By FARIHA WASTI
Fadia Nassar’s past keeps her rooted in Beirut’s homeland and is a part of her identity now, in the United States. Surviving 14 years through a Civil War in Lebanon, her faith gave her the courage to continue her life in another country at 29 years old.
“You feel like your identity is threatened when you are desperate. You’re scared; the only thing you can do is pray, and so you get closer to your religion, it becomes more relevant,” Fadia said.
Nowadays, Fadia and her husband, Roger, are active members of the John Paul II Church of Westchester.
“Religion is a significant part of our life because it became our defense mechanism,” explained Fadia.
Passion for Science
Fadia teaches science at the French-American School of New York, in Westchester. She commutes a few minutes along the tree-lined suburban streets from her home to the school.
In 1982, she graduated from university in Beirut with a chemistry degree. She taught tenth-grade chemistry for two years. In 1984, the school year came to a standstill as the Civil War escalated.
“When the bombs fell, my students and I had to go to the basement of the school,” Fadia recalled. “It was really, very scary, something I always remember. My students lived in the middle of Beirut, and I lived in the suburbs.”
The bombings were worse in the city compared to the outskirts. Fadia worried about the responsibility to take care of these students, some of whom seemed braver than she felt.
“Instead of me reassuring my students, my students were reassuring me. They were so used to this. They said, ‘don’t worry, Madam, this is not that bad,’ and I was thinking, ‘Oh my god! Are we going to die?'” Fadia recalled.
It was at that point that she decided to quit teaching. She started working at a company that sold medical equipment to hospitals and clinics to use her passion for science and meeting people.
Fadia said, “It was about contact with people. I am a big ‘people person,’ and chemistry was my passion. The company was looking for medical oriented people that understood the work.”
A Broken Landscape
Growing up in Lebanon, her family split their time between the mountains and their home in Beirut’s suburbs. Syria intervened in the brewing civil war and ended up occupying Lebanon from 1976 to 2005. Fadia’s childhood home was part of the region occupied by Syria. In 2006, Fadia returned to Beirut to show her two daughters her family’s former home in the mountains.
“We couldn’t go to the house. It was still standing but was badly burned,” Fadia said. “The Syrian soldiers had lived in it for years; we weren’t allowed at the house since then.”
During the civil war, divisions hardened between members of different religious groups. Some neighborhoods came to be defined and divided by their dominant sect, and it became dangerous to cross boundary lines.
“The Muslims could not go to the Christian side; Christians could not go to the Muslim side. When you are born, your religion and sect are written on your Identity Card. If a Muslim boy were killed, a family would go kidnap a Christian boy,” said Fadia.
Early in the war, as bombings began in Beirut, Fadia and her parents would shelter in the basement of a large commercial building adjacent to their home. After Fadia’s father died in 1986, her mother decided to stop hiding in the crowded basement during the bombing. She would rather avoid the bunker, filled with anxious people huddled together over a radio. Fadia’s mother preferred to take shelter in her own apartment’s laundry room, with her daughter tucked under a mattress as a makeshift cover.
“We are very resilient. Even during the worst times of war, we tried to live as normally as possible. We played scrabble. Sometimes we had no electricity, so we played by candlelight. The war happened in rounds. We had a month of heavy fighting, where we couldn’t even leave the shelters. Then we had peace,” Fadia said.
Keeping up the Faith
In 1989 Fadia’s fiancé Roger received news that his boss was expanding his business in the United States. His boss invited him to join, and the couple decided to get married and move to the U.S. Acquiring the visa was another hurdle. Due to the bombings, the Beirut embassy was closed, so they had to travel by boat to Cyprus, where they had to wait overnight in a long line at the embassy door.
“In a line of 150 people, they only called for 30 that day. We were lucky; we got the numbers 25 and 26. Out of the 30 people, a nurse and we got the visa. Everyone else was rejected.
We only got it because our visa pass already existed from the company. We just needed it on our passports,” Fadia said, laughing from the relief the moment still brings.
Fadia found a replacement and left her job at the medical company in August 1989.
Fadia told her daughters, Mary Jo and Christine, of her struggles in Lebanon. She hopes the stories she shares make Lebanon feel like home to them too. Despite the hardships Fadia grew up with and left behind, she considers Lebanon an essential part of her identity. Her family and friends still live there, though her mother passed away. It is even more important to her that her daughters know the country and the religion that helped her and Roger survive.
“We think of the stories as a funny adventure that we had. It wasn’t that funny, as we were living it, but we still laugh,” Fadia said.