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passed me some houmus, a Lebanese speciality, saying ‘You better get used to it, you’re going to be getting plenty of that where you’re going.’ I still laugh at that now and think how true it was.
    Early next morning Mike and I exchanged shirts. I don’t know to this day why we did that. Shelagh drove me to the airport. It was early in the morning. Shelagh parked her car, helped me out with my bags, and gave me a parting hug, telling me to enjoy myself. I said I would do my best. She also gave me a warning. ‘Be careful, Brian.’ I answered ‘Shelagh, I come from Belfast, I know how to be careful.’
    She looked at me again and said ‘I didn’t mean that.’ I asked her what she meant exactly. She said simply ‘The Lebanese women are more liberated than you think they may be, Brian, so be careful.’ I smiled, quite happy with that knowledge, pleased that, at least, I was not walking into a kind of Middle Eastern backwater where I would not be able to make friends and associate with the people with whom I would be working.
    In Terminal Four I went to the check-in desk. A young Lebanese girl took my ticket and baggage and with some surprise asked me was I intending to stay in Lebanon long. I said ‘Yes, for a year or two.’ She seemed even more surprised and told me that not many people were travelling to Beirut any more. I nodded. She asked me was I perhaps a journalist, so I told her I would be teaching there. She smiled, and told me how much I would enjoy Beirut and that Lebanon was ‘a very nice place’. I was somehow encouraged, thanked her and went back to await my flight call.
    All around me were Indians, Africans, Pakistanis: a whole tapestry of humanity parading itself in its different costumes with its different habits and its jumble of baggage. Children of different nationalities were sitting close to their mothers. Others, excited by the airport, and perhaps frightened, seemed to be crying louder than I could bear to listen to. I remember feeling strange as I looked around at all these people so differently garbed, talking in so many different languages, each with their own preoccupations. My own Irishness, whatever that was, seemed to be quickly submerged and lost in this mass of humanity.
    I had brought some books with me to read on the flight but I was too fascinated by what was going on around me. I occupied myself by trying to recall some of what my friends had told me about Beirut, about places to see, where to live and how to spend my holiday time, visiting places such as the temple of Baal at Baalbek — under which I was to reside for some time with my fellow hostages. But I was seeing too many sights now. My eye was caught by the features of an old Indian gentleman sitting quietly, remote from all the traffic about him. Where was he going? Was he glad to be leaving what was obviously not his home? Suddenly I found myself feeling the kind of inner loneliness that I’m sure so many people experience, passing through that way-station.
    I boarded a Middle East Airlines flight and we took off. I remembered the airline clerk’s remark that not many people now travelled to Beirut. The plane was more than half empty. I took some newspapers from the stewardess out of habit, and to pass the time.
    Airline flights are always boring for me. I only really enjoy that first moment when the plane travels along the tarmac at speed and then is suddenly airborne. But I remember some of the articles I read.
    Flicking through the pages, my eyes homed in on reports from the Middle East. I particularly remember one, because I kept the newspaper and later used the article in my teaching seminars. It was a report on ritual slaughter methods in England. The small piece caught my imagination:
     
    ‘Leaders of Jewish and Muslim communities said yesterday that their followers would become vegetarians rather than accept a ban on ritual methods of slaughter.’
     
    The article went on to describe how the