Valley residents cut visits short, flee from bombing in Lebanon

Families feel relief as travelers stuck in Lebanon begin to come home.
By SARAH WEBER
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
CANFIELD -- Seventeen-year-old Somia Abou-Osman and her 13-year-old brother, Ali, sat watching the Lebanese landscape fly by their speeding taxi about one week ago. Now, sitting on the couch at home, they look barely shaken by their weeklong ordeal to get here.
The two teens take a yearly trip to see family in El-Marj, Lebanon. Their father, Ahmad Abou-Osman, owner of the Sav-a-Step convenience store on Mahoning Avenue, came to the United States from Lebanon in 1982. Yearly visits to see family in Lebanon have kept them close to their relatives and heritage.
This year's visit, which began June 14, was cut short by the sudden flare-up in the region. When Israeli bombs started hitting Beirut, about an hour and a half away from El-Marj, Somia said her family tried not to act scared. When the bombing moved closer, the family decided it was time to get Somia and Ali out of the country.
"They bombed really close to the house," Somia said. "Everything started shaking, and it got really bad."
Seeking safe passage
Their father and mother, Wanda, worked from Canfield over the phone with the two children seeking a way to bring them home. Somia and Ali were scheduled to be moved out of the country by the U.S. Marines, but the road to get to the port where Marines were helping the fleeing Americans was too dangerous.
Instead their family arranged for them to travel by taxi to Syria, where they were able to get a flight to France.
"There was no way I was going to jeopardize their lives," Abou-Osman said. "They were bombing the road."
Paris meant relief from the bombing, but it also introduced new problems. Somia and Ali had trouble figuring out where they were supposed to get on the plane to the United States, and French airport personnel were little help.
The two missed their flight and were stranded at the Paris airport.
The teens were told that all flights were booked, and they would not be able to get home until August, when they were scheduled to return before the violent outbreak.
Who helped
Their parents frantically started grasping at straws. They looked into buying new return tickets to the United States, but the price was outrageously high -- $2,000 to $3,000. Finally, they started calling political representatives.
"The woman at Tim Ryan's office gave me her home phone number and told us to call her, even if it was in the middle of the night," Abou-Osman said.
She was Mary Anne Walsh, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th. Walsh was finally able to help arrange a flight home for Somia and Ali after they spent 24 long hours in the Paris airport. Their father said Sean Buchanan, the constituent liaison at Ryan's Akron office, also was very helpful.
"If it weren't for them, my children would still be there," Abou-Osman said.
Somia and Ali flew into Philadelphia, and after a four-hour layover there, they finally arrived back in the Mahoning Valley, stumbling into the arms of their thankful parents around midnight Friday.
In spite of the ordeal, Somia and Ali said they still want to go back to Lebanon and hope that their family members remain safe.
"The only thing you really have is your family and friends, and in a second, they can be taken away," Somia said.
Another family's situation
Though Somia and Ali made it home safely, Lynette Darwich is still waiting for her family to arrive.
Darwich, who recently moved to Michigan from Campbell, and her mother, Sandra Hupp of Campbell, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of Kasem, Lynette's husband, and their three children, Hasan, 7, and 6-year-old twins, Ali and Sami. Kasem and the children had gone to Beirut earlier this month to visit Kasem's parents.
When violence started to swell, the family left the city to keep the children safe until they could return home.
Monday evening, Hupp said she got word that her son-in-law and grandchildren landed in Cyprus, where they were taken by boat by the Marines. They will be flying into the United States sometime this week.
Hupp said the twins' sixth birthday was Sunday, but they will have to wait to celebrate until they get home.
"It's been a trying two weeks," Hupp said. "I promised to get [the twins] two-wheeler bikes, and I'm going to go to get them tonight."