school days
38
SCHOOL DAYS
“What’s it all about?” Abboudi Hoss (Hf 62)
Abboudi Hoss “This is the happiest day of my life!” said my mother when Mr Lloyd, the Headmaster, announced to her that I had been accepted at Uppingham. Immediately, my hopes of finishing school back in “sunny” Lebanon were crushed. I could not share her joy: imagining a dreary boarding school, thousands of miles away from home, and myself, trapped in a grey and black school uniform as opposed to “The Beach Boys” look, which I had cultivated so carefully back in Beirut. My parents owned a popular beach resort along the sandy coast just south of the capital when that city was still the Paris of the Middle East. The Sands, as it was called, once the source of all my fun, now became the primary cause of this dreaded exile. To my parents, this Mediterranean “paradise” was no longer the ideal place to raise their only son, into whose hands the family destiny would fall one day. Uppingham, on the other hand, certainly was! The picture of my mother waving goodbye as the School Special pulled out of the railway station is still fresh in my mind. That is where and when it all began: three years, six months and twenty-seven days of “character building”, as some of my teachers called it. My longing for the end of each school term and daydreaming about the leisurely life back home was an absorbing distraction; one which I wished I’d spent less time over when facing my final exams. Maybe that is why I
never made Oxford or Cambridge as my parents had wished. No matter for what reason, I did not leave my name on a list of noteworthy scholars at Uppingham! What of the rest of Uppingham life, the innumerable tasks, routines and traditions that punctuated the school day, what was that all about? The polishing of praepostors’ shoes, the sewn pockets, the masters’ salutes, the competitive sports, the early morning tish calls, the daily recitals of psalms in Memorial Hall, Sunday Chapel, the CCF and a whole other list of things known only to those inside the periphery of Uppingham School. I had no meaningful answer to that question when I looked back at Highfield, wearing the school uniform for the last time, but as it turned out this was the end of the most important chapter in my life. No academic subject I could have excelled at would have better prepared me for the unforeseen events awaiting me upon my return to Lebanon. The lessons I’d learned outside of the classroom were the ones I’d come to value most. In 1975, a civil war broke out that destroyed generations of dreams and the livelihood of thousands of families, including mine. With nothing of any significance still functioning in either my country and/or business, I found myself standing between an affluent past and a future that depended entirely on what I could or could not achieve. A list of
Highfield Unders Cricket Team 1962. overwhelming questions came to my mind, such as, what do I embark on next? Would I be able to settle in a foreign land? Could I do without my past in forging the future? Would I cope with a less flamboyant lifestyle? Did I have the courage for all these new challenges? Subsequently I left Lebanon to live and work in Paris, Chicago and Munich, without suffering any culture shocks! What I started to accomplish soon quelled any anxiety I had. Over the years, I founded several businesses totally unrelated to my past which, fortunately, are still doing very well. I am now happily settled in a quiet, small village at the foot of the German Alps with my Bavarian wife and son. There, I have stowed away my Aston Martin in an old cowshed and enjoy driving a Golf just as much. I am now better off in every way than I have ever been before. It took me some 30 years to recuperate everything in Lebanon that the war had destroyed. Throughout this time, a young chap dressed in a grey and black uniform stood at my side, and the life-lessons that he’d learned at Uppingham supported me all along. That’s what it’s all about. Looking back, I agree with my mother, the day I was accepted at Uppingham was the happiest day of my life.
