Gad Saad

They had nice business and so on.

My older sibling, I have three other siblings.

One is 14 years older, one is 12 years older, and one is 10 years older.

The one who's 10 years older is the Olympian Judoka.

that played in the, that competed in the Montreal Olympics in 1976.

So they already had left Lebanon prior to the start of the civil war because they had started facing some Jew hatred difficulties and even in tolerant, progressive Lebanon.

Unfortunately for me, being the last 10 years younger than everybody else, I was still a kid, we got caught up once the Civil War broke out.

Some really bad things happened during that first year, but then we were able, thank God, to escape to Montreal.

But then my parents kept returning to Lebanon because they still had business interests, so they would go back

To Lebanon from 1975 to 1980.

On one of their return trips to Lebanon, they were kidnapped by Abu Nidal's group, Fatah.

And some really bad things happened during their captivity, very much like the stuff that you hear about on October 7th.

But luckily, they weren't killed.

They were able to be freed.

I mean, they weren't freed through a commando operation.

They were freed through the connections that my parents had.

My mother's best friend was a Syrian woman, Syrian Muslim woman, who was the personal dresser of Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashir, the one who was recently deposed.

And so through him, my siblings reached out to this woman.

Her name was Ehsan.

I think she's passed away now.