The earliest I remember really says how small the country is. When I was 10, my brother Kim and I went to a summer activities camp. We didn't know anybody there but we did have a common friend with one of the other kids, Jad. I think my mom was vaguely acquainted with Carlos, the horse-riding instructor, as well. One day Kim and I were grooming a horse, yakking about our recent visit to Vulcan, a Great Dane twice our size that we adored. Jad heard us and was surprised:

"You know Vulcan??"

"Oh I LOVE that dog,"said Carlos as he passed by.

That was one popular dog!

Kim is now in Canada. Given the number of neighbours and classmates who have moved there as well, he doesn't feel particularly uprooted. He specially spends time with a family of friends, let's call them Smith, that lodged us a few years ago in South Africa before heading to Canada. The Smith received around Christmas a couple of Lebanese relatives from New York, let's call them the Jones. They happen to be cousins of ours as well even though at that point in time Kim and I had never met them. In the course of the conversation they sighed:

"We have a young cousin who is in Canada right now, but we have no idea how we could get in touch with him."

"Really? What's his name?"

"His name is Kim."

"Ah!! Well then we're going to find him immediately."

"You are? How??"

"He comes here almost every day!"

I'll pass on the Canadian priest who recognized him even though "last time I saw you, you were 6 months old!" My brother's unusual name makes him quite memorable it seems. Until I was 4, and Kim was 2, we lived in Oman where there was a small Lebanese community as well. We were among the youngest children and so all the older children wanted to take care of us. Many years later Kim, now a strapping 20-year-old who had to bend his knees to look me in the eyes, went to play basketball in a nearby club. As usual there were several people on the team that he didn't know, but when one of his friends said his name out loud one of the strangers reacted.

"Your name is Kim?"

"yeah."

"Kim Medlej?"

"Yes..."

"Did you live in Oman a long time ago?"

"...Yes."

"I used to make you play in the swimming pool when you were 1. You've grown!"

More about Oman? After over 20 years, we went back to Muscat in December 2004. Upon arrival, very late at night, we went straight to the nearest restaurant to have some food before going to bed. At the table next to ours a man was engaged in conversation. From his dialect it was obvious he was Lebanese. A few minutes later the man came over and asked my dad:

"Are you Lebanese?"

"Yes."

"Did you used to work for so-and-so insurance agency?"

"Yes..."

"Is your name Jean Medlej?"

"??"

"I worked there too, you didn't really know me but I remember you."

The man hadn't seen or heard form him in over 20 years, and yet!! But that wasn't all. A few days later Kim and I were having dinner alone at the hotel. Someone walked past us, froze in his tracks, and we heard: "Kim? Joumana??' He was from our school, a year older than I... but that wasn't all either, because he said "I have to tell someone your'e here!" and ran off to return with the father of a different friend . At that point I realised I would have to climb Everest to NOT run into anyone I know! Although that may very well be useless, not only because a friend of ours did climb Everest recently and planted the Lebanese flag, but also because of the followign story that happened to a friend of ours...

A well-known journalist established in France, some event or other took him to the Amazon with a group of colleagues. As an outing, they were taken on a long trip down the Amazon that involved camping and reaching God-forsaken places. Far from civilisation they stopped by a lonely hut where a man lived, who greeted them in Spanish and brought them drinks. Our friend recognised the drink at once: it was jellab, a kind of date juice usually served with pine nuts. Clearly their host was Lebanese. He waited till he was offered a second round, to reply in Lebanese: "This time add some pine nuts for me, will ya?" Stunned reaction: "Akhu sharmoota!" before grabbing him in a big bear hug.

One of my favourite stories happened as I was walking down the Champs-Elysées with a friend. We were heading for Virgin Megastore and he was telling me a story about a guy called Karim who had stuck to him like glue a few years back during a stay in Cyprus.

"He wanted to take my phone number to call me when we got back home!" he said as we were about to enter the store, "I gave him a wrong number, I never wanted to see him a...Oh hello Karim!! How are you?..."

The guy in question had run straight into us on his way out.

I don't know what it is about the Champs-Elysées but I always expect to see someone I know. Another friend of mine was waiting with me to use the phone when he realized that the person using it was an acquaintance, and my mother spotted an old classmate whose voice was very recognizable through the crowd.

There's also the story of two classmates of mine, one studying in Belgium and the other going there for a holiday. They ran into each other in the subway. Neither had any idea the other was there. Another friend was walking around in Paris when his brother-in-law, whom he thought was back home in Beirut with his wife, walked past him.

My cousin Mounya could tell stories of coincidences. One that I vividly remember was when my mom and I took seats for a play. Several days later Mounya decided to watch it too, and she grabbed the very last ticket. It was the same day as ours -- right next to my seat!
Even more interesting was an experience she had when she returned to France. While she stayed in Beirut she did some designs for a jeweller, and when she went home she looked for one that might be interested in her work as well. She found a Lebanese jeweller. Only later did she find out that next door to the shop lived the sister of the Beirut jeweller.

