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26
WINTER
2010
My father graduated in 1924 from class FIV. His grades for this class
do not show in the transcript above. Below is a photo of the graduat-
ing class for that year. My father is first row second from right.
Graduating Class 1924
Notice how the students were all well attired … suits, neckties,
and bowties. You have to remember these are students of what
now is equivalent to Bac 1. Notice this class FIV is referred to as
(
فصلا عبارلا مسق ثادحلأا يدادعتسإ
).
My father later joined AUB and graduated with a BA in 1930.
To be able to support his studies at AUB, he went to the village
of Karak in Jordan and taught in a Bedouin school for one year,
mostly among the Al-Majali tribe. He had to dress as a Bedouin,
as shown below, to be accepted by the Bedouin community.
Salaheddin Yamout, Teacher at
Bedouin School in Karak, Jordan.
Circa 1927
Here is a funny story my father
recounted to me that happened
during his teaching year at Karak.
(Reveals what happened at that
time for somebody who tried to
apply what he learned at IC to
a remote school inside Arabia).
My father wanted to organize a
group of boys into a school choir
to sing the Arabic national songs
of that time. He auditioned his
students one by one for the qual-
ity of their voices and picked those who qualified.The morning
of the second day there was a lot of commotion outside around
his residence. Bedouins on horses were circulating his residence
in the way we see Red Indians circulate a caravan in Western
movies.They were calling for “he whose name is Salah” to come
out. As it turned out, my father had failed to pick the son of the
tribal chief to join the choir.This was considered a big insult to
the whole tribe.The only retribution was for the son of the tribal
chief to join, a viable way out of this quagmire.
After graduating from AUB, my father taught at IC sometime
in the thirties. I do not have the date. Following the track of his
beloved teacher and mentor Farid Mudawar, he again organized
theatrical groups of students for extracurricular activities.The
photo below shows him with other members of the faculty.
Among his colleagues who should be in this picture (but I cannot
identify them) were Shafic Jeha, Musa Suleiman, Atef Karam,
Faiz Assaad, Ahmad Qawwaf, Alexandre Wuthier, and Emile
Najjar. All were there except Ahmad Qawwaf when I joined IC
in 1952. Four of them taught me. My father is front row second
from left.
Members of the Faculty IC -- Circa 1935
After graduating from AUB with a BA in 1930 and joining the
IC faculty in the thirties, my father married, lost his wife five
years later, worked with IPC, came back to AUB for two years as
a student and obtained a BScCE in engineering, then traveled to
Saudi Arabia, came back to Lebanon and worked with the Min-
istry of Public Works as an Engineering Inspector, and passed
away in 1968 at the age of 62.
It was my father who initiated me into IC, which I joined in
1952 to graduate BacII in 1958.The French teacher Monsieur
Alexandre Wuthier, whom I suspect to be the tall man in the
middle of the picture above, taught my father and 35 years later
myself. He would always comment to me, “Yamout, your fazer
was better zan you.”
Eventually, I myself was able to initiate three of my four chil-
dren, Sani, Sawsan and Karim, into IC. To continue the chain,
Mr. Nadi Nader, who taught me math for both Bac classes also
taught my son Sani.
We are now three generations of IC and the fourth is on its way
Inshallah, all thanks to the chance delving of that American
foreigner, probably a teacher, at my grandfather’s glassware shop a
hundred years back.
I have dwelled mainly on my father’s association with IC, not
much on mine. My classmate Issam Jabara had sent in his
reminisces of our days at IC (in an earlier issue). While there are
many individuals around to reminisce on my period and that of
my children, there are not so many to reflect on the era of the
generations before.