Clay and Caroline Hollister, Living and Raising a Family in the Midst of a Civil War, Hist 150 Honors Spring 2021, Conducted by Parker Perkins, 17 March 2021

Overview of the Interview

In this interview, Clay and Caroline Hollister discuss their experiences in living through the Lebanese Civil War. Clay and Caroline describe the unique challenges that being a foreigner and raising a family presented, as well as their impressions of the changes that the country underwent. Beginning in roughly 1975, the Lebanese Civil War was a violent conflict characterized by religious sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians, as well as the destruction of a once-great nation. Lebanon still has not recovered from this war, which ended in 1990. Moving to Lebanon in 1973, Clay and Caroline were able to experience Lebanon both before and after the war had begun, giving them a unique perspective on the effects of war on a nation. The interview begins with Clay and Caroline introducing their move to Lebanon, before describing the pre-war state of the country. As the interview progresses, Clay and Caroline provide insight into the atmosphere of the country as the war was building – especially within the academic world, in which Clay worked. Clay and Caroline discuss the challenges associated with raising a family during this time, as well as the intersection of gender with roles during war, touching upon their experiences with major flashpoint events, like the Damour Massacre. Finally, Clay and Caroline explain how they escaped the country – and the lasting mental and physical toll from war that they would carry back with them to the US. This interview demonstrates the social, cultural, and physical effects that wars often exhibit on societies, focusing on Lebanon’s national history.

Biography

Clay Hollister grew up in America, where he received his degree in English from Duke University. Working for the Nixon administration, he would lose his job after Watergate, spurring him to find a new career which led him to Lebanon. He moved to Lebanon in 1973 to work at a television station associated with a secondary school on the outskirts of Beirut. He would also work for the Peace Corps and NFPA before retiring as a high ranking FEMA administrator in the wake of 9/11.

Caroline Hollister grew up in America as well, and would meet Clay while at Duke University. She  accompanied Clay on his move to Lebanon with their first daughter, Gambrill Hollister. While in Lebanon, their second daughter Sarah Hollister was born. Caroline is well traveled and has a keen interest in international cultures and religions.

Transcript

Parker Perkins
Okay, so I’m recording it now. And I just have a handful of questions. So you guys are free to talk as much or as little as you would like you can skip questions or add anything else that you want to. So what I would really like to focus on today is your your all’s experiences in Lebanon. So I know that you moved to Lebanon Grandpa, correct to work at the American University there?

Clay Hollister
International College, the secondary school.

Parker Perkins
The secondary school. Okay. And you taught English, correct?

Clay Hollister
No, I didn’t, I was not assigned as a teacher.

Parker Perkins
Oh

Clay Hollister
I was assigned a developmental job, which was brand new. That was the […] secondary school, had a relationship with the local television station. And the school wanted to expand its ability to its teachers, and its skills in education around the Gulf in the Middle East, the other Arab states.

And they, the television station, and the President of the school, came up with this idea to start a company, the decision was made between the school and the television station, to start a new operation to try and make educational films like Public Broadcasting System, only in Arabic for the Arab market. In other words, create things like Sesame Street, or Mr. Rogers, or the science shows or cultural shows, which could be shown on television, in Egypt and Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, that’s, that’s why that company, make it happen. Because I’ve been producing television in New York. So we know the guy’s sort of a long story. But in any case, that’s what we were hired to do sort of brand new venture.

Caroline Hollister
It was not a we, it was a him.

I was, I was what they call the State Department, the trailing spouse. So I came along.

And your – I – was pregnant with your mother, when we arrived. And so she was born over there. And that was quite an experience because everyone who – it’s a very family, community country, nobody does anything alone by themselves. So every woman who was pregnant, and felt she had to deliver her baby in the hospital, came to Beirut University Hospital, from all over the Middle East. And so did their mothers and their fathers and their sisters and their brothers and their cousin so that the hallways, and rooms were full of family. It was one step removed from starting up a little fire and cooking something for everyone to eat while we waited. So it was a very different kind of experience that we had nobody or very few who we knew very well and did not …

Clay Hollister
No family!

Caroline Hollister
And did not expect anybody to be there. And that was just fine by me was a very different kind of experience. But your mother – Oh, tell him about getting his mother to the hospital.

Clay Hollister
Oh, have you heard that story?

Parker Perkins
Believe I have – where you were like, “people were like shooting their guns up in the air”. If you want to recount the story, you’re welcome to, so.

Clay Hollister
I don’t think it’s part of your, your questioning.

Parker Perkins
Well, we’ll get a few more questions. So what was it like as an American in pre-Civil War Lebanon, especially Beirut, if you can just kind of describe maybe the culture you know, your day to day life was like your interactions with a lot of the local Lebanese people. I mean, what was it like pre-Civil War in Lebanon?

