Letters to the Editor

Although I infrequently communicate with my IC Aluma, I cannot find words to express my feelings and memories about this great institution. The lessons I learned during those formative years have had a great impact during my life and played an important role in shaping my professional life. The education I received in IC has had a great impact in success of my professional life.

I cherish reading the IC newsletter which in a way, reminds me of those happy years. I wait impatiently to receive each issue which I read from first to last page.

I am presently a Professor of Medicine/Physiology at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, having joined this institution in 1967.

I graduated from IC (French section) with Baccalaureate II in 1952 and MD from School of Medicine, AUB, in 1959.

I am pleased to share with my colleagues the latest award I received in October 2019 for Career Excellence from the Lebanese Society of Nephrology/Hypertension.

I would like to thank my IC Alma Mater for giving me the opportunity to share with my colleagues what IC has always meant to me.

Thank you again.

Best wishes.

Respectfully Adel Elias Berbari, M.D. ‘52

I graduated from International College in 2004, but I was part of an extinct breed in the history of the school. I was part of the second to last high school class. What is the high school class it was made of foreign students. Well not exactly foreign students but Lebanese students of Lebanese parents who were born aboard and raised there for the first 10 years of their lives. Our parents shared two things in common, first they all emigrated and left Lebanon in search of a better future for themselves, and second for some reason or another decided to move back with their families to settle in Lebanon.

My classmates grew up in places like Canada, Australia, the USA, and part of Africa, Europe and the Arabian Gulf. Why did our parents move back? Some for work, some to be close to family but ultimately because they had hope in Lebanon and didn’t want their kids raised away from home.

What was life like as a high school student? Different from those who were in the Lebanese Baccalaureate or French Baccalaureate, that’s for sure. We didn’t have to study for the Brevet and the Bacc. We didn’t study Tarikh wa Joghrafiyah, (History and Geography), well at least not like our peers. Our history lessons didn’t focus on Fakherredine and Jamal Pasha. Instead, we learned about Europe and Asia and the world wars, the industrial revolution and civil rights. We didn’t have to take Arabic grammar, instead we took special Arabic and special French. Most of us spent the first decade of our lives learning Arabic at home. Sure we could speak it but we had no knowledge about grammar and spelling in Arabic. A shame we didn’t learn the language as much as we should with it being such a beautiful language that’s becoming extinct itself.

Our class was cool, we all spoke English fluently and were spoiled with foreign culture that we unknowingly flaunted. We weren’t trying to show off, but it was just the culture we knew. Our interests were a mix of foreign and Lebanese. We read a lot of American literature, watched, and listened to a lot of American culture. We read Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison, and James Joyce. Instead of Al Moutanabe we read Edgar Allen Poe and Robert Frost. We were a bunch of misfits. Our colleagues would tease us for our weak Arabic but also because we were getting away with an easier curriculum. We didn’t have government tests to study for and take. We were also lucky because middle school through graduation, we were all in the same class, we built strong friendships and grew into a tight knit group. We joined the Terry Fox Run together; we set up our own roller hockey team that would practice after school. Of course, some of us left halfway through the school years, some moved back to the US or the Gulf, whether for parents work or an older sibling’s college career. Our last year the class was split up; half of us went into the International Baccalaureate program and the rest graduated as high school students and incoming freshman in college.

Most of us went to local schools in Lebanon after graduation. I went to AUB and I was a freshman hoping to become an engineer. The year was 2004 and we were excited what the future held. Lebanon was booming, tourism was breaking records year after year and the downtown area of Beirut was coming back to life. Maarad street was packed every evening with folks enjoying dinner al fresco. The whole world was talking about us, CNN, the New York Times, everywhere you looked people were raving about Lebanon that was coming out of the ashes. Most of us wanted to stay in Lebanon and build our careers there. Very few of us thought of applying abroad, a handful did for specialty degrees or for the desire to attend some great foreign schools. Then in February 2005 everything changed, for the first time our class of returned emigrants experienced what it was like to be Lebanon, fear, uncertainty and confusion about what the future held. Would Lebanon be ok, would life carry on as usual? We joined the Cedar Revolution and attended protests, all these felt like a rite of passage as a Lebanese.

