In Arabia

"The first duty is to remember."Beirut Veterans of America6:22 on Sunday morning, October 23, 1983. A terrorist truck bomb destroys the Barracks of the U.S. Marine peacekeeping mission in Beirut, killing 241 Marines and gravely wounding many more. Minutes later, the French peacekeeping headquarters is hit, and scores die. At same time, David Klein, an American, the Director of the University Hospital, is kidnapped from the streets of the city by Hezbollah, the militia responsible for the bombings. The Lebanese Civil War has returned in all its fury, bringing chaos to Beirut.In Arabia recounts the events leading to these assaults and follows their consequences through the eyes of six witnesses.Four of the witnesses are Americans: Robert Maisel, an intelligence officer, who is the narrator; Tony Robson, a young Foreign Service Officer on his first posting in Beirut; and Captain Terry Timmons, a warrior who trains Lebanese security forces in the techniques of urban warfare; and Klein, the hostage. Two are Arab women, both physicians. One is Shareen Khairallah, a Lebanese Christian, who returns to Beirut from medical school in Chicago. Her friend and colleague is Hind Khataeb, a Palestinian Muslim, and a surgeon at Makassed Hospital in Jerusalem. Each witness understands and reacts to the acts of terror through the prism of culture, family, and history.The witnesses are driven by duty and bonds of love, and they unite in a common cause to find and rescue Klein, the hostage. Who are the terrorists? What drives them to acts of appalling violence? Difficult questions to answer in a world where tribal identity, religious faith, and the weight of history condition every political act.In the months following the terrorist bombings, Western politicians ordered the Marines and the French peacekeepers to retreat from Lebanon. Government officials lose interest in the fate of the hostage, Klein.But the witnesses are relentless, and their years-long search will lead them to a violent confrontation in a village of antiquity in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.