wfn.org | Former Hostage Ben Weir Returns to Lebanon

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29-July-1998 
98250 
 
    Thirteen Years Later, Former Hostage Ben Weir 
    Returns to Lebanon 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.-It was around midnight 13 years ago when the Rev. Ben Weir 
stepped from a car onto a west Beirut street - free for the first time in 
495 days.  Pulling off the ski mask that he'd been forced to wear off and 
on, he headed for the home of a friend with a wad of handwritten letters in 
his pocket for the families of four of the other U.S. hostages in Lebanon 
who were still held in a basement room by extremists. 
 
    Weir was airlifted out of Beirut the next day.  And he hadn't been able 
to get back there until several weeks ago, when he and his wife, Carol, 
revisited the Lebanese communities where they lived and worked for 32 years 
before being swallowed up in political chaos. 
 
    "It was like coming home," said the now 75-year-old Presbyterian 
minister and former General Assembly moderator of being back in Lebanon, 
where in June he was commencement speaker at the Near East School of 
Theology (NEST). 
 
    The Weirs began their tenure in Lebanon in 1953, serving from the 
Shiite town of Nabatiyeh in the south to a cooperative parish in Tripoli in 
the north.  The family moved to Beirut in 1961 when Weir began work with 
the Jinishian Memorial Program, a program designed to help needy Armenians 
in Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, and Carol began teaching at NEST.  At 
the time of Weir's abduction, he was the Program Agency representative of 
the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to the 
National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon (NESSL), which is 
headquartered in Beirut. 
 
    Weir was shoved into a car by gunmen while walking with his wife on May 
8, 1984, just a few blocks from NEST, where the couple was headed.  Just 
one of many kidnap victims in the nine years of turmoil in Lebanon, Weir 
was one of 17 North Americans held by Islamic Jihad at various times, 
allegedly in an attempt to pressure the U.S. and Kuwait into a swap of 
prisoners - the Americans for men who'd been jailed in Kuwait on charges of 
bombing the French and U.S. embassies there. 
 
     In the 16 months of his captivity, Weir was held both in solitary 
confinement and in small rooms with several other hostages: Associated 
Press bureau chief Terry Anderson, American University of Beirut professor 
Tom Sutherland, American University hospital administrator David Jacobsen 
and Father Martin Jenko, a Roman Catholic priest. 
 
    Snatched away abruptly from 30 years' worth of relationships, Weir has 
longed to go back to Lebanon - to reconnect and to remember.  In fact, the 
Weirs tried to do so two years ago, but the plans fell through.  When 
NEST's invitation came this year, both Weirs jumped at the chance.  "Ben 
did not have that opportunity to say good-bye," said Carol, who stayed in 
Beirut 11 months after the kidnapping, until it was clear that she was 
needed in Washington as an advocate for the hostages. 
 
    "It was providence that the Weirs could come 13 years after Ben's 
release," said NEST president Mary Mikhail in an interview with the 
Presbyterian News Service.  "It was as if they just left yesterday.  So 
many people inquired about the possibility of visiting them, inviting them 
or spending even a short time with them.  The Weirs have always [been] and 
still are considered as partners in the ministry of Jesus Christ - 
co-workers with us all here." 
 
    Or as Salim Sahiouny, Weir's longtime colleague at NESSL, says, "They 
spent 30 years amongst us.  They really were part of our community and were 
loved and respected by the community, by all denominations, by all 
religious groups: Muslim and Druze. ... 
 
    "I had seen Ben in the States after he had been released," Sahiouny 
said, recalling that Weir asked Sahiouny to stand on the platform as part 
of the family when Weir was elected moderator of the 1986 PC(USA) General 
Assembly in Minneapolis.  "But this was the first time in Beirut, the first 
time in Lebanon." 
 
    Postwar Beirut itself is a city changed from the one the Weirs left. 
It is in the middle of a building spree that some estimate may go on for 
five more years to repair the damage done by years of shelling, sniper fire 
and bombs.  In fact, the four-story apartment building where the Weirs 
lived - just a few blocks from NEST - has been demolished and replaced by a 
28-story high-rise with condominiums that sell for up to $1 million each. 
The seminary is slowly regaining its prewar enrollment level of more than 
100 seminarians, drawn from across the Middle East and North Africa.  The 
classrooms are no longer spontaneously converted into makeshift hospitals 
or worship centers for bombed-out congregations.  The school's bomb shelter 
sits unused. 
 
    "There are lots of stresses," said Weir.  "Lebanon was a middle-class 
country before the war.  But jobs are hard to find.  There's been a rash of 
building.  And there's a rich superclass [able to afford] ostentatious 
spending.  What's left of the middle class is hard-pressed to make ends 
meet. They are scratching just to survive." 
 
    But what has not changed, according to Weir, is the closeness within 
the Arab Christian community that was home to him for so long. 
 
     "We found people expressing great emotion ... that I was fine, that I 
was able to return.  They'd say to us, `You know you're back home where you 
belong.  You ought to stay here.'  There was also compassion for my 16 
months of captivity and the distress that caused the family. But almost no 
Lebanese family has been untouched by that shadow.  Every family 
experienced some loss, many [have] great losses - death, separation from 
family [since some have left the country to find work]," said Weir. "And 
that shadow is still there." 
 
    In his commencement remarks, Weir told his listeners that "waiting on 
God" is an aspect of ministry - something he learned about in his tense 16 
months as a hostage.  "It is not," he said, "just passivity.  It is 
actively trying to exercise faith."  Reflecting on those comments, Sahiouny 
told the Presbyterian News Service that listeners could tell that "this 
person - though he ... [was] badly treated for over one year - remembered 
this part of the world." 
 
    Remembering is something both Weirs do - for both are working to raise 
financial and prayer support for NEST from the U.S.  When asked about how 
at home he felt after all the years away, Weir said, "In one sense, a great 
deal has happened in the years between [my release and now].  We've taught 
at San Francisco Theological Seminary.  We've done a lot.  But on the other 
hand, as I returned and stood under the banyan tree where I was released, 
it all seemed very near in some ways. ... 
 
    "It really was a homecoming," he said, "in a very humbling and 
delightful way." 
    Several of the other former hostages have visited Lebanon again, 
including Anderson and Sutherland. 
 
    While in Beirut, the Weirs packed up mission documents stored in the 
NEST basement - some dating back to the early 1800s - for shipment to the 
Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia. 

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