Home Visit

As the chartered DC-7 rolled to a stop at Beirut International Airport, a noisy and exultant crowd engulfed the police lines, thrust aside the official welcoming committee, and overwhelmed the plane's teetering ramp. With cheers and tears they greeted the vanguard of more than 500 U.S. citizens of Lebanese and Syrian extraction who had returned to visit the land of their fathers.

The third convention of the National Association of Syrian Lebanese American Clubs had been arranged, in the words of its president, Cosmo Ansara of Springfield, Mass., "to reintroduce the older people who were born over here to their former homeland and to give the second generation an opportunity to see for themselves the places from which their parents came." Added Joseph Sado of New York: "We believe that we are acting in consonance with President Eisenhower's people-to-people program."

But such official statements were too grand for so sentimental an occasion. One of the U.S. arrivals was so taken with emotion that he could not answer questions at customs, and soon the customs inspector was weeping too. One Lebanese mountaineer had carefully rehearsed one English phrase of greeting, boomed out "Hi, buddy," then lapsed into a rattle of Arabic. Some of the Americans' fractured Arabic was just as incomprehensible to their old-country friends. Michael Borane, 65, of Phoenix, Ariz., who had not been back to Beirut since he left at eight, doggedly set out to find his father's old house in the almost totally rebuilt Ras Beirut section, finally knocked at the right door, was greeted by a joyous cousin who reported later: "I couldn't speak, and I couldn't feel anything except the hairs rising on my arms."

One successful emigrant had freighted his American car (a mid-50s model) back to Lebanon to impress his home villagers. He had a rude awakening. "They've all got 1959 models!" he complained. Premier Rashid Karami, Maronite Patriarch Paul Meouchi (once of Los Angeles), and even usually aloof President Fuad Chehab posed smilingly for pictures with the visitors. Most of the expatriates seemed glad to see the old country, but would they like to stay? "Of course I'm going back," snapped one conventioner. "I just came here to dream."

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