the Family

Ours is a family of five:
  Farid the father
  Nawal the mother
  Fadia the eldest daughter
  Fadi the middle son
  Shadi the youngest son.

What I know of the family was told to me by my father, Farid:

Concerning our family past, I recall a few details from my late father, briefly as follows:

About 1730 our great grandfather "Eissa" had a big fight in his home town, a small village near the coast in south Lebanon called Safad Al-Battikh and migrated to another village called Deir Mimas on the western slopes of Mount Hemon in south Lebanon; there he became to be known as Al-Safadi, which means the man from Safad. One of his grand sons named Elias moved to Zahle in the early 1800's and started a new branch of the family there. Another grandson named Zakaria moved to southern Syria and started another branch there. 

There are still a few Safadies in Deir Mimas. Right after World War 1, my father Moussa and his three brothers (Sleiman, Nageeb and George) moved back to Lebanon and settled down in Beirut. Uncle George moved to Canada in the early 1950's and is now residing with his family in and around Sault Saint Marie. My father passed away in 1976; uncle Nagib passed away in 1990 without any children of his own; uncle Sleiman passed away in 1994 leaving three boys and four girls. His eldest son Hilal is presently in Edmonton and three of his children are scatered in Western Canada. Another cousin, Samir, was residing in Alberta when he passed away in 1997; his wife and four children are all still there.