GeorgeNicolasEl-Hage.com
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  • Professional Profile
    • Who is George Nicolas El-Hage
  • Publications
    • "Aqlam Muhajirah" The voice of the New Pen League (NPL)
    • Literary Criticism >
      • Books (English) >
        • A Labor of Love: Our Lebanon Family Home Renovation Project
        • Gibran Kahlil Gibran: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
        • Eliya Abu Madi: The Distinguished Poet of al-Rabita al-Qalamiya
        • A Brief History of Arabic Literature: Volume One: Pre-Islamic to the Abbaasid Age
        • A Brief History of Arabic Literature: Volume Two: Andalusia to the Modern Age
        • William Blake and Kahlil Gibran: Poets of Prophetic Vision
        • Gibran Kahlil Gibran: The Man Versus the Legend
        • Essays on Literature and Language
        • Ibn al-Farid's "Khamriyya" ("Ode on Wine")
        • Nizar Qabbani: Women in My Poetry and in My Life
        • Nizar Qabbani: My Story with Poetry - "An Autobiography"
        • Nizar Qabbani: Journal of An Indifferent Woman
        • Ghada al-Samman's Beirut '75: An Autobiographical Interpretation
        • English Translation of Selected Letters of Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
        • Khalil Hawi: Letters of Love and Life
        • Immortal Quotes from Ameen al-Rihani’s Masterpiece The Book of Khalid
        • Ameen al-Rihani: Eastern and Western Figures
        • Ameen al-Rihani’s The Register of Repentance: Four Short Stories and a Play
        • Selected Letters of Ameen al-Rihani: Translated with an Introduction and Notes
        • Ameen al-Rihani: You...The Poets
        • Ameen al-Rihani: My Story with May
        • Ameen al-Rihani: The Muleteer and the Priest
      • Books (Arabic) >
        • al-Zajal al-Lubnani wa Zaghloul al-Damour fi Beit Meri: (Lebanese Zajal and Zaghloul al-Damour in Beit Meri)
        • Madkhal ila-l-'alam al-shi 'ri 'inda Khalil Hawi usluban wa madmunan: (An Introduction to the Poetic Universe of Khalil Hawi)
        • al-Nabi bayna 'adu al-Masih wa al-Insan al-Ilah
        • Sahifat "al-Risala" al-Lubnaniya al-Mahjariya: (The "al-Risala" Newspaper and the Lebanese Press in Diaspora)
        • Gibran Kahlil Gibran wa William Blake: Sha'ira al-Ru'ya: (Gibran Kahlil Gibran and William Blake: Poets of Prophetic Vision)
        • The Trilogy of Heroism, Redemption, and Triumph: The Press in Diaspora, Khalil Hawi, Zaghloul al-Damour
    • Textbooks & Articles on Teaching & Learning Arabic >
      • marHaba III: A Course in Levantine & Modern Standard Arabic (LMSA) >
        • marHaba III: PART ONE Audio Files
        • marHaba III: PART TWO Audio Files
        • marHaba III: PART FOUR Audio Files
      • marHaba II: A Course in Levantine Arabic - Lebanese Dialect - Intermediate Level >
        • A Companion Book to marHaba II: English Translation & Transliteration of All Lessons in marHaba II
      • marHaba: A Course in Levantine Arabic - Lebanese Dialect >
        • marHaba: Practice Workbooks
      • MABROUK: A Course in Modern Standard Arabic (Elementary & Intermediate Levels) >
        • Study Guide: MABROUK
      • The Story of Sami and Warda
    • Lebanese Nursery Rhymes
    • Books (Poetry in English/Arabic) >
      • Love Surpassed: A Book of Poetry
      • Letters to My Son: An Immigrant's Saga
      • Lebanese Hymns of Love and War
    • Books (Poetry in Arabic) >
      • Love Poems from Beirut
      • Awdat al-Faris wa Qiyamat al-Madina
      • al-Ghurba wa Mawasim al-Dhalam
      • Law Kunti Li
      • Qasa’id Bila Tarikh (Undated Poems) >
        • Mikhail Naimy: Fathers and Sons - A Play in Four Acts
      • Maw’id wa-liqa’
      • anti wal atfaalu fi Beirut: You and the Children in Beirut
      • You and the Children in Beirut
    • Poems (English) >
      • To Mary Ann with Love: A Book of Poetry
      • Birth of a Princess
      • Forty Years of Bliss
      • Thinking of You
      • You are My Christmas
      • A Poem for Mother's Day
      • To Mary Ann on Her Birthday
    • Poems (Arabic) >
      • Arabic Poems in MSA >
        • Beirut Speaks - song
        • A Tribute to Beirut
        • Lubnaniyat
        • The Garden of Visions
        • Najwa
        • Kunna ibtada’na
      • Arabic Poems in Lebanese Dialect >
        • Hilwit libnan
    • My Poetry (Translated from Arabic to English) >
      • Beirut Speaks
      • The Book of Death, #28
      • Journey of Illusion
      • Letter to a Country With No Frontier
      • A Letter to the Children of Qana
      • My People
      • You, Beirut and the Children
      • Introduction to If You Were Mine
      • Sufiya: A Mystical Poem
      • Surprise Attack
      • Exile
      • Chariot of Light
    • My Translations of Other Poets'/Writers' Works >
      • May Ziyadeh: The Return of the Wave
      • Said Akl: When Lebanon Speaks
      • Ameen Albert Rihani: A Train and No Station
      • Mikhail Naimy: Once Upon A Time
      • Mikhail Naimy: Abu Batta and Other Stories
      • Mikhail Naimy: Fathers and Sons - A Play in Four Acts
      • Mikhail Naimy: Inspired by Christ
      • Mikhail Naimy: Sab‘un (Seventy) An Autobiography
      • Mikhail Naimy: al-Ghirbal (The Sieve): Selections Translated into English with an Introduction
      • Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad: A Loaf of Bread (al-Raghif)
      • Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad: The Lame Boy and Other Stories
      • Maroun Abboud: Faces and Stories
      • Maroun Abboud: The Red Prince - A Lebanese Tale
      • Maroun Abboud: Tales from the Village
      • al-Rihaniyyat
      • Munajayat Al-Sab‘in
      • Mahmud Darwish’s poem, “Antithesis”
      • ‘Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati’s: The Byzantine Poems of Abu Firas
      • Gibran’s Unpublished Letters to Archbishop Antonious Bashir
    • Personal Reflections >
      • First Impressions of Lebanon in June 2013
      • The Collapse of a Tradition
  • Professional Activities
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Letters to My Son:  Fourth Letter


