That sounds like an exciting trip. Was he traveling solo? You must have been a nervous wreck, though. You should post some of photos on FR. People would love to hear about his trip.
I started my career in field service engineering in power plants and, after three years in the western US, went international for two years. I was in quite a few hot-spot countries (China two weeks after Mao died; Chile a couple years after Allende; the Phillipines near the Marxists and Islamists in Mindanao) which scared my folks to death. Like your son found, I discovered things were nowhere near as bad as the US press had made them out to be. But it only takes a second to get snatched and held captive or get murdered. But, being young and carefree, it was a heck of an experience.
He went solo, his only luggage was a 10 lb backpack. Yes, my wife and I were nervous, the whole time he was gone. He said that the hardest part of the trip in Egypt was the language barrier was worse than he thought it would be. He had backpacked thru India, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos a few years ago, over a 6 month period, and could get along quiet well not knowing the local languages. But, in Egypt, few people spoke English. In Lebanon, English was more widely spoken, even if it was rather limited. He was told to avoid certain areas of Lebanon that have large Syrian refugee concentrations, because of a high level of crime, mainly drug dealing.