Good day to you, and welcome. Please sit down. In our homes we would give you a little cup of coffee before we said one more word, so imagine that I have done it, and that it is strong, and sweet, and that my late wife Alma made it, because hers was better than mine.

My name is Roberto Khalil. I am the historian of the Cedars Society of Toledo, which is a polite way of saying I am the oldest member who still remembers where he put his glasses, most days. I was born in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1920, to a mother and father from a village in the mountains of the Metn, above Beirut. My father sold dry goods in Monterrey for eight years, then a cousin wrote to him from Toledo, and in 1926, when I was six years old, we came north. I spoke Arabic at home and Spanish in the street, and I learned English in the first grade from a nun who had no patience for either one.

After I came home from the Army in 1945, I went to work in my father's grocery, and from 1946 until 1986 I ran it myself: forty years of bread, coffee, olives, bulgur, lamb on Saturdays and credit for anybody who needed it. I was president of the Society from 1962 to 1965. My grandson says I am older than television, the computer and sliced bread. He is right about all three, though I tell him sliced bread was not so much. He also made me this home page, and now I am older than it, too.

The Cedars Society was founded in 1931 by fourteen families who wanted to bury their dead properly, help each other through the hard times, and keep the language and the food and the dancing alive for their children. Sixty-eight years later we are about 230 families, Lebanese and Syrian and everybody who married one of us, and we still do all of those things. We do the food the most. You will see.

A mahrajan is a festival, and ours is the biggest weekend of the year. This was our forty-fourth, and I have been to every one, though at the first ones I was carrying folding tables and now they make me sit in the shade and accept compliments.

We had good weather both days, thanks be to God and to Stephen Azar, our mahrajan chairman, who I believe arranged it personally. About 3,400 people came through the gate over the two days. The band came down from Detroit with an oud, a derbakki drum, a singer with a beautiful voice and an electric keyboard, which I am told is the modern way. When they played for the dabke, the line went all the way around the dance floor and halfway back, young and old with their arms linked, stamping in time, and Raymond Habib at the head of it waving his handkerchief like a man directing traffic. I danced one time around. My knees have asked me not to mention it again.

And the food. For two weeks before the mahrajan, the ladies of the Society met every morning in the hall kitchen and rolled grape leaves, stuffed with rice and lamb, one at a time, by hand. They rolled more than 6,000. They also made the kibbeh, the spinach pies, the meat pies, the hummus, the tabbouleh and enough baklawa to tile a floor. The men grilled the shish kabob, which is the easy job, and complained about the smoke, which is the traditional part. By four o'clock Sunday afternoon there was not one grape leaf left in the city of Toledo.

The raffle grand prize of $1,000 went to a gentleman from Sylvania who said he only came for the grape leaves. After expenses, the mahrajan cleared a little over $19,000, which goes to the scholarship fund, the Arabic school, and the new furnace the hall will need before January, whether we like it or not. Thank you to every volunteer, and to the parish of St. Thecla's for lending us their grounds again. Next year's mahrajan will be the second weekend of August, God willing.

A hafla is a party, and if the mahrajan is for the whole city, the hafla is for the family. Please come.

Last year 280 people came to the hafla and the dabke went until the band begged for mercy. Bring your children. Bring your parents. If your parents are like me, bring them early, so they get a good chair.

When I was a boy, nobody had to teach us Arabic. We heard it at every meal, at church, at the store, and especially when we were in trouble. My own children understood it but answered in English. My grandchildren, God love them, know the words for the foods and not much else. This is how it goes in America, and it is why, in 1972, the Society started a Saturday class for the children.

The class meets every Saturday morning from 10:00 to 11:30 in the downstairs room at the hall, from the second Saturday of September until the end of May, for boys and girls from five to fourteen. Our teacher is Jeanne Issa, who taught school in Beirut before she and her family came to Toledo in 1976, during the war. She is gentle and she does not give up on anybody. She once taught me a word I had been saying wrong for seventy years.

The children learn the alphabet, which is twenty-eight letters written from right to left, and how to write their own names, which they love. They learn greetings and numbers, the names of the family (teta is grandmother, jiddo is grandfather, and the grandchildren learn these first because we are the ones with the candy), the names of the foods, and the songs for the Christmas program in December. Nineteen children are enrolled this fall, which is the most in ten years. The cost is $30 for the year, for books, and nobody is turned away. Last week little Jamal, who is eight, told me sabah al-khair, good morning, and then asked me if I was a hundred. I said not yet, habibi, but I am practicing.

Every year since 1964 the Society has given scholarships to young people of our families who are going to college. This year the committee chose three, at $750 each, and I had the honor of handing them the checks at the mahrajan, on the stage, in front of everybody, which they did not enjoy as much as I did.

Mabrouk, congratulations, to all three. Study hard, call your mothers, and come home for the mahrajan.

Every one of us came from somewhere, and somebody met every one of us at the train. When my family came to Toledo in 1926, my father's cousin had a room ready, a job ready, and a pot of lentils on the stove. That is what a Society like ours is for.

Since the war in Lebanon began in 1975, and in the years after, many families came to Toledo from Lebanon, and some from Syria, and they still come. We help them the way we were helped. Our members find furniture and winter coats, help with apartments and jobs, drive people to appointments, translate at the doctor's office and the school, and explain the mysteries of the American driver's license. This year we have helped three families settle here, two from Lebanon and one from Syria. If you are new to Toledo, or you know someone who is, please write to us. You do not have to be a member. You only have to need a hand.

The Society is still a benevolent society, as it was in 1931. When a member family loses someone, we help with the funeral and the ladies bring the food, and nobody grieves alone.

The general meeting is the first Sunday of every month after the noon Mass, downstairs at the hall, with coffee and something sweet. Dues are $40 a year for a family and $20 for one person. Members over seventy-five pay nothing, a rule I mention for no particular reason.

Read our history, 1931 to today  ·  Recipes from the ladies' kitchen

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since April 1998. Thank you for coming. Come again, and bring an appetite.


Write to the Society: [email protected]
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Last updated September 19, 1999