One of the advantages of living at Mafraq Sharooq in Musaitbeh, Beirut, was the presence of Mustapha’s grocery just around the corner. It was not a modern supermarket, not the brightest, cleanest, most organized store in West Beirut, which is exactly what was so nice about it.
Mustapha Kais, the owner and manager and father of all the helpers, was always there, a small bundle of energy, always a little worn looking, with a three-day beard and an overgrown mustache, greeting customers by name, concerned about stocking whatever they wanted, opening their charge account or searching for it in his enormous book, taking orders on the phone, issuing quick commands, sending a boy on a bike to someone who urgently needed a dozen eggs or a mouse trap. If he had a moment to breathe, Mustapha would take a sip from his yerba mate, a South American tea, entirely mysterious to me. He drank it through a metal tube, a kind of straw.
If you came to the store looking for Corn Flakes and did not find them, Corn Flakes would appear on the shelves soon. If you didn’t ask he would tell you that he had some American crackers. And if you were away for a while and showed up again, Mustapha would pop the lids off all your favorite soft drinks, cold and wet from his ice chest.
He knew the likes and dislikes, the buying habits of all his customers. He once told me that a Russian housewife would never buy a kilo of anything, not cheese, not squash, not even potatoes. She would buy for tonight’s dinner, as though tomorrow did not exist. I didn’t know. Mustapha knew. When my husband Wayne started rumors of trouble coming by carrying fifty pounds of flour out of the store, Mustapha told people to calm down, “Mr. Fuller likes to buy in quantity.”
Going to the grocery was not like going shopping. It was more like confessing your need to someone who would find it for you and put it in a bag and help you get it home. No money necessary; he would just record it in his big book. Mustapha was a friend. In fact, we once visited him and his wife in their home in the Shouf mountains. The stone house was very simple, clean and pleasant, and they made us feel that we had honored them. They were Druze, which meant little to us, but they were open-minded in a multitude of ways, the kind of people who can live with anyone. They sent their children to the Baptist school, because it was a school with high academic and moral standards. They knew the value of such things. And the school was in Musaitbeh, part of the neighborhood, where they had an apartment not far from the store.
Mustapha’s wife, Najla (Our children always called her Mrs. Mustapha), was originally Argentinian, a woman totally unnoticeable in appearance, quietly accommodating and humble. I felt free to educate myself by asking her what to do or what to say in a certain situation or what in the world this vegetable was called in Arabic. I remember well when she told me how to cook Jerusalem artichokes. It was quite involved and after describing several steps, she suddenly said, “You don’t want to do it, Mrs. Fuller. It’s too much work.” She was right. I appreciated the permission not to try.
The summer that our son Tim was sixteen, he played a piano concert, sponsored by a Christian ministry called ReconArt, at the Gulbenkian Amphitheater on the campus of the university, known at that time as the Beirut University College. (This was in that happy, innocent time before the civil war.) Our family helped in the distribution of posters, taping them to light poles and walls in various locations around the city. Tim went down to the street one day and asked Mustapha to display one of them in the store window and while he was doing it, he invited Mustapha and his wife to come and hear him play. When he told me this, I considered the invitation an appropriate courtesy and never thought of it again. I am afraid that I was making several false assumptions.
We get a big surprise
The publicity worked, and the Gulbenkian was filled to capacity with the music-loving community of West Beirut as well as people from our own circles. Wayne and I and three of our children were seated on the front row, and our son Jim was in the back somewhere among the young people who served as ushers. The moment was almost there. The theater would dim, leaving all the light on the imposing grand piano and Tim would walk out and take a bow. The crowd was growing quiet in anticipation when suddenly Jim appeared, looking worried, leaning in to whisper to us. “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Mustapha and his wife are here and there are no seats anywhere.”
Surprise that they were actually there merged for a moment with distress that there were no seats, and then we asked Dwight and Cynthia, our younger two, to sit on the step in the aisle, leaving two empty seats for the Kaises beside us. Jim dashed back up the stairs to escort down to us an absolutely stunning couple. These appeared at first to be people we had never seen before. Mustapha looked younger and handsome, perfectly groomed and wearing a formal suit and a bow tie. His wife, the plain hardworking “Mrs. Mustapha,” was beautiful in makeup, a lovely hairdo and a sparkly gown. Seriously, they could have gone to Buckingham to meet the queen without changing anything.
