Pat's story--The Evacuation is a Joke

Pat is an American married to a Lebanese. Her baby daughter is in Lebanon with her husband's parents. I posted something of hers earlier, but I think I used a different name. I can't remember. So here's an absolutley amazing series of two e-mails.

I couldn't even have made up stuff this unbelievable.
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I received the first one at Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:25:06

Hi Jane,

Are you still in Cyprus? Good news, Yasmine and her cousins boarded a
ship,
I think it's most likely the Orient Queen, this morning Beirut time and
will
hopefully get to Cyprus by this evening US time. We can't wait to
speak to
her again, but were lucky to be in constant contact the whole week.
The
embassy called at 2am Lebanese time to tell my husband's cousin that
they
should prepare to leave, she woke the kids around 5am and headed down
to the
port. I'm not sure what happened from there, but it would seem that
the
ship stayed in the harbor all day, because CNN reported that it had
just
left Beirut around 10am eastern time here.

That's as much as I know for now -- I hope that you are ok - it looked
on tv
that some of those early ships were without shade from the sun.

It's fine for you to put stuff up on your blog, but I do appreciate you
leaving identifying info out.

Good luck getting the rest of the way home, and let's all pray that
this
stops very soon.

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I received the second on at Wed, 19 Jul 2006 17:58:45

Hi Jane,

Bad news - we just found out that Yasmine and her cousins did not board
that
ship after all. I'm wondering to myself if you are on it? Apparently,
after being called at 2am and told to be at the port, they were turned
away.
Their ride had already left, thinking that they had boarded the boat.
They were told to come back tomorrow, and somehow got to a relatives
home,
north of the city to wait.

Now I could almost see if they had done what many people are doing and
just
gone down to the port to try their luck without waiting for
notification.
But to be called and told to go, and then not get on the ship, that to
me is
ridiculous. A woman traveling with 6 children. I'm trying to find
out
more detail, but it was just so disappointing to go from the high of
relief
thinking she was on her way to Cyprus on a cruise ship to finding out
she's
still stuck and for all we know she will have to travel on a military
vessel. If she doesn't get on that boat tomorrow, I'm going to flip
out.
They were perfectly safe, tucked away in the mountains and now they are
closer to the action - far enough away to be safe, but probably not far
enough to avoid hearing the bombs...

Let's keep our fingers crossed for tomorrow...