“Why are you in Lebanon? What are you doing right here?”
Virtually precisely one decade in the past – on January 2, 2011 – I boarded a flight from Los Angeles to Amman through Paris. Amman was not my remaining vacation spot. It was the primary cease in a circuit of three Levantine international locations – Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon – the place I might be main an ambassadorial mission on behalf of my alma mater, MIT in Boston. On the finish of the month, after my tour ended, I made a decision to linger in Beirut and search for a job.
I’d endlessly dreamt of planting roots within the land of my heritage. Rising up, my brothers and I had spent paradise-like summers in Lebanon that uncovered us to the heat and distinctive hospitality of our tradition. We spoke the language fluently, so I definitely by no means felt like a foreigner. And most significantly, I’d lately bagged my second graduate diploma and was able to launch a profession. One way or the other, the consulting gigs I’d held in Paris and Abu Dhabi felt missing. Certain, I used to be challenged intellectually. However I used to be in the hunt for that elusive work-life steadiness.
As I ricocheted from one interviewer to the subsequent in Beirut, one widespread query rapidly emerged: “What are you doing right here? Why have you ever come to Lebanon?” On paper, that query is arduous to reply. Certainly, why would anybody who was raised within the consolation and modernity of a first-world nation even for a second think about making a house in a third-world jungle? Let’s be critical right here: the expression “Paris of the Center East” was dubbed after World Conflict II, when Lebanon was present process a cultural renaissance. Arguably it not applies to a rustic steered by sectarian strife, political upheaval, and rampant authorities inefficiency.
Each time I’d try to sort out that query, I got here up quick. If Lebanese folks didn’t imagine within the value of their very own nation, how might I, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed third-culture child, persuade them in any other case?
Delectable delicacies? Mediterranean climate? A storied previous? Historic ruins? Wonderful, however what about abysmal infrastructure? Meager livelihoods coupled with an exorbitant value of dwelling? Fixed political gridlock? Polluted surroundings? Corruption inside each layer of society and in each establishment? Anybody in her sane and rational thoughts wouldn’t willingly overlook the latter in favor of the previous.
And but I did. Passionately and persistently. In reality, my effusive self-assuredness gave start to this very weblog, whereby I chronicled my adventures and lay reward to Lebanon and its gifted artisans. My love of Lebanon grew deeper by the day, and with each go to again “residence” to California, I used to be much more assured of my relocation to the motherland. I wrote a weblog put up that was picked up by An-Nahar newspaper in 2014 about “why we come again to Lebanon.” Readers overseas ceaselessly requested me to weigh in on their own dilemmas of resettlement.
What can I say? I adored each sq. meter of that messy insanity which marks our sea-bordering nation. I efficiently blotted out the faults within the failure-stricken system and as an alternative elected to deal with our strengths. How else can one ever be pleased with one’s environment, if not by ordaining happiness as a frame of mind?
| Beirut coast, November 2011 |
I’ve been away for a while now. In November 2019, simply three weeks into what I surmised had the potential to grow to be an unstoppable folks’s revolution, I flew again to LA forward of the start of my second youngster. The coronavirus pandemic, which introduced our complete world to a grinding halt by mid-winter, prevented my return to Beirut, and Lebanon’s debilitating monetary misery merely rubbed salt within the wound of an already diseased nation, maintaining me at bay indefinitely.
As I ponder a return to Lebanon, the place my husband’s livelihood stays, the place we proceed to take up residence within the northern suburbs of Beirut, the place highly effective and constructive recollections of the previous decade enhance my consciousness, I’m wondering if I’ll like what awaits me. Will I have the ability to embrace the brand new faces, actually and figuratively, of my chosen homeland? Can I get previous the hyperinflation and financial stagnation that threaten to chuck Lebanon into irreversible collapse?
There’s a sinking feeling within me that, simply as our mother and father’ era waxed poetic about life pre-1975, earlier than the civil battle, I’ll be mentally reverting to the relative euphoria that was pre-2019. There can be a transparent and outlined line of demarcation in my head separating the golden period from the damning years unfolding earlier than us. As we speak, too, a battle of kinds is being duked out, but when and when there’s a triumphant victor stays to be seen.
One factor is definite, nevertheless. Now, greater than ever, I anticipate to be barraged with these pestering queries of “Why are you in Lebanon?” and “What are you doing right here?”. And it’ll be me fielding each the Q&A.
