In the second article of a series on prominent Lebanese-Americans who left Lebanon during the war, Nada Awar Jarrar talks with Abdo Sabban, a former basketball star and current real estate success

VIRGINIA: Abdo Sabban hasn't played basketball in years. These days, Sabban, who was a member of the Lebanese national basketball team in the 1970s, uses his competitive spirit for the challenging business of being a successful American ­ something that requires a great deal of energy and an unrelenting sense of humor.
At 49, Sabban heads the large real estate firm he founded in 1987, handling commercial and residential brokerage, as well as managing properties and investments in Washington, DC, Virginia, and Maryland. Not a small feat for a man who arrived here in 1976 with a one-month tourist visa and only $250 in his pocket.
“In the beginning, it was really horrible,” Sabban tells me as we sit in the living room of his elegant townhouse. “The only contact I had here was a friend of a friend of my dad’s who, we were told in Beirut, would be able to help me get my immigration papers.”
He had no such luck. As it turned out, the extent of the friend’s “influence” was that he owned a restaurant located next to an Immigration and Naturalization Service office.
That’s when Sabban realized that the only person he could really rely on was himself. With the American dream grasped firmly in one hand, and the resourcefulness he’d learned in Lebanon in the other, the then 24-year-old took on the system and eventually won.
“I went to the Berlitz School of languages in DC and got a job teaching Arabic.”
Everything was going well until the day Sabban received a rejection from the authorities to his application for an extension on his visa.
“It was on October 6, my birthday.
Luckily, student of his at the Berlitz School was able to help him. “He was a journalist at The Washington Post and was learning Arabic before going to Beirut to report on the war,” Sabban tells me. “I was teaching him how to say things like ana sahafi, I’m a journalist, please don’t shoot me.”
Sabban pauses to smile.
“Anyway, he told me ‘you’re exactly the kind of person we want in this country,’ and he said he would help me.”
The journalist pulled a few strings with contacts he had on Capitol Hill and Sabban finally got his extension.
But it wasn’t just a question of luck, Sabban argued.
“They could see I was the kind of person who would not be a burden on society and that I would be productive.”
Is he a model immigrant then?
“There are positive and negative aspects to being an American. This society is open to all nationalities, and the opportunities for advancement here are really great, especially when it comes to your career.
“But it’s a double-edged sword because you can work, work, work, and forget about life.” Sabban gestured with one hand, emphasizing his point.
It's that sense of family coming first that we have in Lebanon,” he said. “Here, it’s less than that because people have a tendency to become like machines because competition is so fierce.
Sabban and other hard-working Arab-Americans have managed to create a sense of community, a mini-Lebanon that “almost makes up” for the sheer love of life that can be lacking in their lives. It’s a community which, besides getting together on a regular basis to have a good time in true Lebanese style, also maintains a sense of civic responsibility toward its home.
A graduate of the American University of Beirut, Sabban is president of the University Alumni’s Washington, DC chapter.
He applies to this undertaking the same degree of determination that he does in his day job as an entrepreneur.
“It's very important to us to keep contributing to AUB and to keep the alumni community connected,” he explained.
Sabban is also on the board of directors of the Rene Mouawad Foundation, where he works hard to raise funds for the organization’s educational projects in Lebanon.
Perhaps part of the motivation behind this type of “extra-curricular” involvement is a sense of regret at having left Lebanon behind, and a desire to contribute to the fragile society that is trying to rebuild itself. “I’d like to be a part of the trend toward making Lebanon dependent on institutions rather than on individuals,” Sabban explains.
“Here, even with the election crisis we’re having right now, we know the country can survive without a president because its institutions will go on.”
Returning to Lebanon anytime soon is unlikely, however.
“You know, we’re all so much into our lives here, into our work. It would be very difficult.
“Besides, it’s hard to uproot oneself so many times in one lifetime.”
A huge chunk of home ­ and a large piece of Sabban’s heart ­ lies in Montreal, where his parents, sisters, brother, and seven nieces and nephews live.
He visits them at least once a month ­ “I can’t survive without the children” ­ and gets from them the sense of family and the comfort and warmth that his work cannot provide.
In the meantime, Sabban dreams about making enough money to retire “relatively young.” Perhaps then, he maintains, “I’ll be able to spend more time in Lebanon.”
Perhaps then he can, also,  concentrate on improving the image of Arab-Americans in the United States.
“There have been changes in the last 15 years, but we still have an uphill battle,” he says.
“We have to present a more positive and united image to the public here, and let them know how much we’ve contributed to this society.
“There’s a big injustice because as Arab-Americans we’re not treated right,” Sabban concludes.
“But it’s only because other Americans are ignorant about what we’re really like.”
One gets the impression that the team spirit Sabban acquired as a feisty ­ if small ­ basketball player has never left him.