LEBANON: Lebanese woman could be 127 years old

TYRE (Daily Star), June 17, 2004: Hamida Musulmani is old and wrinkled. Lebanese official records count her among the dead as she was born in 1877. But her memory seems intact and she looks very much alive, leaning on her cane, surrounded by her family in her home in Tyre. Indeed if Musulmani's birth certificate is authentic, she could be 127 years old, or the oldest woman on earth, beating her nearest rival, a French woman who died a few years ago at the officially documented age of 122, Reuters reported Tuesday. But her real age could be much lower as her youngest son is in his 60s, which means she would have been at least 57 the last time she became pregnant. In any case, Musulmani, who lives in her home in Shaitiya near Tyre, has become a living legend. She belongs to a family known for its members' longevity of life. It is said her mother died at 130. Some of her brothers and sisters are now past 90. Musulmani herself has survived four of her eight children. At her home, which overlooks the Tyre shore, Hamida sits surrounded by her children, their wives and her grand-children and great-grand children numbering 65 in all. She looks like a patriarch with her followers surrounding her as she keeps an eye on her children's wives doing their chores in the tobacco field. "When I was young, there was no tobacco industry and we did not know these things, she said. "All I can remember is that we used to grow wheat and barley. But I have distributed this land to my children and they used it to grow tobacco." As she was speaking, one of her sons, Hussein, handed her a cup of natural juice to drink. But she would not drink it until she made sure there were no additives in the liquid. "Thank God I have preserved my health. I am careful to drink only natural juice coming from fruit grown on my own land," said Hamida, who looks like a 90-year-old. She said she had been following a stringent food program. She was holding one of her great-grand-children, Qassem, who is 5 months old. "He reminds me of my yesteryears," she said. Her son, Abu Mahmoud, said his mother became famous during last month's municipal elections. Her name had been crossed out of the voters roster. When her children tried to make a correction, they were told that the officials preparing the rolls could not believe that she was still alive at that age. But she did not get to vote, because no elections took place after the outgoing municipality returned to office unopposed. "I remember old days when the country was under foreign occupation," she recalled. "We had some hard times and many people went hungry under the Ottoman empire," she said. She added that men were then forced to serve in the jandurma (Turkish Army.) "I hid my father in the house so he would not be taken away. But when drinking water ran out, we had to drink sea water. Her eyes welled with tears as she recalled her children who had died. "Only four remained - Hassan, Hussein, May and Leila," she said. By Mohammed Zaatari DAILY STAR Staff Copyright © 2004, The Daily Star.