Clay Hollister
Well, that would be your grandmother cuz she dealt with the locals far more than I did.

Caroline Hollister
Everybody is very friendly. You want to get your gas in your car. You pull up to the gas pump. And a little 12 year old boy comes scurried out of the gas station and wants to clean every window, wash the car, fill up the gas tank and nothing will do that while he’s doing that. You get out of the car, you go into the office and you sit and have coffee, or sometimes a salad or sometimes anything that whatever time of day it is and you talk and have a lovely time and fill you up and you pay your money and then you go to buy oranges of the next little venue, the market and I – As we both did or acquired a sufficient amount of Arabic to get ourselves into trouble, I could, I could talk in the market and get the food we needed. And then once a week, because these local markets – we were what, about the distance of maybe Chapel Hill, to Raleigh. So we go into Beirut, to go to an English stores, Smith’s Market, Smith’s Store.

Clay Hollister
Supermarket

Caroline Hollister
And well, it was a very, very small supermarket. It was British, wasn’t it?

Clay Hollister
British, yes.

Caroline Hollister
So we would go in once, I guess every once a week, once every two weeks and buy staples. And then occasionally we went into the Beirut market to buy food wherever all ever all natives bought their for

Clay Hollister
All the stalls, food stalls and things. They were super friendly. It was just wonderful, really nice to us nice to each other generally, you know.

And when we had, your aunt with us, Lebanese were crazy about little kids, especially little blonde haired girls, oh, people would come out of the stores to give her sweets and touch her head. Oh, you know!

Caroline Hollister
Everybody loved your mother. They would say “basmala”, “basmala” [abbreviation for the Arabic phrase “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful”] as a blessing for Allah. And they just thought she was the Sun and Moon! The only thing they were very sorry, to hear when I would say, I would be asked how many children do you have? And I will say we have two girls. Oh, that’s too bad. No sons! Girls did not count as children, your children were your sons. And so I was never particularly bothered by that. I just thought it was kind of interesting. But one time going to the market, the only way I could buy a chicken for us to have to eat was to buy one that had recently been slaughtered, and still had half its feathers on. And I bought it, it was hanging on a hook in the market. And I bought it and took it home and spent quite a bit of time pulling out the rest of the feathers, which is not easy since they’re in like porcupine quills. And so more or less cleaning it and really doing what a butcher usually does. So it was a bigger challenge. And that’s one of the first times we had company related to your grandfather’s job. It was over mix of the local television people and the local college people and the Arab television people. And of course, most of them are Muslim, very few Christians.

So, I fixed this wonderful meal that I knew and people really loved it was really a big hit here in the United States. Well, like an idiot. I totally forgot. I fixed pork chops. And everyone was very polite. But I noticed there was more tomatoes and rice and and vegetables eaten than than meat. What about the story very we’re going to – Oh, oh, we learned also. If you ask for something, and someone said, Oh, we can have that in two weeks. It took us about –

Clay Hollister
Two minutes.

Caroline Hollister
No, no, no. I will do that. We learned very quickly, that if you – if they said well, you can have it in two weeks. We knew we learn we were never going to get it. The Arabs or the Lebanese, who are very different. They descended from the Phoenicians and Christians. There are 32 different religious sects in Lebanon. They haven’t done a census since 1930. And that’s the source of a lot of their problems. And so if you ask them, they everybody wants to give you something. Your grandfather once complimented a friend on his tie. Were on he took it off and gave it to your grandpa!

Clay Hollister
There’s no way I could not take that tie. I would have offended him. That was really embarrassing. No, I was just making conversation!

Saying nice things to people, the way we do in this country.

Lebanese are really great people that are socially fun. They’re they’re very nice to us.

Caroline Hollister
Entrepreneurs. Yeah, I mean, they start up businesses at the drop of a hat.

Clay Hollister
And they’re all over the world, businesses that are Lebanese.

Caroline Hollister
Tell him the story about the restaurant.

Clay Hollister
Oh, we went to –

Caroline Hollister
One of our trips into Beirut, we have your mother, who by this time might be what, six or eight months, maybe a year, but a little kid and your aunt. And with a big trip, we’ll go in. We’ll have a nice lunch with the kids in a nice little restaurant.

Clay Hollister
We got there. It was lovely. And maybe when the kids looked at menus, and we wanted omelets, you know, I wanted an omelet. Because it looked great. They have –

Caroline Hollister
A special kind of omelet.

Clay Hollister
A western –

Caroline Hollister
No, you wanted a ham omelet.

