<\/p>\n
Beirut is a city of many endings and beginnings, where so many people have started over, again and again, or left and then returned. As we all watch the decimation of Gaza (thousands of buildings destroyed, including schools, hospitals and the Strip\u2019s <\/span>main library<\/span><\/a>), and hear about the deaths of more than 15,000 civilians, predominantly children and women \u2014 including many families, and friends \u2014 one cannot help but also think of Beirut, whose residents have endured not only the civil war but one crisis after the other.<\/span><\/p>\n How do they manage, and why do they stay?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Many Lebanese have left the country over the years; in fact, there are more Lebanese living abroad than at home, as everyone knows. This is certainly true of Palestinians as well. But while we wait to see how Israel\u2019s latest onslaught affects life for the people of Gaza, I asked four <\/span>Beirutis<\/span> why they stay, and how they manage, in spite of everything.<\/span><\/p>\n There are also the torments of this place which are the stuff of my thoughts and the material for my pen. I don\u2019t find it interesting, I find it existential. The country withers, and withering countries have much to say. So, I listen.<\/span><\/p>\n I can and do imagine myself spending less time in Lebanon. Leaving even. In this, I follow the lead of those close to me. Because home for me is where they are. If more of them start to leave, I will do the same. If they determine there is nowhere else to go, and Beirut is good enough, it will be a while before I truly fade from the scene. But eventually, I suspect, there will be little trace of me here. And that, in so many ways, breaks my heart.<\/span><\/p>\n Amal, is living in Beirut often, or rarely stressful, and if so, what do you do to cope with the stress? Secondly, if you were to leave, where would you be likely to resettle?<\/b><\/p>\n More than stressful. It\u2019s maddening.<\/span> In 30 years, I haven\u2019t been able to build any immunity against the callousness of the place, the way in which every other person blithely violates basic rules of conduct. And then there is the omnipresence of a political-economic-sectarian elite whose grotesqueness is truly outlandish.<\/span><\/p>\n But again, the bubble helps. I don\u2019t watch any local television, I know which articles to skip in al Akhbar, the only local newspaper I skim through, I stay away from circles and places that offend my sensibilities, I walk out of gatherings where conversation is very likely to offend me\u2026 My daily routine offers its own insulations. You learn how to protect yourself quickly enough. The kind of work I do helps as well. I don\u2019t have to interact much with too many people, I don\u2019t have to be on the road constantly, I don\u2019t have to entertain people I don\u2019t like\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Destinations! Athens is one possibility, Geneva is another. London, perhaps. I have a European passport, so I have options.<\/span><\/p>\n But how do you manage the many ordeals, from the port explosion to the banking crisis, for instance?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n How do I do it? One way is not thinking about it. Just accepting it as a fait accompli. Another way is inventing hope from scratch every single morning. And <\/span>my trips abroad help a lot. They give me oxygen.<\/span><\/p>\n Isn\u2019t life stressful? How do you cope?<\/b><\/p>\n Of course life is stressful here (and that’s an understatement), but like I said before, when you’ve been raised and you’ve lived all your life under stress, it stops being an external factor, it becomes part of the system. It’s the enemy within, and you sleep and wake up with that enemy. You fight it with the help of family, friends, work, passions, love, laughter, nights out dancing, and sometimes a pill or two.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you were to leave Beirut to go live abroad, where you would go?<\/b><\/p>\n I’m not sure where I’d be able to live. The closest I’ve been to feeling “home” abroad has always been Latin America. Mainly Colombia, but other parts as well. But that’s too far from home to be viable and bearable right now. So I’d rather not think about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I guess the short answer to why I stay in Beirut is that it’s the place where I feel like I have to explain myself least. I’ve lived here nearly all my life, and so the city itself is just layers and layers of memory for me: this the street corner where I had a screaming argument with an ex, this was the apartment I lived in when I was finishing university, this is the bar where I spent the summer of 2013… And of course half these places are gone now, like there’s one parking lot where I always look up at the sky, about where a fifth-floor apartment would be, and imagine how I sat there on the balcony with dear friends before the building was demolished.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n At the risk of pathologizing everything though, I do think that a lot of my love for this place is a kind of trauma response. I talk about it in the essay I shared with you, \u201c<\/span>The Janus-Faced City<\/span><\/a>\u201d \u2014 Beirut as a “wounded creature” was a mythology that loomed so large for me, and I think it became more intense when we moved to Canada when I was almost 11. I was really so extremely homesick, and because of the stress of the move and the isolation of the new place, Canada is also where it became clear to me that my parents’ marriage was less than ideal, and that my parents were also so ill-prepared for life in this new place. Everything felt forlorn and we felt lesser-than, and I’d never felt that way in Beirut.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So Beirut became the place of belonging and feeling right and Canada was the place of dislocation and upheaval. My family had financial troubles (as I wrote in \u201c<\/span>The Gamble<\/span><\/a>\u201d*) and things were really tense and awful at home. And so because of those financial issues, and because I was so homesick, it seemed like a perfect solution to everyone’s problems to send me back to Beirut to finish high school here and have my grandmother take total financial responsibility for me. My family over there would have one less “mouth to feed,” my grandmother would have company, and I would have my grandmother and Beirut. And really, it was so magical to be back: the postwar city was like a fairytale landscape, literally shifting beneath my feet. Around every corner was something new to be discovered.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n\u2014Amal Ghandour\u2014<\/h4>\n
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<\/a>
\n<\/span>I have long battled with this question, Jordan. Some reasons are very obvious and, well, predictable, others are very complicated and elusive.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>I do rather well inside my bubble. I\u2019ve built quite a formidable one and it has almost everything I need for long stays: loved ones, a comfortable home, a nice neighborhood, all the freedom I need as a woman. And mine is a privileged life. To every state failure, I have a private solution; to every frustration, an escape. I have easy access to everything I need. There is little effort in Lebanon, and much effort everywhere else practically.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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\n\u2014Joumana Haddad\u2014<\/b><\/h4>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/joumana-haddad-by-Bertrand-GaudillereItem-the-markaz-review.jpg\")
\n<\/span>Why do I stay? For so many reasons:<\/span>
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\n<\/span>1. \u00a0 \u00a0Because I cannot \u201cnot stay.\u201d What I\u2019ve been through in this country has become such a huge part of who I am and what I stand for, that if I leave, I would lose myself. I would lose what makes me \u201cme.\u201d I\u2019ve paid such a high price and invested so much time and energy and dreams and heartbreaks just by being born here, not to mention by living here and going through all that I went through and fighting all the personal and collective wars that I\u2019ve fought, that leaving would equal failing myself and the choices that I\u2019ve made. It would be an admission of defeat, and I will not be defeated.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>2. \u00a0 \u00a0Because I have become addicted to challenges and hardships. This is what Lebanon and this whole region does to you. Would I like to simply live instead of feeling that I am going to war every morning? Sure. But I will miss the adrenaline of having to resist and confront and overcome.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>3. \u00a0 \u00a0Because staying is a defiant, offensive stance, not just an innate attachment. It is a middle finger in the face of everything and everyone that keeps trying to push me away, dishearten me, scare me, murder me, frustrate me, and tell me that I should just abandon all hope and leave. Fuck them all, I am staying.<\/span>
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\n\u2014Lina Mounzer\u2014<\/h4>\n
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