About this archive

This is a record of one family from Feeki, in the northern Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, and of everywhere the family went afterwards — Brazil, France, the United States and a good many other places.

What is public and what is not

People who have died, the village, the migration and the old photographs are public. Anyone can read them, and we want them found: there are Kallases we have never met who might recognise a face.

Anything about people who are still with us — where they live, how to reach them, recent photographs and news — is for family only, and each person chooses how much of their own detail to share.

How sure we are of anything

Most of what is here is family memory rather than documented fact, and the two are recorded differently on purpose. Where a claim comes from tradition, the page says so. Where it comes from a record, the page says that instead. An archive that presents guesses and documents identically gets weaker every year, because nobody downstream can tell which is which.

Where the family disagrees, we record both accounts with who said what, rather than arguing about which paragraph wins.

The name of the village

We publish it as Feeki. The name is Hellenic and means water spring; it is older than the Arab period. Lebanese administrative records list the village under a later Arabized form, which we record on the village page as a fact and use so that searches find us — but the family's name for the place is the one in the headings.

How to add to it

Corrections are open to everybody, with no account needed. If you know a name, a date, a place, or that something here is simply wrong, tell us. That is not a courtesy — it is how the archive actually gets built.

Family members can also sign in to add photographs, post news, and answer the five questions.