The Raad family roots reach back to Ain Zhalta, a village in the Chouf district of the Lebanese mountains, between the two tourist spots of Nabaah Al Saffa and the summer presidential seat of Beit-Eddine. But it was in Aley, the major Lebanese summer resort 17 kilometers east of Beirut and nearly a kilometer above sea level, that I was born, raised, and married.
I was born into a family of pharmacists in November 1943, the very year and month that France yielded to the forces of change and an independent Lebanon was also born. Both my father and grandfather were pharmacists. Similarly, my mother’s father and brother were pharmacists.
My paternal grandfather, Toufic Raad, had graduated with a degree in pharmacy from the Syrian Protestant College, which later became the American University of Beirut (AUB), and emigrated to Australia in 1908. He settled in Perth, where he was not allowed to open a pharmacy because Australia, then a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire, was protective of the British order of Pharmacists’ Colloquium, which was mandatory for pharmacy practice. After exhausting all avenues to circumvent this requirement, he found himself preparing for a return to Lebanon when his attention was captured by a poster announcing Australia’s boxing championship. An amateur boxer back at home, he enrolled, fought, and won. Then went back to the organizing committee and the Mayor of Perth with a plea to take back the cash award, the golden belt and the heavy winner’s Cup, and to lobby on his behalf with the Australian Department of Health to allow him to open a pharmacy with his American qualifications. After serious effort, they accepted and the Raad drug store is still operational to this day.
My earliest memories are precious to me. During the first week of December 1948, my father came home earlier than usual one evening carrying sheets of light metal. He called me to sit by his side and, naturally curious and keen to see what his plans were, I joined and watched while he carefully drew all the familiar characters and animals of the nativity scene. Then he used metal scissors to cut each of these figures out, painted them, mounted them on wooden stands, and put them aside to dry. That weekend, I accompanied him and a couple of neighbors to the nearby forest, where they cut down a small spruce tree, brought it back home, and decorated it with Christmas candles. Then Dad proudly assembled the nativity scene that he had made under the tree, and we all celebrated a wonderful Christmas.
Santa made that Christmas one to remember as he gave me a red toy Jeep, which my father, who was holding Santa’s Reinders, had built with the help of the local Aley blacksmith, Ibrahim Karam, whose workshop faced my dad’s pharmacy in the main square. Santa gave me, at the age of five, a grey woolen sweater with the letter “R” woven into the chest, knitted by my mother. That night, I slept next to the stove that warmed our snowy nights to the sound of cracking, burning wood and the smell of oak wood fire.