July 1998
Monterey, CA

And as I awake, ten years later, I feel exhausted. The dust of exile has stained my forehead, time has frozen, the minutes are impregnated and prolonged, and a “dark night engraved in stone” has foreshadowed a nightmare that soils my horizon.

Yet I arise with a twinkle of hope in my heart and a bouquet of flowers in my hand, for you and I are on our way, as is our custom every week, to visit your grandfather in his final resting place. His journey to our planet has come to an end, so we planted him here, a grain of wheat, a holy branch of Cedar, with the hope that we will transport his ashes to Lebanon where his dust will mix with that of his land, his family and his country.

Just one day before he left us – as if he realized that the dim light in his lantern was about to be extinguished – he held my hand, stared into my eyes, and said:

“My son, you know that I never wanted to desert my home and my village, but you did well when you brought me, your mother, your sister and your brother, here to America. We came to know Nicolas, my grandson, and we were also introduced to the goodness of this generous land. My son, may God bless you, but do not let me die here, for death in exile is a fate worse than death. If you bury me here, I will suffocate in loneliness and boredom. My bones will be eternally cold away from my family. Lebanon’s soil is warm and tender.”

As I listened, I closed my eyes to hide the forming clouds pregnant with rain that were gathering in my horizon. I embraced him and solemnly promised to take him back with me the day I return.

The day I return? When would this day come? You, my son, always ask me, “Dad, when shall we visit Lebanon?” And I pause and ponder. When will I return carrying your grandfather on my shoulder with my right hand and holding your little fingers with my left hand and behind us the ashes of our exile glowing in flames like the dust of burning Troy. To Lebanon we will march where I shall build an eternal city and all the roads shall lead to its open gate.

We shall return, my son. This is my promise to you and to your grandfather and his good memory. This is my hope. That will be the day of reckoning, the day when Lebanon will openly confess her sins. On that day, she will happily march to welcome us with all of her political parties, divisions, sects and politicians. On that day, all the colors, flags and political parties will unite in her horizon, forming one banner of love, unity, patriotism and sincerity.

When that day arrives, my little one, Lebanon will be ready for your visit. She would have returned to be, as she once was, a generous and forgiving land that glorifies the righteous and crowns the heroes with laurel instead of stoning and crucifying them. We shall return, my son, holding in our hands the epic of heroism and sacrifice, the Bible of Divine guidance and the Holy Qur’an of enlightenment.

We shall enter the great city of Beirut to destroy its idols, one by one. We shall stand facing each and every idol with the sword of the Prophet in our hand. We shall confront each idol that does not bear witness that there is one, and only one, Lebanon, unified and free in the shade of the Cedars and that only the children are symbols of peace and the basis for a prosperous future and that they are the hope for Lebanon’s resurrection. Every idol that does not testify to this truth, my son, strike it with the sword of the Prophet Muhammad, the blade of Imam Ali and the sword of Elijah and Fakhreddine after you inflame its body with the whip of Christ, the whip that He raised in the face of the merchants, the scribes, the Pharisees and the hypocrites when they transformed the House of God to a market for money changers and sellers of goods just like they changed our Beirut, our villages and towns from a peaceful temple to a den for thieves, mercenaries, and highway robbers.

Until that time dawns and the hour draws near, let us, my son, earn our daily bread with the sweat of our forehead and fulfill our obligation to this hospitable land that took us in and harbored us. It will not be for too long because that which is written is about to be fulfilled, and the hour is present and at hand as you sail with me on our historic journey toward the holy mountain of the Cedars, my son, my hope, my future, and my everlasting continuity.


 
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