Tim played well; the Bach was magnificent, the Beethoven and Chopin lovely, and the audience responded with warmth. We were proud of him and just as appropriately proud to have beside us the distinguished grocer from Musaitbeh and his elegant wife. (Weeks afterwards people from West Beirut asked me about the identity of our honored guests on the front row.)
By Monday afternoon it was all a happy dream. Mustapha was running around the store in his apron, a little disheveled, and Najla was again the simple grocer’s wife. I sat with her behind Mustapha’s desk, and she told me how thrilled they had been with the concert, then grew abruptly solemn and asked me, “Mrs. Fuller, how does he do that?”
I told her the solemn truth. “I don’t know.”
She said, “Our children are smarter than we are.”
I agreed, “Saheeh.”
And we said together, “Al-hamdulillah.”
Later, for a period of time in 1976 and 1977, when our children were all away in the U.S. or Europe, Wayne took responsibility for a mission building project in Jordan, and I stayed in Lebanon, living in Monsourieh near our publishing office but often flying to Jordan to visit him on weekends. Once when I came back after a weekend in Amman, Wayne gave me an urgent mission. I was to deliver money to Mustapha; he had realized, he said, that he left Lebanon owing Mustapha money. He knew the exact amount in Lebanese lira.
I made a special trip down to Musaitbeh to pay this debt. Mustapha, tired and unshaven but energetic as always, greeted me like a long lost relative, opened various cold drinks, asked questions about everything but money, sipped his mate and stated again and again that he did not think Mr. Fuller owed him any money. Then he got around to searching in his big ledger, flipping pages, asking about dates, and declared over and over that there was no bill. My insistence that Wayne knew the exact amount made no impression. “How can I take Mr. Fuller’s money when I don’t find any bill?” I was forced to put the money back into my purse and keep forever this nagging memory of our debt to Mustapha.
Saying Goodbye
When we were leaving Lebanon for retirement in 1994, there was a program in our honor, and the Kaises were among the friends who came up to Monsourieh from West Beirut for the event. That was the second time we saw Mustapha in a suit and a tie. They also brought us a gift with a note thanking us for our work and our “years of loyalty to Lebanon.” This note is one of our precious possessions, just because it is from Mustapha and Najla, two people whose word could absolutely be trusted.
Both of them are gone now, but the store in Musaitbeh is in the capable hands of those “smarter-than-we-are” sons.
Such people as Mustapha and Najla, though from Syria, are now living as refugees, most of them in tents, in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe, the whole trajectory of their lives altered by circumstances they could not avoid. They are prepared to support themselves, given an opportunity. You can help by respecting their humanity and speaking up in their behalf.
You can also help them by buying In Borrowed Houses from this website. Ten percent of proceeds will go to an organization funding refugees.
Or you may send gifts directly to organizations dedicated to such ministries. Here are the addresses of several:
A list of agencies involved in ministry to refugees in the Middle East
1.The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, www.donate.unrefugees.org
2.World Vision, www.worldvision.org
Very active in Lebanon
3.Global Initiatives, GlobalInitiatives@lenrodgers.com
This organization was founded by my friend Leonard Rodgers who has been director of Youth for Christ in Beirut and then director of Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding. Gifts may be sent to this address:
#404, 1928 E. Highland Ave., Suite F104
Phoenix, Az 85016-4226
4.Witness as Ministry, www.wamcares.org
This humanitarian organization was founded by Jean Bouchebl, who is a character in my book
Gifts may be sent directly to: WAM Inc.
2271 Lake Ave, Suite F104
Altadena, CA 91003
5.Episcopal Migration Ministries
6.Church World Service, a ministry of the United Methodist Church
7.Middle East Bible Outreach, www.mebo.org
Based in the U.S., supporting all ministries of the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development.