Kingston restaurateur flees Lebanon

With luck, Kingston's Famous King will soon be home. Fouad Gharib, owner of the Famous King restaurant on Princess Street, is believed to have boarded a departing ship from Beirut yesterday after being stranded with his wife and five children in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley since violence between Hezbollah and Israel broke out two weeks ago. Gharib's cousin, Afif Gharib, told The Whig-Standard from the home of Fouad's brother in Lebanon that Fouad and his family left the house yesterday afternoon after the Canadian Embassy informed them that a ship would be docking in Beirut to rescue stranded Canadians. "They told him to go to Beirut," Afif Gharib said. "Now they are gone." Supposedly, the only rescue boat being sent to Lebanon by the Canadian government was going to dock in the southern port city of Tyre yesterday. But Pamela Greenwell, a spokesperson with the federal foreign affairs department, confirmed that a second, smaller ship was sent to Beirut yesterday. Afif Gharib was unable to say how Fouad and the family managed to get to Beirut, only saying that the Canadian Embassy called and then the family left. Greenwell could not speak to the Gharibs' situation, but did say it is possible that the embassy or the government sent for them specifically. "We always do our best, sometimes even against our own advice, when it comes to helping Canadians," she said. The Tyre ship boarded 1,000 evacuees. The Beirut ship took just around 200. That brings the total number of Canadians evacuated from Lebanon to about 10,000 since the conflict began. Fouad Gharib and his family were planning to stay in Lebanon until the end of August. It was a chance for three of his five children, who were born in Canada, to finally meet their grandparents. They were in southern Lebanon doing just that when the first attacks were launched by the Israeli Defence Force in retaliation for Hezbollah's kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers. One of the bombs fell just 200 metres from his father's home. Flying debris from the impact of the blast hit and injured one of Fouad's daughters, Hoda, a Bayridge Secondary School student. The family immediately fled north to the Bekaa valley, where they found refuge with Fouad's brother. There, they remained out of the danger zone and spent days trying to arrange an escape from the war-torn country with the Canadian Embassy in Beirut. When contacted by The Whig on Monday, Fouad expressed deep frustration with the embassy's apparent unwillingness to extract his family from the Lebanese interior. Most roads leading to the Mediterranean coast had been blown out by bombs. "I've been pleading with the government to get us out of here," said Gharib. "We're waiting for the phone to ring ... for them to tell us how to get out." Fouad's brother-in-law, Hassan Akar, has been running the restaurant in Kingston during his absence. Akar had been trying just as hard from Kingston as Fouad was from Lebanon to get his family members out of Lebanon, registering them with foreign affairs and making daily calls to press the department for a rescue. "I'm so happy," Akar said yesterday evening. "Oh man, it's been so crazy lately, watching the TV news and watching everything going on. I'm so glad he'll be home soon."