Bsherri is geographically located in the Northern part of Lebanon, and not far from the famous Cedar forests of Biblical times, at an altitude of over 5,000 feet; it is embedded in the blue sky and pure air with the far sight of the Mediterranean Sea. The town has not much changed since the birth of Gibran, except that the population has grown in number and it has became an international spot of tourism and pilgrimage. Presently, Bsherri counts 4,000 people; it is situated as always among beatiful vineyards, apple and mulberry orchards, waterfalls and deep gorges of the Kadisha valley so much spoken of by our author. In the middle of the village is the tomb of Gibran buried in the Chapel of the Monastery of Mar-Sarkis,3 and a little museum dedicated to him on the third floor of Mr. Gibran Tok’s building. The museum contains some of Gibran’s water colors and canvases as well as several belongings of the poet.

The Gibrans belonged to the Maronite Catholic Church.4 The father, Khalil ben Gibran, was a shepherd with no ambition to alter his peasant’s fate. All he cared for was playing Taoula (trick-trak), smoking the Narjjile (water pipe), visiting friends for chit-chats, drinking occasionally a sip of native Arrak and strolling in the vast field of Mount Lebanon. The father had hardly any psychological impact on his son Gibran. Yet, mother Kamila played an important role in the intellectual maturation of her son. She was the last child of a Maronite priest, Estephanos Rahmi and was born when her mother attained the age of fifty-six. At the time Kamila met Gibran’s father, she was the widow of Hanna Abdel Salam with whom she had emigrated to Brazil and from whom she had a boy, Peter.

The romance between Kamila and Khalil ben Gibran occured after a sudden encounter when one day he heard her singing in her father’s garden. “He did not rest until he had met her, and was immediately impressed with her beauty and charm. And there was no peace for him or anyone else until he had won her hand.”5

Kamila conceived three children from her marriage with Khalil ben Gibran. Besides our author who was named after his father, she bore two younger daughters, Mariana and Sultana.

Gibran received his first education at home. His mother, a polyglot, (she spoke Arabic, French and English), and endowed with artistic talents for music, was his first tutor. We are told that she acquainted her son with the famous Arabian old tales of Haroun-al-Rashid, The Arabian Nights and the Hunting Songs of Abu N’Was.6 She was also the key person who prompted him to develop his artistic sense for painting, not that she taught him to handle brushes and mix the colors, but in that she knew the rules of the game of the psychology of Behaviorism. That is, the environment in which a child comes in contact with, tends to mold somehow deterministically the capacities of the child’s future personality. The situational event that caused Gibran to develop an interest for writing and drawing and to declare that “every person is potentially an artist. A child may be taught to draw a bird as easily as to write the word”7—goes back when at six years old he was offered a volume of Leonardo reproductions by his mother. His biographer, Barbara Young, writes:

After turning the pages for a few moments, he burst into wild weeping and ran from the room to be alone. His passion for Leonardo possessed him from that hour, so much so indeed, that when his father rebuked him for some childish misdemeanour the boy flew into a rage and shouted, ‘What have you to do with me? I am an Italian!’8

In 1894, Peter, the half-brother, then 18, wanting to alleviate the financial burden of his step-father and to break through the apathetic poverty of the family, decided to follow the path of many of his country friends. It came to his mind to sail to America, land of opportunity, adventure and the dollar. First the mother objected but later hearing the good news that several youth villagers had prospered in the Promised Land beyond their fathers’ dreams, Kamila consented to the project of Peter with the condition that the family accompany Peter to the New World. The father refused to travel on the grounds that somebody had to take care of the small property they owned.

In the same year, Kamila, Gibran, Mariana and Sultana under the leadership of Peter, set foot in the United States and went directly to Boston where other natives of Bsherri along with other Syrians had comprised a colony in Chinatown.

While the mother, Peter and the two sisters worked to bring money home, Gibran was forced benevolently to go to school to get the education his parents were not granted. During the two years of learning he spent in the public school of the district, Gibran recorded the highest scores from among his U.S. classmates. His teachers saw in him the precocity of his genius. Also, it was at their suggestion that he abbreviated his initial name Gibran Khalil Gibran into Kahlil Gibran by rotating the letter “h” of his first name.9

After two successful years of intense studies in American curriculum, Gibran asked permission from Peter and Kamila to return to Lebanon in order to cultivate his native language and become acquainted with Arabian erudition. His wish was met and from 1896-1901 he studied a great deal of subjects at the eminent Madrasat Al-Hikmat (School of Wisdom), today located in Ashrafiet, Beirut. Among the courses he enrolled in were international law, medicine, music and the history of religion.