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For one family, vacation spot became war zone

A local man took his family to Lebanon, his native country, for a summer visit. Then the bombs started falling.

By LOGAN NEILL
Published July 29, 2006

SPRING HILL - For the past several days, Ed Nakhoul has been fielding calls from news-hungry media itching for details about his family's recent escape from war-torn Lebanon.

First there was CNN. Then Fox News out of Tampa called. On Tuesday he spoke at length with a reporter from Bay News 9.

Nakhoul, who owns and operates Mobility Express, a scooter and wheelchair supplier in Spring Hill, is more than happy to tell his story.

For him, the best part is that it has a happy ending.

"For a while, I didn't know how it was going to end," said Nakhoul, 40. "I'm just thankful it's over. It's not something I want to go through again."

On July 14, Nakhoul and his wife, Renee, and their three sons, Paul, Matthew and Ferris, were traveling from their home in Tampa to vacation in Lebanon, where he was born, when the fighting broke out.

For several days, Nakhoul and his family watched from a family member's home near Sourath in northern Lebanon as Israeli jet fighters swooped down to drop bombs on nearby Hezbollah targets.

"You couldn't see the bombs, but you could feel the ground shake when they hit," Nakhoul said. "Sometimes it seemed they were very close."

Although the heaviest bombing remained 40 miles south in Beirut, Nakhoul and his family learned from a leaflet dropped by an Israeli fighter that the area around Sourath would soon become a war zone as well.

The next morning, he and his family boarded a van back to Beirut.

The long, arduous trip was made more dangerous by the need to detour around areas that had been heavily bombed.

However, once in Beirut, the Nakhouls found that their trials had only begun, as U.S. Embassy officials struggled to handle the large number of people fleeing.

"No one seemed to have any answers," said Nakhoul, who estimates he spent more than $1,000 in cab fare ferrying his exhausted family between airports in search of a flight out of the country.

Finally, he secured passage to the island nation of Cyprus aboard a packed cruise ship. From there, the Nakhouls made their way back to the United States, arriving Monday.

Nakhoul said that, as a teenager in the late 1970s, he fought with Christian militia forces during Lebanon's civil war. He believes that, in the current conflict, things in his native country will likely get worse before they get better.

Though he still hopes to finish a vacation home there, he vows not to return until the government there elects new leadership.

Despite the devastation of the bombing, Nakhoul doesn't find much disagreement with the Israeli military action.

Rather, he blames Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant group, and its ties with Syria and Iran for the hostility that stirred the Israeli government to invade Lebanon.

"It makes you wonder what it is that Hezbollah really wants to achieve in Lebanon," Nakhoul said. "The trouble will not go away until Hezbollah goes away."

Logan Neill can be reached at lneill@sptimes.com or 352 848-1435.

[Last modified July 28, 2006, 22:38:47]