BYBLOS, Lebanon, 7 August 2007 — Iraqi singing star Kazem Al-Saher and a celebrated old boy of an orphanage in Lebanon’s picturesque town of Byblos aim to come up with a fund-raising song for children of the turbulent Middle East.
The Birds’ Nest, dating back to 1926 when a Danish missionary gathered 5,000 Armenian children in Syria orphaned in deportation marches from Ottoman Turkey, has a stunning location, in stark contrast to its bleak origins.
Perched on a hill in the cobble-stoned ancient city of Byblos, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Beirut, it adjoins the walls of a Crusader castle and neighbors a Mediterranean sandy beach hotel on the other side.
Former student Vartan Melkonian, now 58, who has risen to the heights of conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, is teaming up with Kazem Al-Saher in a “Words for a Song” competition.
Kazem is to compose the music to a winning poem from entries pouring in from around the world. Each entry to the Britain-based Melkonian Foundation, in a competition running up until Sept. 1, costs five dollars.
The Iraqi singer has to pore through hundreds of poems. Once a winner is selected, he will compose a song, possibly with the help of the orchestral expertise of his friend Melkonian. The proceeds from the competition will go to the Birds’ Nest but also other children’s institutions in both war-plagued Iraq and Lebanon.
Born in the Qarantina-Maslakh refugee camp named after a local slaughterhouse, Melkonian, his three sisters and a brother lost their mother at an early age and were abandoned by their father.
He was at the Birds’ Nest for four years in the early 1950s before having to making way for a new influx of orphans.
While the girls were kept on to do housework, the boys were dispatched to an army compound, but Melkonian ran away at the age of seven and grew up on the streets of Beirut.
From inventing harmonies and singing in the choir while at the Birds’ Nest, performing with fellow street urchins for tourists and sailors, to forming a tin-drum band, he finally landed a job as band leader at the Casino du Liban.
In 1971, he moved to England and “that’s when I was born again”, Melkonian said in a telephone interview.
At the entrance to the orphanage, an elaborate grave, complete with engraved face, pays tribute to founder Maria Jacobsen, “Mama for thousands of Armenian orphans”. She died in 1960 after running the Birds’ Nest for three decades.
As a nun gardens among the odd Roman pillars in the grounds, a finger-painted, red-white-and-green Lebanese flag greets visitors at the reception.
Originally composed of no more than tin-roofed hangars, the Birds’ Nest now has attractive stone buildings with arches. Danish Protestant missionaries handed over the orphanage to the Armenian Church in 1970.
The students come from single-parent families, divorce cases, social assistance cases, mostly from Bourj Hammoud, a former Armenian refugee camp for genocide survivors turned into a bustling suburb of Beirut.