I don't know what it is with my family – except for the fact that it's large and scattered on every continent. I have a friend near Paris called Lauriane whom I invited here a couple of times. After her last stay she went home then went to stay with a friend in Po, another city. That friend was invited to dinner in a house and took Lauriane along. The people had another guest and the latter started showing them pictures of her family. Suddenly Lauriane jumped straight off the couch:

"Hey that's Joumana and Kim!"

The guest looked at her with round eyes: "You know Mana and Kim??"

She was my mother's cousin, who didn't even live in Po at the time.

I have another favourite, that I heard from my gymnastics teacher in school. He was once sent to the USSR with the Lebanon gymnastics team for a competition, and his next-door neighbour asked him to say hi to his brother for him if he happened to see him. In a country that big, the odds weren't very high! Especially that the team was going to Moscow and the brother lived in another city.

After the competition, the plane back was postponed for a few days and the federation sent the team outside Moscow to do some visiting while they waited. They provided them with a Lebanese guide and they spent two days walking around with him. At last, when they were about to board the plane back, the guide asked my teacher if he could give him something for his brother back home.

"Where do you live?"

"This area, this street, this building, this floor."

"Oh, then your brother says hi! We're neighbours."

A year after I was done with university, one of my old teachers whom I had worked with a few times asked me to print out something and bring it to him at the school. I wasn't sure about his schedule so when I went there, I found he wasn't. Nevertheless, I went straight to the class that was taking a course with him and asked the nearest student if I could depend on her to give something to the professor. She said she could, and asked if there was a message with it. "Just tell him it's from Joumana." She looked at me hesitantly: "Joumana?" Then she looked at her desk and pulled out printed papers. "Is this yours?" and she handed me printouts of my article on the souk and soaps. How often do you run into the author of a site you've visited in real life? It turned out she had been searching for something about Lebanese soap for a packaging project, and my site had turned up.

Let me now mention the phenomenon that is called "bush drum"in English I( think). The French call it "Arab phone" after their experience in the Middle-Eastern and North African lands where a piece of news travels at the speed of sound. Of course, the news don't always keep their integrity by the time they have travelled from mouth to ear a few dozen times, and it is also called "broken phone".
Lebanon's modernized society is very western in appearance and attitude, but there are many habits we haven't lost and the "Arab phone" is one of them. A study was conducted in my university, and showed that it took approximately 15 minutes for a piece of news launched on one end of campus to reach the other end. Here are a few funny stories I have to tell about this way of spreading news.

I once stopped by a framer's shop to drop off a piece of art that I needed framed, then went on to my workplace. The framer didn't know my name, just that I was taking a class with a particular teacher who was also his client. I was working when one of my classmates, Wael, dropped by to see someone at the station. After a few minutes of conversation he went: "Oh and by the way Jouj, the frame guy needs some balsa for your thing."
I stood there without understanding for a moment then figured Wael must have passed by him and seeing that he was a student of that teacher too, he asked him to get the message to me.

Much funnier was what happened on my brother's arrest. It was on his 15th birthday, which we spent in a mountain village, Faraya, neighbouring with ski slopes. He celebrated by playing slide on the slopes at night after they had been deserted, with friends. It's perfectly legal, all the more because the chalet he was staying in is built practically on the slope itself, but a drunk guardian passing by thought they were thieves and started shooting in the air. The kids bolted in every direction and were nabbed and taken in. My brother had had the presence of mind to run towards the chalet and so he woke up our dad and they both went straight to the post where they spent the night arguing until the others were let out and the drunkard arrested.
Naturally, by the next morning, everyone in the village was talking about nothing else, both on and off the ski slopes. Two days after the event was Monday, and we returned to school. Everyone (all the students knew each other in that school) was gathering around to ask more details -- they knew the whole story already. What amazed me most was when we went to the dentist that afternoon only to hear him say: "So how did you like the Faraya jail?"

Some cases are kind of mysterious to me. I would love to know HOW the driver of the taxi I took yesterday knew where I worked. "You work at Future TV right?" he said as if we were continuing a conversation interrupted a while ago. Uh...
So the taxi company is based a couple of blocks away from home. It was still startling!

I should be used to this kind of thing though, after my experience with post offices. Until recently we had to go get our mail at the place, it wasn't delivered at home. I used for that two different offices with two different addresses: one near home and the University Post Office. In both cases I didn't interact much with the employees, except to say hello as I entered, then I would dive straight into the room with the boxes, take my mail from mine and say goodbye as I left. Occasionally I'd give them mail to send, but there's no reason why they would associate my face with a name and box number that they almost never see. Apparently I was wrong. I was nailed to the floor once when I entered one of the offices to hear the man go "Oh there's a package for you I believe. Salim, get the parcel for Joumana Medlej, 50 365".
I don't know if they similarly remember their hundreds of other subscribers! I had the same shock at University when I went to the desk and said:

"I'd like to enquire about a parcel that should have been here by now."

"Medlej, right? Let me see, 652, 652..."

I gave up any attempt at understanding after that one.

Article © Joumana Medlej