Clay Hollister
Anyway. So we place the order, and nothing happens and nothing happens. And, you know, 20 minutes go by everyone is eaten, drink – drunk their soda, whatever it was that they were having. So I called the waiter over and said, well, you know, just a minute. We’re coming, “schweischwa” [unsure what this means]. No problems. Don’t – not to worry. Another 20 minutes goes by, well, we sat there an hour. I guess it was an hour and a half. Finally, the head guy came over and I said, look – what goes on! We’ll have a peanut butter sandwich. And we hope, well – they didn’t have any ham. So they were trying to find ham in the markets all around town. And they hadn’t had any luck. But –

Caroline Hollister
They know they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t tell us they didn’t have it.

Clay Hollister
Yeah.

Caroline Hollister
Because they never not have it. They always have it. So they say send a runner to the market to dry and buy ham. Well, of course, it’s a pork product. And not as frequently hung and displayed and sold as it is here.

Clay Hollister
So we switched whatever we were going to have to something they had already. But it’s a desire to please. They’re very, very nice. It was good. Before the civil war started, we had a really nice life.

Parker Perkins
How did it compare maybe to life in America living in pre-Civil War Lebanon?

Clay Hollister
No, no comparison at all. Compared to the Lebanese, the Americans are rude!

Really!

Parker Perkins
I believe it.

Clay Hollister
I mean, you know, the, it’s not the same. The welcoming sense that we got in Lebanon – to each other and to foreigners was terrific, I think. I don’t think Americans do that. Except maybe in the south, is that open and welcoming. Georgia might be, at least from our experience.

Caroline Hollister
The other nice thing is that what, what I, we both have traveled in other countries all around the world. So this was not a singular experience, but that everything is outside. You go and you have something to eat, or you walk down the street and people are outside walking and talking and you’re in the sunshine. And when it rains, maybe you duck under something or you have an umbrella. And it’s just it’s beautiful and it’s outside and you, coming back to the United States, one of the things you notice, above all is how closed in we are. Walled in, a few windows, how how are you have no porches. And in the south, which I think must have had probably a very special group of immigrants getting it all started, but everyone has a front porch and you sit on your front porch and your neighbors walk by. And you say hi and you – Oh, you stop in when your grandfather was working in Beirut, and –

Clay Hollister
And did you understand we lived about 12 kilometers outside of Beirut?

Parker Perkins
Yes

Caroline Hollister
Say 15 miles. So it was – it’s like the distance from Raleigh to Chapel Hill. Maybe a little shorter. But well, while we were there, your grandfather would be off doing mens’ work and making decisions and movies and traveling all over eating the biggest shrimp he’s ever seen in his life. And I would be home with like with the two girls. People would stop by – “how are you”, they, they’d encouraged me to come out and go walking with them. If I went out by myself, I’d soon have several other women walking with us. Just outside and they, if they don’t speak Arabic, they speak French. And if they don’t speak French they speak, you know, 15 other languages just as fluidly.

Clay Hollister
It was amazing to find out how multilingual the Lebanese are. A lot of Europeans are the same way.

Caroline Hollister
You found that with your German friends that they could switch from one language to another? Throw in a few. I mean, that’s like your uncle Marcus. I mean, his his his, he and his mother. I mean, she translate scientific journals from Italian into English. And it probably has set the standard for many of these technical terms.

Parker Perkins
For sure, definitely very impressive. So it sounds like you guys had a very nice life living in pre-Civil War Lebanon. Could you guys kind of sense that it was like tension was starting to build or things were starting to change, as it got closer to the actual fighting coming out? Like was it noticeable that things were happening?

Caroline Hollister
Absolutely.

When we arrived, the night of the university students’ rebellion, and they were, they were doing a proper insurrection, not Washington DC and, you know, real one with and the military was hurling tear gas into the compound. And of course, our housing was – our temporary housing was arriving in the middle of tear gas. And I was having not a good reaction to arriving in the middle of gunfire and tear gas.

Clay Hollister
We were exhausted. We got there were absolutely wiped out. And it was at night. And we hadn’t had anything to eat. It was all – We were tired, and your grandmother was exhausted cuz she was pregnant. We had, you know, Gambrill with us and, and they put us up in the dormitory teacher’s room until we got a house for ourselves, which we weren’t sure when that would be as the Lebanese say: soon. Soon, you’ll get a house. Yeah, this was Americans. So, but it wasn’t that different. But it was a it was a really a rough night. If it was a nice, quiet place. This was just – I don’t think there was any trouble with the [unintelligable]. So it was not – the Civil War hadn’t begun. But there’s always I mean, it hadn’t begun overtly, stuff going on together in there.

Caroline Hollister
Watched it build, Parker. We watched it build and there was clearly danger in the air from the time we arrived onward.

Parker Perkins
And when did you all arrive? When did you all arrive?

Caroline Hollister
We arrived? Well, your mother was born in June, and we were three months, I guess February,

Clay Hollister
February, March, March, February, beginning of March, – [19]73.

