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New York, New York - The settlement reached in Doha last week between warring factions in Lebanon puts an end to an 18-month national crisis and raises hopes for a stable future for that beleaguered country. It may also make real my father's dream for his country, and prompt a wider movement for peace in the region.
In the 1920s, my father emigrated from Lebanon to Argentina, but not for one day did he stop thinking or dreaming about his beloved country. He was a man of wide cultural interests, but economic setbacks in his new home left him in a precarious position. It affected his health and he died in 1971, relatively young and having never fulfilled his dream to return to his native Lebanon for a visit.
My father had emigrated to Tucumán, a town in Northern Argentina with a substantial Arab and Jewish population. There, he tried to make real his commitment to promoting culture and peace. Together with a group of friends, he founded the cultural Athenaeum Gibran Khalil Gibran, named after the famous Lebanese writer. During the 1950s and early 1960s, famous writers from all over Latin America gave lectures on a wide variety of subjects that brought hundreds of people to the Syrian and Lebanese Society, where the Athenaeum was located.
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César Chelala is a writer on human rights and foreign affairs, and co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America awardRecommend this Post
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
César Chelala, "Dignifying Lebanon's past," Common Ground News - Partners in Humanity. English Edition. 27 May 2008.
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