On occasions, my grandfather would let me hold his MAS-36 and say, “Someday I will let you use it.” But I never did. Rugged rural Qubayyat finally met rugged rural Virginia. My grandfather would have appreciated my justification: self-protection, deterrence (this is Virginia, man, everybody has guns here) and defending my horses and chickens from coyotes and rabid animals. My friends knew of my long fascination with lever action rifles from watching countless Western movies. An implicit threat to my wife, Rudaina, when she was alone at the farm ended my reluctance to acquire lethal ornaments. 357 Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver, a Henry rifle and a Winchester Model 94 Theodore Roosevelt Commemorative Lever Action Rifle (a limited edition honoring the 26th president, an avid hunter). They quickly remedied this, helping me buy a. In the 1960s the prominent Shia leader Imam Musa Al-Sadr summed up the gun culture with the phrase “arms are the ornaments of men.” Al-Sadr, who was referring to defending one’s country, could never have imagined how his followers and other Lebanese would abuse it as they plunged their country into never-ending wars of all against all.ĭecades later, when I acquired a small farm in Virginia, my new friends discovered I had no guns to protect myself. They were companions on rough roads, used for self-defense and protection of family and property. Guns in Lebanon’s isolated mountain villages were ubiquitous. He would place it on his lap, clean it with fine cloth and oil it, always in silence and devotion as if caressing a woman. He was partial to the French MAS-36 Rifle (MAS-1936) that was common in the village. I vividly remember Habib Nader’s nightly ritual of inspecting his guns after dinner while sitting by the wooden stove sipping coffee. I was thrilled when I was told that the voice did not betray the proud mountain man. I could not afford to attend, for I was trying to survive my first year in America.

Regretfully, I missed his last act at my brother Michel’s wedding. In his twilight years he would sing only at his grandchildren’s weddings. He was a fixture at weddings where, after some Arak, he would sing about eternal love and gallantry and traditional mountain ballads. Slouching was for others.īut for many in Habib Nader’s bucolic village of Qubayyat, he was known for a voice so powerful and gritty it drowned out church bells. Walking the streets and fields or leading his pack animals through winding dirt roads and ravines of Akkar province, he seemed to float effortlessly. He was slender and tall in his improvised turban.

That face was graced with the most arrogant, majestic white mustache the rugged mountains of Northern Lebanon have ever seen. Habib Nader was a handsome, proud mountain man his reddish high cheek bones finely chiseled a beguiling twinkle in his deep brown eyes. Only Habib Nader’s love of his seven sons and daughters and their offspring would surpass his devotion to Arak, tobacco and firearms.

A gentle man, he treated his Arak like his own fresh tobacco or his World War II-vintage rifles and shotguns: with silent tenderness and reverence. But in Habib’s old house, where traditions were religiously observed, diluting Arak was akin to blasphemy. He used to say that “to make high-proof Arak, you need the best grapes, in the best hands to be plucked at the right time.” His Arak was so potent you had to pour more water than usual to turn this Lebanese version of pure colorless “White Lightnin’” into white, anise-scented alcohol.

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