Caroline Hollister
And things were beginning. And over the course of the time we were there, several incidents that weren’t – we weren’t involved with directly but there were rumblings between all the various religious groups amongst themselves anyway. And at one point, the Palestinians started getting antsy and uprising and making noise. And in the every aspect of the Lebanese Government is done by quotas. It’s where we do not want our country to go. And there with 32 sects and 16 major sects, you have to have the Prime Minister of one Sunni Muslim. And the President was a Shia and then the –

Clay Hollister
Prime minister was Christian. [They confused this slightly – the president is Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister is Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies is Shia Muslim]

Caroline Hollister
So every position had to have be filled by a majority sect. And because they had done no census since 1930, when the French were there or had left there has been no census done, there was no updating. So the entire quota system is based on the 1930 census, [The census was actually taken in 1932]

Clay Hollister
Which has no relationship to any reality.

Caroline Hollister
I mean, Muslims living there, have, you know, 15 children and the Christians do not, they might have 10. So the whole population dynamic is changed dramatically over the time. And this this was a real tension, then you throw into this mix the Palestinians, boom, Yasser Arafat did he is best as did the – Who was the general? Begins with an H, who is in charge now. They don’t want a solution. They enjoy doing what they’re doing. They have all the power they want. And as a result, Palestinians do not have very good living conditions and in the most part, and the tension began between the Christians, and the Muslims, and the Palestinians who mostly were Christian. And finally, you know, leading up to it, and

Clay Hollister
We’re getting off track.

Caroline Hollister
Well, it’s what it was like to live there. We had, we invited a young teacher and his wife to come for dinner, about halfway through.

Clay Hollister
Through our tour there. But at the end of 73, getting into 74, that’s when things were starting to get a little exciting.

Caroline Hollister
But we had them come for dinner. And while they they arrived, and they said you know there’s, there are people lining, tires, car tires up along the road. And sure enough, while we were having dinner, the Lebanese covered the road, one road, north and south, the one road –

This one road north and south. They piled up tires, they set them on fire, and they burn for weeks.

Clay Hollister
They block the road completely.

Caroline Hollister
They were objecting to the importation of Somali bananas. Because they grew bananas, the Lebanese. But we lived over –

Clay Hollister
A banana farm.

Caroline Hollister
Which, there were bananas from all the way from our house all the way down to the the ocean. And so we had these, this young couple stayed with us for three weeks,

Clay Hollister
They couldn’t get home. So they came for dinner out, right? Yeah. But you we adapted you get used to these things. It’s the gradual frog in the boiling water that’s warm and then ends up boiling, and you’re not really realizing it.

Caroline Hollister
We were realizing. We were trying, we were trying to outlast it. We were hoping that it would get worse. And on another occasion. We couldn’t get into Beirut. I think you did get into Beirut. From time to time.

Clay Hollister
I did.

Caroline Hollister
The kids couldn’t go to school. So we started a school for all the expats who had children in our neighborhood –

Clay Hollister
Your grandmother did, she began the school.

Caroline Hollister
And we gave them as much education as [unintelligable] of those of us who were behind. And then when it really got bad. The school – Oh, I remember what April 19. It was a significant date. And that was when the Palestinians shot up a bus containing Christians on their way to something that was sacred and religious probably connected with Easter or, or with the new year. And that’s after that point. There was more violence than not,

Clay Hollister
It started to get dangerous.

Caroline Hollister
At one point, the school said we’re going to evacuate you to Athens and put you in safe quarters for the – until this thing settles down.

Clay Hollister
And those were called the troubles. Always the troubles. Troubles are not going to last long. But a euphemism for it could be a euphemism for just people protesting in the streets, or all out gunfire and rockets and mortars. So the troubles meant, whatever, whatever, whatever they wanted to mean. But when someone says we’re expecting some troubles, get in your house and close the door. Hope you have enough food.

Caroline Hollister
So we were evacuated to Greece where we stayed for a week or so and then you came back and left us there.

Clay Hollister
I came back to see if this is worth are going back to some of our friends cut their tours and went home.

Caroline Hollister
But we decided to stay and stay.

Clay Hollister
I signed another two year contract.

Caroline Hollister
And and I was so I was in. I was in Athens and your grandfather was in Beirut. And we didn’t know how things are going with each either one of us. And then we came back. And were they we joked at that point we’re approaching Thanksgiving, we said, well, we’re probably gonna have two days of Christmas shopping before there’s another blockage and we can’t go anywhere. So sure enough, it was about two days. And then we were, we were really quite isolated. And it was it was getting to be extremely serious. And the Christian – we happen to live, we did not know this –

Clay Hollister
Did you see my videotape that I did, but –

Parker Perkins
I watched part of that, so.

Clay Hollister
Well, it’s only three minutes long. Six minutes long, but that tells the story of what your grandmother is about to relay to you about that night.

