Hannā Mikā'īl Māmā was a passenger on the Titanic.
Background[]
Hannā Mikā'īl Māmā was born in the Maronite Christian town of Zgharta in the Syrian land of the Lebanon. The Lebanon was occupied by the Ottomans before independence came in 1920. The origins of his family could have laid in Kfar Hātā or Ehden. He was born to Mau Māmā and his wife in 1893.
Hannā’s family had neighbours, the Butrus family, with whom they had good connections. Their son Tannus Butrus-K’awii became Hannā’s friend and Hannā’s heart was struck by Tannūs' sister Jasmine.
In 1909, to the grief of Hannā, Jasmine departed from her native land to go with her parents to America. Tannūs didn’t come with them, so he tried to console Hannā and keep him busy. Together they did some farming and practiced shooting.
While Hannā spent most of his younger life doing farming, Tannūs grew up as a shoe seller and got his own wife, Mona. The land meanwhile, still languished under the Ottoman rule. In a moment what must have been blind rage, they soon felt the wrath of Tannūs. Some of the Ottomans had confisquated the hurdle of farm animals from a friend of his. This made him determent on taken action against these men. He hurried to their home and waited patiently. When they were there he demanded from them to give the cattle back to the man they took it from. He threatened them with a rifle but they didn’t listen so he killed them.
Tannūs now had to escape as there was a good chance that revenge would come. A friend of Tannūs provided him with money. For Hannā, who was doing fine on his own and had a solid financial situation, this was an opportunity he grabbed with the most eagerness. Now he could set about to the promising land and see Jasmine again. He would go with Tannūs. His point of interest would be Philidelphia where Max, Tannūs' father would live. More residents of Zhgarta joined the party. There was the Nakid family and another man of the same age as Hannā and Tannūs: Sarkīs Mu'awwad.
Hannā carried a lucky amulet with him. It was given to him back in Syria, by an old monk from the valley.This figure told him he would be in safe hands if he kept it around his neck, thus Hannā wore it at all times. The medaillion was believed to be connected to the crucification of Jesus Christ.
Titanic[]
Tannus was forced to go on without wife and children, when the customs at Marseilles found that one of his children had a perhaps contagiable illness. The rest of the group now carried on and got to Cherbourg, where, on April 10, a large steamer headed from the north and was ablaze with light on the evening. Smaller tenders brought her passengers towards her as she couldn’t go and dock in the shallow waters around the harbor. This Titanic was soon underway to get to New York. Tannus and the others were Third Class passengers.
On the night of April 14, it was cold as the Titanic steamed through an icefield. She ran 22,5 knots and was doing well, but something appeared on the horizon. This was an unforeseen obstacle. The lookouts only became aware of it when Titanic was too close to get by unscathed. This was an iceberg which stopped Titanic in her tracks, as she slid against it while trying a port manouvre to prevent a head-on collision while also attempting to slow her down. Now though, the harm was done as Titanic had received nasty scars over a great lenght of her starboard side from the contact with the hard ice. Water flowed through these small cracks in a rapid tempo.
On April 15, just after midnight, Captain Smith had listened to the fatal, inevitable words from Thomas Andrews. She would founder, and, quickly at that. Titanic had 2 hours to live so he had to evacuate now, so the captain told the crewmen to ready the lifeboats.
How Hannā and his two mates experienced the collision and when they arrived on the Boat Deck is not known, but at the late hour into the sinking, they got there.
Hannā also tried to get on a lifeboat with his two other friends. The difference was that he was lucky enough to have found a large enough skirt of a certain woman for him to hide as they took pity on him, or so it was told.
The sacred necklace must have somehow worked. As his close compagnions died ,Mama made it off the sinking Titanic. How he did it is not known. One version says he was simple another passenger of lifeboat 15 that could get in without problems. He himself said that Madeleine Astor shielded him after he had been brought onboard lifeboat 4. He even was quoted to have kneeled down before pastor Thomas Byles, but he must have taken the confessions at Titanic’s final moments and went down with the ship so that leave the plausibility of the story as low.
Sarkis Mua’wwad's and Tannus Butrus-K’awii’s deaths were ascribed to a high-ranking officer shooting them. One of the families even claimed it must have been the captain himself, which rather contradicts Smith’s already suspicious behaviour. It’s still an unknown. Truth is that they were lost when the Titanic took her last stand and disappeared beneath the surface on 2:20 A.M, having been split in two sections.
After the sinking[]
Hannā now could do nothing but sit and wait for rescue to come. It came, at 4:00 A.M, in the form of the RMS Carpathia, an old, lot smaller ship than Titanic but with the most captain ever. They wasted not time to come to Titanic’s aid when they heard her distress signal. Sadly, despite all her efforts, she was too far away from Titanic to get there before she went down completely, but she could now offer shelter for the men and women in the boats that were left from the tragically stricken vessel. Hannā was soon onboard as well and later in the morning, Carpathia sailed to New York, where she got on the 18th of April. He reaced his desintation: Philadelphia. Here, he talked to the press, but it’s not garantueed that he was truthful on his discription of the disaster from his point of view.
Later life[]
Although Māmā was in love with Jasmine, their marriage was either short-lived or they never had a wedding to begin with, because Hannā found another woman in New Jersey named Elizabeth Starr. She was the daughter of other Syrian migrants, Sarkis and Katherine Starr. Their marriage came in 1918. No children were brought forth by their bond. Hannā meanwhile changed his name to John Mami.
John was forced to go in the army during World War 1, in 1917 while he and his spouse lived in Washington DC. He made it out alive and in the 1920s he worked his way around the shipyards in Philadelphia but it was still only in 1927 that he became naturalised despite already having changed his name. After being a dock worker he started a business in dry goods, still having his adress in Philadelphia. Even later, he started the Titanic Cafe.
But then he had a run-in with the law in 1939. There were 731 bottles containing alcoholic beverages found at his house, worth of $1200, that same day, July 28, the Schwenksville liquor store was robbed. To punish him, he was forced to close his pub, lost his liscence and had gotten a 5-year probation. The court reviewed the case again in 1941 which altered the situation for him just a bit. He gave up on his cafe and sooner or later he managed other establishments such an ice-cream parlor or a pool room.
On April 18, 1952, John Mami was in Washington when he took his last breath. He came to pass as an 58-year old man.