My mother's father, Najeeb Noujaim--Nash Ne Jame as those of his new country spelled it--left the cedar mountains and his family in his mid-teens to return to America. He and his family lived in America at the turn of the century. My grandfather's family returned to a Lebanon strangled by the Ottoman Turks, their grip upon a vanishing empire ever more desperate. Disease, famine and war engulfed the mountains.

From America my grandfather searched for his family across the Middle East. His entire family save for a sister and brother perished along a road to Damascus as they searched for food and sanctuary. His sister Melvina escaped enslavement by kidnappers by dressing as a boy. With the help of the Red Cross his siblings landed in New York, each tattered with a suitcase.

Later in life he grew distant never speaking of the tragedy that befell his family. Although he lived an adventurous life as an aerial photographer eventually settling down with my grandmother and raising two children, he died a highly accomplished yet quiet man when my mother was fifteen years old. I never knew him.

We have been almost a century removed from Maasser. Today, we walk the same streets as my ancestors. I imagine my grandfather's family planting cherries, herding goats, while children play and women roll grapeleaves for a feast in the days ahead.