Caroline Hollister
Well, the – over Christmas, the Christians, minority, which is led by Shamu a former prime minister, they bulldozed the Palestinian camp into the ocean. And then all hell broke loose, the – in Syria, the Palestinians are required to be in the army, so that they can be kept an eye on and everyone knows where the men are. So at this point, the the Lebanese, the Palestinians who are in the Syrian army, really kind of make up the “Fedayeen”. Part, one part of the “Fedayeen”, and all of the Middle East. And they couldn’t stand it anymore when this village was bulldozed into the sea. So they – The Syrians said all right, you know, go take revenge. So the Palestinians came over the mountains of Syria and Lebanon, across the Bekaa Valley, and then over the mountains, to the sea. And we happen to be on the edge of those mountains above the sea.

Clay Hollister
This is the Battle of Damour, you can Google it, you can read all about us what was what we were living in.

Caroline Hollister
So at that point, we were a bunch of experts in living in this compound, South Africans, Canadians, Americans, French. So it was everyone said, well, let’s all get together at the school, where at least it is a quadrangle, and we get all our families that each have their own room. And we can stay together because there is safety in numbers. And we only had a very, very little bit of Arabic. So we certainly did not want to run any risk. So we moved up with, the night before we moved up, they mortared us from on high, and one of our American friends stood on his roof with his wife and two dogs, and they watched the mortars coming down. Idiots that they are they were from Flint, Michigan. So we decided your grandfather knew very well from his time in Vietnam, what a mortar was all what it was all about. So we all huddled together in your aunt’s bedroom with sleeping on mattresses, while the mortars went off all around us. And then the next morning, we went up to the school where we get a room to stay in. And do did every other expat who was in the community. And we knew that the Fedayeen were on their way. And we didn’t know how or when they were coming in or what they were going to do. And you told the story, – and then you –

Clay Hollister
I’ll send you the link to that story that gives you the details of it. Okay. Do you have other questions? Other areas, we should be touching for your?

Parker Perkins
For sure. So I kind of want to get the perspective of having a family during this time as well. So obviously, it seems like it was very, very stressful. How do you think having two children, two very young children, how did that affect your experience with the civil war – did it kind of change how you guys thought, what your actions were maybe, did it change your priorities while you were trying to navigate these difficult times, having you know, my mother and my aunt with you there?

Caroline Hollister
Well, well, our our basic policy as parents has been to take care of our children. And part of taking care of them is not to scare them half to death. So we never expressed any fear never spoke about anything that we were worried about. I read stories, we played games, we had fun. There were other parents who had no business having children. One, one mother, told her little girl was the same age as your aunt that bad men were going to come and rape them. This is a kid who is maybe five or six years old, hasn’t not – what in the hell is rape to start with. And they would just express fear all day long. It was it was out of – way out of proportion. And, and it’s something you’d never do as a parent.

Clay Hollister
Your grandmother was phenomenal. She would, she kept the spirit of the house up and the kids entertained and happy. And despite all the bad stuff that was going on around that was terrific. Absolutely.

Caroline Hollister
That that one year, we moved 21 times Parker. 21 times, and every time we move to a new place, whether it was a hotel, or a mattresses on the floor, I would rearrange the room to look like our home back in Beirut back in – where we lived. And I sang them the same bedtime songs, and we read the same stories. And we just kept a little oasis of calm and never worried, never had any. And we didn’t either. I mean, I knew we were one way or the other, we would solve this and we would get out of it or help would come and we’d be saved from it. And nobody did anything. Part of the problem was that the phone system is so bad, nobody, when they couldn’t reach us, they didn’t think anything of it. Because the phones in Lebanon hardly ever work. So finally, one of the people from your grandfather’s office came.

Clay Hollister
This is when we were trapped up in the school.

Caroline Hollister
After about two weeks, two weeks or so she came up and she was a druid –

Clay Hollister
Druze

Caroline Hollister
Druze. And it was Druze territory. She wasn’t a druid. She drove up. And she she had instinctive understanding that things were not all hunky dory. And she came up and just was paying a visit, “ahlan wasahlan” and life is good, and not to worry. And she saw what was going on, went immediately back to the school, and contacted her Druze friends and, and very popular Kamal Jumblatt, who all lived in the area where we were. And she helped negotiate our release –

Clay Hollister
The soldiers were running the place, Syrian soldiers – actually still Syrian, the Syrian army, but their soldiers were Palestinian, incorporated into it. And they they, you know, had to negotiate a reason for letting what – we were potential hostages. Let us go. So we were hostages. But so it took a little bit of negotiations on the part of this lady and her political contacts, to let us leave and go into Beirut.

