Everybody's very nervous
I think some are nervous about what I'm gonna find and I think most are nervous about how I'm gonna react I was born there
Lived in an orphanage. I don't know how I got there or where I came from
But I always had this dying
curiosity what part of that culture or heritage if any influenced the way I think
And I'm dying to know
I'm Marcus lemonis
44 years ago. My parents adopted me from a Beirut orphanage
They took me out of Lebanon and brought me to the US since then I haven't been back
Lights on time. Yes. Thank you
Now I've made a huge decision of returning to the country for the very first time
This is my journey to the place where I was born
Lebanon a nation of survivors and success stories my only job all my life this one
I'm gonna learn from its people the best way. I know how by finding out how business is done
Here is always a fight. It makes the success even greater
I want to get to know the country and its culture
Only then will I be ready to learn about myself and the secrets of my own past? This is my name. Yes
I've always considered myself Lebanese, but I gotta be honest with you
I don't know a whole lot about the country of Lebanon or my roots
Here's what I do know I was born in
1973 and was left in a Beirut orphanage
When I was nine months old, I was adopted by Leo and Sophia lemonis of Miami, Florida
My dad Leo is Greek. My mom. Sophia was Lebanese. I
Can remember early mornings when my mother would come into my room it would be a bedtime story like most of us are familiar with
And it would always be a book about adoption. She
Wanted me to understand the gift that I was given to be in America
Like a lot of immigrants. I found my American Dream
after college, I got into the family car business and
Eventually became the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company
Plus I make a little TV on the side people always ask me
Have you ever met your birth parents my initial reaction in every case was I love my life
I love my parents. I don't I don't need to know anything. I don't want them feeling disrespected
This is a man and a woman who?
traveled halfway around the world
to pick up some random kid in the middle of a
foreign country
But in everyone's life there comes a time when you need to understand who you are and where you come from
And I'm gonna start like traveling the country. Yeah, Alex beautiful Wow
He's waterfront. This is a nice area, huh?
And I see palm trees and I feel like I'm in Santa Monica Boulevard
Lying along the eastern Mediterranean Lebanon sits at the crossroads of West and Middle East
But it's a tense region with Israel and Syria lining its borders
The country is home to more than 6 million people at its heart the capital Beirut
My mom when she was alive
Asked me never to come here and I don't think it was because she didn't want me to learn
I think she always feared for my safety
Before I was born Lebanon was thriving
Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East
Cosmopolitan and wealthy the country has long been a melting pot of religions
Christian
Sunni and Shia
18 sects in all but that mix became explosive the year after I was adopted
We have just about run out of words to describe the madness that has Beirut Lebanon civil war started in April 1975
Religious militias fought on the streets and mountain sides of the country American peacekeepers became a target
In October of 1983
241 US servicemen were killed when a truck bomb exploded at the Marine Barracks. So I stopped and just stared at the horror. That wasn't
In front of my eyes the strife didn't end until 1990 after a peace agreement took effect
On Beirut's Damascus Road, there's a bullet-riddled memorial to the war known as the Barakat building
Architect Mona El-Hallak is fighting to preserve
This corner was called in
1976 the door to hell
Damascus roads became the Green Line
The green line is what really divided Beirut East and West the barakat buildings sat on the dividing line between a mainly Muslim
West Beirut and a mainly Christian East
Upstairs
snipers were positioned behind sandbags
Targeting the street below and then you hear and you're looking and this is where you would have killed someone you
Would have been the sniper and you would have killed anyone who crosses in front of you and today
this and this job was just to stand here and
Kill me one day when the old times doesn't matter the order and the walkie-talkie shams. Shoot
Through a quirk in the building's design
The snipers couldn't be seen by anyone outside even when they were shooting
This is two meters deep. It is the concrete wall. Again. This is one hole
So they bustard the concrete they built the concrete
This is what the door this was the door. So they built that as a shit exactly to protect them
You could shoot all the way down to the end of Damascus road and the people down there
They have no idea where it's coming from of course and they try to shoot back, but they should back at the other balcony
On the balcony it's hard for me to spot those peoples but there's no doubt. I'm in their line of sight
and that's exactly where the bullet came out through here through here and
So anybody who was there was being killed?
So as a kid you were not allowed to be here. This was the Green Line. This was no-man's land. You don't cross
The Green Line was literally that
Overgrown trees and bushes that had pushed their way through the ground were people feared to walk
For Mona, it's a vivid memory
She was 6 years old when the Civil War started. I was almost 2 and safe in Miami
Whomever has been to war doesn't wake up in the same way that someone who hasn't been through war
Because you know you kind of earned your life
During the worst times the bombing you run to the toilet to the indoor toilet of any house and
There are times where I spent nights in a toilet like this with 30 people
Like sardines and he want to feel crushed by other people so you don't mind
Suffocating because really my memories I wanted human bodies next to me because I don't want to die alone
When I hear stories like this
It almost feels disingenuous for me to say that I'm Lebanese because they didn't go through what you went through
There are people who left during the war forever never came back the war changed their lives
They were sent away because they their parents were afraid they would be hurt and they'd send them away the war did this to them
Mona hopes that people like me the ones who had to go away who will return to places like this to get a better
understanding of what happened here
why was saving the building so important to you specifically because this is a place of memory and
We have to keep it because there's no other place. They have destroyed everything else
So for me, it was almost the last chance to have a building that talks about the war
Maybe the pinnacle of this project for you will never be on one particular day
but if there was one day it would be where everybody was here and they were saying I forgive you I
Look forward to that day
And I genuinely believe that this would be a place not only for the Lebanese
Because I believe that a little girl in Syria has hidden in the same way. I have hidden when I was a little girl
I think war is the same. You've go through the same feelings the amnesia that we've been living for the past 28 years
The place to shake it. This is a place to question it
The answers to the questions that brought me to Lebanon about my heritage and my birth parents
Are literally right around the corner. It turns out my orphanage is just a few blocks away