My family and friends were all nervous about the future; I took my family’s advice and transferred to a college in the US. Reluctantly I packed my bags and left for college life in the US. It was interesting and eye opening, but part of me missed my friends and home. They were all still together and life was good they carried on. So after two semesters abroad I packed my bags and headed home in May of 2006, I reinstated my AUB registration for the Fall. Then summer of 2006 happened and I fled again, thru Syria, then to Riyadh, then Dubai and finally back to Texas to resume classes. This time a lot of class mates were looking to get out

Letters to the editor

of the country as well.

I left Lebanon 14 years ago. I graduated from Texas and went on for a Master’s at Cal. Every step of the way I have considered a return to Lebanon or to the region to be closer. Our teachers in IC taught us about Al Loubnane Al Moughtareb and I have driven by the statue at the port numerous times. I look up at the statue with the tarboush that embodies the diaspora. I never imagined I would join their ranks. I am glad and thankful for my experiences and opportunities I have had in Lebanon. But I tell myself I was part of a generation that returned after the war. Our parents brought us back because they had hope, but we ended up leaving again, with a part of our heart, our families always back at home holding the fort. With everything going on in Lebanon right now I was reflecting on my generation and our time at IC. My story is not unique, there are many who share this experience, but here is to hoping for a better future for our country.

Mohamad Tassabehji ‘04 Memories of Yesteryears:

Roger Valla who headed the Section Francaise (when Leslie Leavitt was IC’s President, and later Archie Crawford). He also taught us in a masterly manner ‘Economic Geography’ in the Classe de Seconde. Classes were held in my days until the Deuxième Partie in Bliss Hall. His son Didier was a Cub in my Pack when I was Akela. Valla had summoned me to his office, and I had wandered ‘what have I done wrong’?

I was quite relieved when he had invited me to sit down, and told me his son was asthmatic, and would I please ascertain that on a forthcoming camping trip, he would not be sleeping next to a boy whose sleeping bag was filled with ‘down’. I had entered his office through a small door ‘so-tospeak’, and he had accompanied me respectfully through the main door . . . I had then felt as if seven-feet-tall!

Seylaz and Genestlé, who taught us French Literature over the classes of 3e until MathElem, and had made us love French – literature and poetry – which I still enjoy in my elderly years, still capable to recite well over one hundred verses from memory. Genestlé had bequest a lot of land in Mechref to IC in his will; he was never married.

Dumont, who taught us Mathematics over several years including the seven books during the year of MathElem; a stern but lovable wizard with numbers, equations and geometry, with a great sense of humor, always with a lit cigarette stuck to his lower lip! Years later and until retirement, he had become IC’s Deputy President, as I recall.

René Habachy who taught ‘Existentialism’ at AUB, and one class of The History of Civilizations in the Seconde, and who drifted into ‘off course’ philosophical thoughts which delighted us. I came to IC class three in 1967 and returned to my home country after completing class four in 1969. I left IC after just two school years, but IC has been with me ever since. Today, when I look back and compare, I know why. At IC, I was not taught, I learned. The difference may appear subtle, but when you learn, you understand, when you are taught, you just memorize. Maybe it was the attitude of my teachers, or maybe it was the organization of the school, or perhaps the proximity of the American University of Beirut. Whatever the explanation, I matured to be responsible for my knowledge, my mind became programmed for learning, for studying and searching, for understanding and evaluating, for truth. I graduated from medical school and devoted my career to medical diagnostics and preventive medicine. I worked on the theory of diagnosis and contributed to the rise of a new specialty – the diagnostician. Over the years, medicine has changed greatly, and today preventive medicine is among the four main branches of health care. Prevention saves lives if people are aware of the dangers confronting them. The precondition is: learn, understand, and know the truth about your health. I fostered the idea of “Health Squares” – sites in cities for jogging, exercising, and improving health awareness. Curiosity led me to the French title of master in industrial management. I spent some twenty years chairing supervisory boards of large companies. Corporate management and supervision involve diagnostics, so my background was an advantage. Working for my city, I participated in several large projects, for example, the new Philharmonic Hall in Stettin, which won the prestigious European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2015. Socrates is quoted in Latin as saying, “Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.” May IC continue its mission and forevermore bring up its students as children of this great philosopher. May every one of them, like me, proudly, honestly, with gratitude and satisfaction repeat the title of Reem Haddad’s book: I am IC.