Caroline Hollister
Every night, they would bomb the city of Damour, which is where we went and had coffee and got our gas filled and food and bought our food. And, of course, we didn’t have any food. So every day, the soldiers feeling sympathetic to their hostages would happily, fortunately bring us food of various sorts and shapes. But we had no electricity –

Clay Hollister
This was food from the stores that they were looting as they were slaughtering their way through Damour, I mean, this was not how you want to get your food.

Caroline Hollister
Especially when you knew the store owners

To compound it, the Lebanese Air Force thought they could come to our rescue by bombing the place. So if we weren’t worried about what the Fedayeen would do, we had the Lebanese Air Force, which fortunately could probably not hit a ball field if –

Clay Hollister
They hit the ball field. That’s what they hit!

Caroline Hollister
And then finally we got out we drove down the road. Your mother was fast asleep, being the cute little baby but she was and your aunt was sitting in her – Was she in a car seat or she would just sit you lap? This, this is before mandatory car seats and God knows what. So we were all up front together. And as we drove down the hill, your aunt said, nothing – This all looks just fine Mummy, which was great. And then whereupon she kind of snuggled up with your mother and, and fell fast asleep. We turned the corner into the city of Damour. And there were dead bodies hanging out of the windows, and a barber chair in the middle of the street and stores all –

Clay Hollister
On fire.

Caroline Hollister
And we drove through that and we went straight to the school, where upon your grandfather said he was terminating his contract.

Clay Hollister
And we flew home.

Caroline Hollister
Well tell about the airport, it was the British, everywhere in the world, the two of us have been,

Clay Hollister
The British have helped

Caroline Hollister
The British have been the best people, you could trust them.

Clay Hollister
They organized the convoy to get us, all of us potential hostages again, out of the country.

Caroline Hollister
I don’t know five or 10 cars?

Clay Hollister
Five or 10, I can’t remember. We all met in a convoy on the Corniche along the coastal water. And we were escorted by some police. And we never know what the who, they are for, at a high speed, God, we raced to the airport.

Caroline Hollister
Lying down on the floor of the car.

Clay Hollister
We had to get down in the car. And we zapped out to the airport, which in itself was a mass of armed men guarding everything and you never knew who they were affiliated with. But we got on we got on an airplane and took off. And did you see the last? Did you ever see the film Argo?

Parker Perkins
I’ve seen parts of it, I haven’t seen the full film.

Caroline Hollister
You’ve got to see the whole thing.

Clay Hollister
You will understand what’s going on, that’ll give you a feeling for it. Also the other film you would want to see if you want to further research is a film called The Insult. And that this is about the Battle of Damour. It’s a feature film. And it’s the story of two men, one a Palestinian and one a Christian Lebanese, and their relationship after the Battle of Damour and the politics of life in Beirut, at this very time we were there because it’s a great film, you get it on Amazon, you can see it being sold.

Caroline Hollister
It’s all based on your sect, and your religion and your family. And it’s it’s a place we don’t want to go in this country. And then it’s just, we we’ve seen it and trust me not only does it not work to be clumped into your identity groups, it kills everybody.

Parker Perkins
For sure. Um, so grandpa I know, grammy already talked a bit about, you know, what she was kind of doing to help, you know, keep my mother and aunt Gambrill, you know, calm throughout the whole experience and make it as easy –

Clay Hollister
She was running the family. Yeah.

Parker Perkins
What, what was kind of your role? I guess, as a father, in this scenario, did you have any sort of different, you know, concerns on your mind, when compared to grammy?

Clay Hollister
A lot of concerns, to try to make sure that, you know, we were safe and that the school was paying attention to us, and we were paying attention to the people around. So it was

Caroline Hollister
There wasn’t a lot that we could do

Clay Hollister
Not much it was really an awareness, trying to be aware. So you could conceivably do something, but there was stuff going on, you know, we we went didn’t understand how good or how bad it was. It’s pretty complicated. And –

Caroline Hollister
We basically laid low and we tried not to not to draw attention to ourselves, and not to go anywhere where they didn’t want us to go.

Clay Hollister
That was pretty much it. We made it out. Okay, it was quite an adventure.

Parker Perkins
And I know you briefly talked about it. Was there any sort of single straw that broke the camel’s back that made you decide to leave Lebanon or was it was it just a, you know, a confluence kind of building up of these events that –

Clay Hollister
The second evacuation, we were evacuated twice to Egypt, the second time in Greece, or excuse me, Egypt, Greece! The second time we were there, we knew this was not happening. And what should have done that in hindsight, was just had Caroline go home with the kids, which is what friends of ours did. And they went back and tried to close up the place, sell the car, whatever. That would have been. That would have probably been the right decision, but we wanted to stick together. No, your grandmother is no wilting violet.

