By John A. Meyers

William Morgan Stewart, born March 18, 1937, in Dundee, Scotland, graduate of Towson (Md.) High School, Johns Hopkins University and University of Edinburgh (Scotland), former U.S. Foreign Service Officer (in Bombay, Washington and South Viet Nam), and TIME correspondent since 1971, is taking a vacation. Finally. After a week of temporary duty in Jerusalem, Stewart, the magazine's Middle East bureau chief, is planning two weeks in Greece and Scotland, says he, to "sleep late and have long naps." For the past 2 1/2 years, Stewart has lived and worked in West Beirut, reporting on, among other things, the activities of the Palestine Liberation Organization. And he was one of only half a dozen or so foreign correspondents who had been in Beirut constantly since the initial Israeli advance of June 6. As some 6,000 P.L.O. fighters and their leaders were being scattered last week to various parts of the Arab world, Stewart began his own personal wind down.

Since that first week in early June when the Israeli military machine smashed its way to the gates of Beirut, life in the city had been harrowing. "There were bad moments, worse than anything I can remember during Viet Nam," said Stewart, who was TIME'S acting Saigon bureau chief in 1972. "I felt like a hunted animal, as if the shells and bombs seemed to follow me across the city." On one occasion, a bomb hit his apartment; on another, explosions pulverized his neighborhood. Two weeks before the final ceasefire, an explosion ripped through the floor where his hotel room was located.

He recalls how his meetings with P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat were arranged "like a pleasant kidnaping," Stewart said, with a P.L.O. representative and armed guard appearing some time past midnight and whisking Stewart off into the darkness. Once at the meeting, Stewart would find Arafat's energy unflagging and "his determination to regain a homeland for his people absolute." He saw the P.L.O. leader as having "a shrewd talent for judging people, something that makes him a better politician and diplomat than military commander."

Concludes Stewart of his extraordinary assignment: "There is no need to romanticize these people. That would cheapen it. On some things, we could never agree. But we had, in a way, a common experience, of wartime. I don't think I'll ever be the same again. And in an odd way, I am almost reluctant to leave Beirut, crippled and shattered as it is. This city and its people now wear the survivor's badge of honor. Part of me, I think, will always be here."

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