusalem’s Mamallah business street.

The trip to Lebanon was during a dark and gloomy day with heavy rain. We arrived in Beirut at night and checked into a hotel in the downtown area. My father joined us after a week with few summer furniture items and took us to the rented house in Alley. He informed my mother that he had arranged for storing our carpets and valuables in locked cabinets and brought the cabinet keys with him.

I have an almost complete blackout of my stay in Alley. All I remember is that I was not happy in school and that I used to enjoy long walks from Alley to Souk el Gharb to visit friends who moved there from Jerusalem.

Alley, Lebanon, Sept 1948

Damascus, Syria, 1951

My father wasn’t doing well in Lebanon. His initial business ventures were unsuccessful and led to heavy losses. His older brother, Daoud, who was planning to return to Jerusalem, offered to help rescue the merchandises he warehoused in Jerusalem. My father gave him the necessary documents authorising him to handle his belongings. When my uncle returned to Lebanon, he told my father that he could not rescue any of the family possessions. (Yet, he managed to buy a farm in Anjar, in the Bekaa valley.)

Frustrated and disheartened, my father decided to move to Damascus where his oldest brother, Abu Mufid, had recently moved in with his family. Abu Mufid was a kind old man, and his children were my father’s age. My father felt that we would be safe near my uncle’s family as he planned to spend time in Jordan starting a business there.

Reflecting on our family upbringing during the difficult periods we went through after our exodus from Palestine, I realise that although we never lacked parental love and care, we were short of empathetic understanding owing to my parent’s traditional background and young age. I reason that lack of parental empathy contributed to my, as well as my brothers and sister’s going through different developmental paths. My youngest brother, Walid, while a teen-age university student sought understanding in the first girl he fell in love with and eloped with her to the US. My second brother, Marwan, the smartest among us, tested norms and dashed to an originated daring world. My sister, Nawal, by spending most of her young age in a nun’s boarding school, did not have a chance to develop with us a truly attached family connection. Being the eldest male, I felt obligated to assume the role of the man of the family when my father was away or when we faced financial difficulties. I grew up in fear, worrying about our financial problems. Perhaps this may explain my apprehension at making indefinite moves, which made me miss many favourable opportunities.

My stay in Damascus was pleasant. The patriotic mood in Syria towards the plight of Palestinians was tremendous. Our Syrian neighbours welcomed us and made us feel at home. I remember a time when a bus driver refused to charge me when he learnt that I was a Palestinian.

I used to enjoy going shopping with my uncle Abu Mufid and hear him bargain with shoppers. He was in his eighties, and his chats with my mother about how his wife ignored him and his grievance about his children siding with their mother used to amuse me.

I enrolled in the American School in Damascus, which was a protestant missionary school located in Abu Rummaneh Street, a few minutes’ walk from our home. This school prepared students for admission to the American University of Beirut (AUB). Many members of my family were graduates of, or were students in, this university. My parents wanted me to pursue a medical degree from it.

I was happy in the school and was particularly fond of my Arabic teacher who made me love reading modern classical Arabic novels and poetry. I was able to recite tens of classical poems and enjoyed playing "souk ukaz pastime game with my mother who had a wealth of Arabic poetry verses in her memory. In this game, each participant would recite a line of a poem. The next contestant was to recite another line that started with the ending letter of the last verse recited. The books of Jubran, particularly his The Prophet and The Broken Wings" were my favourite leisure time reading.

My stay in Damascus chanced during the phase of my becoming a teenager. But unlike ordinary teenagers, I was going through a difficult phase. My sister, Nawal, who is one year older, was studying in a boarding school in the west bank and