SHARE In the summers of her youth, Mona Nemer would escape the sweltering heat of Beirut with her family to seek out the cool mountain air of Wadi Chahrour. The small village in Mount Lebanon provided respite away from the bustling city just a dozen kilometres north, a place of tranquillity to indulge her boundless curiosity. “It was really very quiet and peaceful, which gave a lot of time for reading and perhaps dreaming,” she tells The National. “I guess I was just curious and asked many questions. I was fascinated by so many things around us.” Most of the dreams were about a future career in science. She can’t explain why, but from an early age she was drawn towards “the medical side”. Not, she hastens to add, to become a doctor of medicine.