91-year old Sarkis was born in Mar Mikhael. He attended Sahaguian-Levon Meguerditchian College in Sin el Fil, then transferred to Collège Saint Grégoire, that was closer to home, due to the Second World War at the time. He completed middle school, and dropped out to work with his father as a shoemaker at fourteen. He lost his shop during the Lebanese civil war, and moved to Mar Mikhael where he opened a shop facing the church.

When you first meet him, you would think he is too strict and hard to talk to, but behind this façade, Sarkis was good man with a sense of humor he was most famous for.

He incarnated the meaning of coexistence between different religions; he had a wonderful voice and would recite the Islamic call for prayer (the “Adan”), despite being an Armenian Christian. His voice resembled that of Abdelwahab.

Sarkis was passionate about sports. In his early years, he won multiple competitions, and played football with the Homenetmen Football Club. He also played kickboxing, and won first place in 1959. He was also called “the doctor”, for he had a talent for developing alternative traditional Arabic medicine.

On August 4, 2020, Sarkis was with his niece Makrouhi in their home in Mar Mikhael, directly facing the Port of Beirut. At 5:00 PM, they heard weird noises that they could not identify. His niece saw a huge cloud of black smoke above the port. Suddenly the explosion pushed them towards the kitchen. Makrouhi lost consciousness, and when she woke up, she saw her uncle unconscious and bleeding. His 70-year old niece tried to save him, but she couldn’t. Two hours later, her sister, who is a doctor, arrived with her husband and examined Sarkis. He was already dead. An ambulance evacuated him to the American University of Beirut Medical Center. Sarkis stayed in the morgue for two nights, after which his family received his dead body to bury him in the family’s cemetery.