Mark Meinke
The Summer of 1969
Arriving at Paris Orly in early June, a bunch of us Mac students bused into the airline bus station and arranged to stay at a pension on Rue Madame (in Stein and Toklas territory). No one knew where that was. It turned out I was the only one who spoke French so I led a caravan of students and suitcases through the streets until we found the pension. That started a pattern of translating and guiding that was to last through 20 years residence in the Middle East.
I was on my way to Beirut funded by a grant for my senior honor thesis on American missionary efforts to support education in the Middle East, especially in the Levant. Dr Armajani, for whom I served as student assistant, was my mentor and intercessor with the college administration and, after I got to Beirut and enrolled at the American University of Beirut (AUB), he managed the change of honors thesis topic to the origins of the Palestinian liberation organizations including the Palestine Liberation Organization. He also arranged for me to spend the first semester of my senior year and Interim at AUB adding courses on Middle Eastern history.
But meanwhile back in Paris, my French skills led to my guiding groups from the pension to the tourist sites around the city before boarding the train at the Gare de l’Est for the train to Istanbul.
That was a journey. Somehow I didn’t get the memo that said get on the train car labelled for your destination. I just got on at the back of the train and then discovered that at each stop, as that car was taken off the train, I had to move up a car or two, until I actually ended up in the Istanbul car. It was a long (4 days) trip but after we left Budapest it got a little riotous as our compartment became home to Bulgarian party members with a large supply of “potato wine” (aka vodka) with which they inebriated the whole compartment. Arrived finally in Istanbul, a bit sodden with potato wine, I booked a flight to Beirut and left for my summer residence with the Itani family, courtesy of fellow Macite Amal Itani, in the Ghberi suburb of Beirut. I signed on at AUB and found rooms in Ras Beirut with an Afghani and a Jordanian roommate.
