Life in Zahle 

The year was 1916 and a man with the name of Harout Krumian lived in Lebanon in the village of Zahle. Unlike most villages during that time his was very developed. The people in Zahle all knew each other which made life easier because you could have trust everyone. Harout Krumian was a mechanic that followed in the footsteps of his father and brothers. He later in years opened his own mechanic shop selling parts and came to America; but when he was in Zahle he had a long fulfilling life with many stories. In Zahle, he would attend many festivals which the entire community would go to. During the time he faced no conflicts and neither did his village. He spent most of his time working, fixing cars along with other vehicles, such as tractors that had malfunctions.                      

           I lived in Zahle, Lebanon were I lived for forty eight years. During the time that I had lived there I had three jobs: Fix Car electric engines, Taxi cabs, and then open up a store which sold Car parts. I did that job because my father and brothers had done it. I had boss’s that were two brothers that had a big business that I would work for which I had respected them a lot. I only knew Armenian then so in my work log I would write in Armenian; they were Arabs and could not understand my writing, but they never checked because they had trusted me. I would go to there workplace once a week and show them my work log to receive my paycheck and every time I would go they would give me short amount of money. They would always pay me less. So one day in they owed me three thousand, so in my work log and I wrote five thousand so when they give me less I get my correct pay. Then when I hand him my work log he looked at the numbers and wrote a check for five thousand. I was surprised because he had never done this in all the years I had worked for him he had never gave me the correct pay. So on a Monday I told the other workers when he drives by to call me. When I went up to him and he said what’s happening I told him that I made a mistake and wrote five thousand instead of three thousand. He told me its ok just change the three thousand to five thousand in your work log. 

We once had a worker with the name Hovsep. We use to make car batteries by hand and in the batteries we would put Petrol remains that we would heat up first and would be slippery as water. We had a worker with the name of Hovsep who was wearing sandals and he filled the battery with it and you have to wait for it to harden a little but he spilled it on himself and burned his foot. One time when I was still young and my brother was much older then me and a bus drove in our workplace and the interneter or as we called it “enamo” the thing that makes electricity in the car battery wasn’t working. As they were checking what’s wrong the man who had no clue how a car even works said to my brother to try to make his job easier when my tires popped I covered the whole with some materials back then car tires were expensive he said that might be the reason why it doesn’t work when really it’s the interneter that is messed up.

Zahle had many jobs one was the farm were five hundred people would work on. I never worked on it but I would fix the tractors and mechanisms. There were officials that did paper work; you would also go there to pay money that you owed. There were also banks but they were very different. A person would trust you with money if they knew you well which mostly everyone knew each other.

There were festivals in Zahle that were like the rose bowl. There were Festivals like there was one called Hetazul it was sort of like the rose bowl. There was a time when there was a drought and the people started praying my St. Mary’s statue and then rain started to fall down so it became a traditional festival. In the festivals there was food served they were Armenian and Arabic food. The village had a police department that protected it. There were also schools. There were schools for boys and girls there even was a French university, every child would go to school. There were many restaurants mainly Arab and Armenian that were famous back then now it has American restaurants. The village even had doctors but in cases we would have to go to a main city hospital.There were no racial issues it was a Christian village and the country was democratic. Zahle did have a mayor but it was a mayor of a bigger area then just Zahle.

                                                            Interviewed By Hovan Barsoumian