December 2016

Fifty years ago this month I graduated from the University of Liverpool. A few months earlier, along with three friends, I had driven overland to attend the International Dental Students Congress held that year in Israel. On the way we drove the spectacular road from Beirut up to Damascus, visited Petra in the Southern Jordanian desert, at that time devoid of tourists, viewed the Chagall windows in the synagogue on the Hadassah University Medical campus, and listened to the world cup final with a group of German students in a youth hostel overlooking the Mandelbaum Gate. Little did we know that within twelve months these beautiful countries and their kind people would be plunged into war and that this conflict and chaos would continue to haunt this region, almost unabated, for the next fifty years.