To the residents and descendants from Baabdat

To my people…

More than half a century passed for the day I decided to pack my bags and visit the first immigrants, their children and grand children across the world… On April 2, 1959, I traveled from Lebanon to Brazil, then Argentina and many countries in America, where I met a lot of immigrants from my hometown Baabdat. There, I took notes of the history of Baabdat, the roots of the Baabdati immigration, its causes, its pioneers and families.

I wanted so much to publish this information in a special book. However, the development of the internet was much faster and efficient to spread it and make it quickly reach each and everyone of you wherever you were all over the world. Now, through the internet, you have a special site for you, for Baabdat, its families and all the people originating from there. This site is the result of a 30 yeas of efforts that was planned and programmed with the strong cooperation between me and my son Ramez who was and will always be indispensable to me; he’s been exerting tremendous efforts at all the stages including research, inquiry, activation, development, programming, modernizing…

A lot of people, from Lebanon and abroad, efficiently cooperated with us to contribute to this work. We mention in particular the lebanese foreign ministry, the lebanese clubs, embassies, consulates, education, religious, cultural, governmental, written and audio-visual media and research centers…

I thank those who supported the project regarding the reconstitution of the village’s immigration history and the restoration of the link between the inside and the outside in addition to the communication between the residents and the people originating from Baabdat. They contributed a lot in providing us with the information, testimonies, documents, files, books, papers and pictures that constituted a basic part of this site. They also enabled us to have concrete, clear and precise proofs of the history of the Baabdati immigration, its causes, the places where the immigrants are concentrated and the modifications to the majority of their names and families.

I give special thanks to my beloved brother, Dr. Joseph Antoun Labaki, professor at the Lebanese University and past dean of the Faculty of Arts, who has many writings about the history of Baabdat and Lebanon. His contribution to this achievement is very precious and results from his love and fondness of Baabdat, especially in the debates, dissertations, texts, coordination, inquiries, references and historic researches….
I also thank with deep sorrow, his daughter Jana, who passed away at a very young age, leaving a detailed research on which we based the text of the Baabdat history.

I am also grateful to my friend, the carmelite father, Boulos Nassif, who served the maronite congregation in Argentina for more than 40 years, and to the argentine descendant from Baabdat, Martha Francisca Azar Nisan Labaki, known as sister Andrea Azar, member of the: “Instituto Secular de las Hermanas de María de Schoenstatt”, who supervised with a lot of passion, care, precision and faithfulness the spanish texts. I am also thankful to Mr. Nabil al-Ashkar for his contribution to play the fife in the introduction of the site. Other thanks go to the journalist and writer Nawal Joseph Nasr who meticulously wrote the arabic texts in her poetic and refined style. She also linked between the subjects and the information in a very clear and precise manner.

I salute the late men and women of Baabdat in the immigration countries who are deceased now and who were the backbone of our village wherever they went. Those people always longed to return to their country of origin to breathe its fresh air full of friendliness, yearning and love.

We hope that this achievement is part of the dreams of the old, coming and new people of Baabdat, as well as the aspirations of their children and grand children. We hope that our labaki.com site, is a tribute to all the sufferings and sacrifices they endured in their immigration countries and to their clinging to their lebanese identity and their eternal love for Baabdat.

Last but not least, I thank all those who will contribute in enriching the site with new information and bring clarifications, corrections, modifications and propositions…  Such a great work needs a persistent and accurate collective follow-up and a continuous connection between all the people of Baabdat whether residents or descendants.

Yours truly,
Toufic Antoun Labaki
Baabdat 2009