Clay Hollister
The second time we were there, we knew this was not happening. And what should have done that in hindsight, was just had Caroline, go home with the kids, which is what friends of ours too. And they went back and tried to close up the place, sell the car, whatever that would have been. That would have probably been the right decision. But we wanted to stick together. Your grandmother is no wilting violets. She’s not about to run off an adventure, miss it. So –

Caroline Hollister
We believed in the school. And what it was doing – We love, we love Lebanon and all the friends we had there. The idea of leaving and abandoning that

Clay Hollister
It’s kind of running away, which we didn’t really want to do. And everyone was telling us and telling me when I signed up, troubles are going to be over. It’s all done. Fighting is finished. Things are quiet. Of course, that was completely wrong. They were just getting warmed up. So.

Parker Perkins
Was it, was it recognizable at all – Damour, Beirut? Would – If you had seen those images that you saw when you were leaving [when you first arrived] in 1973, Would they have looked anything the same? I mean, how much did the country change from when you guys arrived to when you all left?

Clay Hollister
Oh, dramatically. The whole high rent hotel district down on the Corniche was bombed and shot up and closed and in flames. The city –

Caroline Hollister
Nothing was spared!

Clay Hollister
The casino, which was an absolutely spectacular casino by world class standards mostly destroyed. The top hotels, the Phoenicia, the St. George, go on. I mean, all shot up the whole green line separating basically Tripoli north and Sidon and Damour South, the line of demarcation, was a free fire zone for everybody, for anybody who was pissed off about anything. And so the city that we knew when we got there, was completely gone. Which is very sad for our friends who were Lebanese living there. Out of jobs, out of work, out of out of the home. So.

It reminds me, or imagine that after World War Two, what Berlin must have been like, because there were – even though the the Allies had won, and life was getting sort of stabilized. There were still, you know, things were blowing up. There were snipers, German snipers, killing Americans.

But it was not safe.

Caroline Hollister
It was not safe for years, which is why we stayed so long, and they’re now still there. But Lebanon has been a problem. Since almost the dawn of time. In 1958, Marines, one of the Marines went in to preserve the Christian government of Chamoun, who was the bad guy and bulldozed all the Palestinians into the sea. So it’s, it’s it’s an uneasy place. It’s, I mean, I know like the, what’s the reconstruction period after the American Civil War, where the Yankees came down and tried to take advantage of the Southerns and make life miserable,

Clay Hollister
To make money.

Caroline Hollister
But it’s interesting, one last thing is, of course, in the course, but people don’t appreciate about the war, especially as civil war is all of the prisons get opened. So the fighters are not disciplined army guys, you know, these are crazy people, murderous people with people of the wrong sect in the wrong place,

Clay Hollister
With grudges!

Caroline Hollister
And then all the all the mental institutions were opened and released. Then you have the Communist Party. It takes advantage of this chaos and this despair, and it goes roaming through with their own militia. And at one point, the idiots who sat stood on their roof with their dogs from Flint, Michigan, and watch the mortars fall around them. They were so concerned about the communists coming through and demanding all the Americans give them money. They burned all of their American Express checks, so they wouldn’t be put in any danger. I don’t know what they lived on the rest of the time.

Clay Hollister
You know what American Express check was? There were no credit cards. So what you did was you went in America, or wherever you were traveling to, you went to your home country, you went to an American Express office and gave the money and they would give you these checks, which were written on American Express, and they were negotiable checks anywhere at any American Express company, or office. And American Express was everywhere. They were, they were everywhere. So that was like a credit card.

Caroline Hollister
It was like cash.

Clay Hollister
You could sell them, trade them in for dollars. To burn them, was – it wouldn’t have done them any, the the bad guys would have had no use for these checks, because no American Express store would give them any money.

Parker Perkins
Makes sense. So what were you all feeling as you left the country? I mean, what was going through your head as you as you were able to finally leave and head back to Greece?

Clay Hollister
Now what? Sort of, you know, what happens next?

Caroline Hollister
Well, we –

Clay Hollister
We were glad to get out. And disappointed.

Caroline Hollister
Wanted to, to go home, I was concerned about your mother and your aunt. And I really wanted to go home where it was safe, to be somewhere where it was safe. And for that reason my heart goes out to so many places in this country, where there are horrible people running around, and they’re not being kept in prison. And there are fewer and fewer places and cities that are safe, being safe and secure. Knowing you’re not going to get shot, and that you’re going to be able to sleep calmly through the night. And your kids are going to be okay, your husband’s going to be okay. And so I want to go home to my parents.

