Debra Pickett

Amira, a first generation American who grew up on the East Coast but spent many of her childhood summers with her extended family in Lebanon, and Karim, a Lebanese national who is completing his medical studies in Chicago, have been in Lebanon all month. They had arranged for a few dozen of their American friends to join them there last weekend. But, before their friends could arrive, Hezbollah fighters breached Lebanon's border with Israel, taking two soldiers captive, and Israel retaliated with a series of attacks, including the bombing of Beirut's airport.

Last Wednesday night, Amira and Karim sent an urgent e-mail message to their invited guests, reporting that "things are very tense here, but we are safe."

They wrote that they were leaving Beirut to stay with relatives in the mountains and apologized that they would not be able to host everyone as planned.

"It was the apology that really got me," says Wendy Sternberg, a Chicago physician who read the e-mail in Paris, where she was to have boarded a flight for Beirut to join the wedding party. "These are two people who are really proud of where they come from and they were so looking forward to sharing their country with all of us."

'Rising from the ashes'

The elaborate itinerary Amira and Karim had prepared for their American friends, about a third of whom were traveling from Chicago, included tours of the Bekaa Valley, home to vineyards and ancient Roman ruins, and a hike among the famed Cedars of Lebanon. They also planned several days in Beirut, which they described as the "heart of the Middle East" and a city that is "rising from the ashes" of a devastating civil war.

Those plans, of course, are all cancelled now.

But surrounded by their parents and all the local relatives and friends who fled Beirut to join them in the (for now) more peaceful mountain region, Amira and Karim went ahead with their plans to have a wedding.

They sent an e-mail to their friends on Tuesday, reporting the happy news that they'd be married the next day. And that they'd managed to arrange safe passage back to the U.S., via Jordan, for this weekend.

It's an ironic sort of honeymoon trip, especially for Amira, a city employee who is planning to pursue a Ph.D. in conflict resolution or international relations. And, while the newlyweds will return to their downtown apartment with a great sense of relief, an unshakable anxiety also will follow them home.

Though they say they appreciate the outpouring of love and concern that has flooded their voice-mail and e-mail boxes, Amira and Karim don't want their friends in Chicago to make a fuss. They asked, in fact, that their full names not be shared with anyone outside their immediate circle, because they didn't want to draw attention to themselves.

They also did not want to make political statements or create problems for their relatives still in Lebanon. So their e-mails and phone calls have remained strikingly neutral, avoiding everything beyond the indisputable facts of their situation: They are unhurt, they are getting married, they are coming back.

For the would-have-been wedding guests, this clarity is both inspiring and confounding. The story of the latest violent crisis in the Middle East is now, for them, personal. But it makes even less sense than it did before.

And, for Amira and Karim, Arab Christians who hope for an independent Lebanon, one democratically governed and free from Syrian influence, the situation is heart-breaking. They don't know when they will be able to go back or what will be left of the brilliant sights they hoped to share with their friends.

The best-laid plans

There was supposed to be a wedding at St. Elie Church in Beirut on Saturday. Beautifully restored after being damaged in the civil war, it sits at the western edge of downtown and is graced by a statue of Pope John Paul II, who visited there in 1997.

Instead, the church will stand empty.

So, too, will a banquet room at the luxurious Casino du Liban, where there was supposed to be a reception.

The 300 guests who were supposed to be there will remain scattered, clustered in distant corners of the globe, as an evening that was supposed to be full of joy passes quietly.

Nothing is turning out the way it was supposed to.

But Amira and Karim are unhurt. They are married. They are coming home.