Tuesday, January 21

what we're leaving behind

Another day, another bomb.

This weekend it was all about the piles of trash that weren't picked up by Sukleen. Last week it was a tie between the EDL strike, the STL trial and a blog post by my colleague about how only Christians can save Lebanon. The week before it was also a bomb; or was it the week before that? And there was the Chattah assassination, and the Christmas and New Year traffic and reunions, and the amazing article by Fifi Abou Dib in L'Orient-LeJour describing exactly what it is that we keep losing, as Lebanese.

I'm leaving on Sunday, on a one-way ticket to New York; I don't have a job waiting for me, I'm not one of those lucky many to hold another nationality, I don't have a dad with unlimited money and I don't know what I'm really going to do there, but I know I can't stay here any longer.

And I know very well what I'm leaving behind. It's not the bombs --that are more present on my Facebook feed than in my reality. The bombs will come with me, because every time I hear there was in explosion in Beirut I will frantically try to call my family and friends to make sure they are all ok. It's not the lack of government, or the social segregation, or the power held by Hezbollah, or the sunni/chiite/orthodox/maronite/etc. bullshit that I could never wrap my head around, or the towers of cement growing like mushrooms in Beirut --none of this is what I'm going to miss. It'll all be here when I return, whenever that may be.

What I'm leaving behind is my sister, the person I love most in the world and who I wont be around for every day. I'm leaving my dad, my childhood home, and all the places where the memory of my mother is still alive. I'm leaving my friends, the friends I made when I was just a little girl, going to school in this very neighbourhood where I lived through all of my most important memories. What I'm leaving behind, what we are all leaving behind, is the potential for something great that will unfortunately never be. I have travelled a lot, met many different kinds of people. As a journalist, I've heard and told many stories. And I have yet to see families love each other as they do here; or groups of friends form ties that last longer than anywhere else; or a diversity that I really believe could've made us special in stead of hateful.

What we are all leaving behind are the brave. The young hopefuls who create LiveLoveBeirut to shout out the love; the heroes like Nidal and Kholoud who defy all odds and fight to marry civilly, and have the first secular baby in Lebanon; the activists who fight for children, for the poor, for the sick, for the environment, even though they get no help and no encouragement. And so we go; writers, filmmakers, designers, finance tycoons and doctors and whatever we may be. We go, and we come back for the people we've left behind. In the country we've lost.

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