So when we got to London, we took with us, another American traveled with her. She was only a 26 year old teacher. So we we kept her with us to help take care of her as well. And, but we got to London, we booked our flight to Boston, and called my parents and said, we’re arriving in Boston tomorrow. And can you come and pick us up? Which of course they gladly did. And then we go back to quiet New Hampshire. And where nothing is happening. It’s it’s February, it’s winter. We are both in shellshock. There’s hardly any way we know how to explain it to anybody. Because no one has any frame of reference. And then I remembered or my mother reminded me that there were a couple of people in town who were descendants of a family that had founded a school in first Damascus and then it moved to Lebanon. And they might be people we might enjoy talking to. So we did we went down and talked to Seelye Bixler. And he had actually been over in Lebanon in the 1920s. And he knew the country. He knew what the history was. He knew all of this. So talking to him about it sort of helped make the transition. And I remember a couple of nights the furnace would go on, and we would both start, and be sound asleep thinking it’s gunfire. And then we went to see what The Man Who Would Be King [a 1975 movie directed by John Huston and starring Michael Caine].

Clay Hollister
Oh, yes.

Caroline Hollister
Maybe that wasn’t there. But But at one point, there are these two horsemen they’re all playing a game of Polo with somebody’s head. And at that point, the two of us had, we’ve had it. We don’t need any more death and destruction. So we left.

Clay Hollister
We don’t leave movies very often. So.

So it did. It took a while. It just is. And it’s somebody that will always stay with us. I don’t know how much your mother remembers, your aunt had fleeting memories, but gosh she was five going on six.

Your mother was very anxious about the sound of fireworks for the longest time. We remember that because every fourth of July, particularly when we were up in New Hampshire. Those fireworks displays going off all the time and your mother was really – wouldn’t go outside, wouldn’t go anywhere near it. So, I sort of attributed that to all the noise, the gunfire that we’ve heard, sort of in her mind.

Caroline Hollister
I mean there is no value placed on life in these countries and in many countries around the world.

Clay Hollister
If you’re angry, if you’re angry, it goes quickly to violence. Well, we covered everything. Parker, what do you think?

Parker Perkins
You have, I really appreciate it. Thank you guys very much for sharing your experiences.

Research

Modern day Lebanon began its life as Mount Lebanon, a territory within the Ottoman Empire. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, France was given control of Mount Lebanon, and the nearby territories of Greater Syria. Mount Lebanon’s population mainly almost wholly of Maronite Christians, who favored the French government.

France annexed much of Greater Syria to Mount Lebanon, as a way to support the friendly Maronite Christians, creating the nation of Greater Lebanon (modern Lebanon). The annexation of parts of Greater Syria, though increasing Lebanon’s area by 100% and population by 50%, would have unintended consequences for the ethnic and religious makeup of the area. The Syrian territories, which France had annexed for the Lebanese, were majority Muslim.

The Maronite Christians were now only a slight majority of the country’s religious and ethnic population. The French, who favored the Maronite Christians, gave them much more power over their new Muslim counterparts, leading to great tension within Lebanon as the Muslims grew increasingly bitter about their situation. Power within the government was split between the Maronites, Sunni Muslims, and Shia Muslims, and the various groups were able to compromise until about 1948. In 1948, Israel was founded, and a large number of Palestinian refugees flooded Lebanon, adding another powerful ethnic group into the situation. Tensions would continue to rise as the Palestinian refugees within Lebanon engaged in anti-Israeli guerilla activities, while became increasingly allied with Lebanese Muslims.

Tensions  boiled over in 1973, when Christian Lebanese soldiers attacked Palestinian guerillas in some of the refugee camps. Retaliatory attacks between Christian and Muslim groups would eventually grow in scale and frequency, leading to the outbreak of a full on civil war. The city of Damour, near where the Hollisters lived, was hit very hard during the war – in 1976, the city was destroyed and the Christian civilians were massacred by Palestinian and Islamic fighters. The war would not end until late 1990, leaving massive amounts of destruction and death in its wake.

Bibliography

CHAMIE, JOSEPH. “THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CAUSES.” World Affairs, vol. 139, no. 3, 1976, pp. 171–188. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20671682. Accessed 4 Apr. 2021

FRANCOISE DEMULDER The Palestinian quarter “La Quarantaine” in Beirut 1976 G. Lamoureux stamp.

Makdisi, Jean S. Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir. Persea Books, 1999.b

Commentary

When I discussed the process and shared the transcript back with my grandparents, they were just happy to see that their story was being shared with the world. They feel that their experiences are important for others to learn from so that similar conflicts can hopefully be prevented. They approved the transcript on 4/4/2021.

Recording and Transcription Process

I interviewed my grandparents over Zoom, and recorded the interview as a video. I separated the audio of the interview from the video. The audio was partially choppy due to poor internet connection, but this was easily fixed during the editing process. The audio was fed through Otter.ai and then heavily edited to correct for typos stemming from the automatic transcription process. During this editing process, the Columbia University style guide was used to inform my usage of brackets for historical information, corrections, and notes.