I asked around about the director. “She has guests: army officers. She cannot see you right now,” they said. “Mrs. Rose Attieh will take care of you.”

Mrs. Rose Attieh came from Souq el-Gharb and had a sister who worked at the ward of girls in the orphanage and whose name I also cannot remember. She was very hospitable. She assigned me a bedroom and asked the servant to move my luggage in there then engaged in a friendly conversation with me. I was very delighted to have this Lebanese encounter and held my hopes high.

The director was an American widow (or divorcee), the most beautiful creation of God on mother earth. She was a crowned queen commanding over 1500 souls of orphans, teachers and servants. Her reverent and imposing personality made everyone fearful of speaking in her presence. I fail to recall her first name. But what I learned from Rose is that she was surrounded by smitten suitors of the youngest and finest men in the neighborhood. “Watch out,” she said to me.

I thanked Rose for her information but was beset by worry and apprehension. “I have nothing to do with that woman. I want the summer to tick away peacefully so I can have my 150 bucks,” I muttered under my breath.

The Mieh Mieh orphans were no less obstinate and rigid than those I had encountered at the orphanage of Byblos. Utter refusal. “We, Armenians, speak Armenian. We do not speak Arabic”, was the response I elicited from them.

I stayed for days, eating and drinking and accompanying Rose during her visits to the folks of Mieh Mieh and Ain el-Helwi. I got acquainted with the chief of the Carpentry Department and I used to escort him to the factor to entertain myself. He even lent me a hand in making a Tawlet Zaher, which remains stored in my house to date.

All that, yet I never met the crowned queen, nor was she ever interested in me.