Your Lebanon. My Lebanon.

We never visited, but we fell in love with our "Balad" through our Baba. We visited Lebanon through the music of Fairuz, Wadi El Safi, and Majida El Roumi. Their lyrics told the stories we longed to know.

Our minds imagined the cliffs on the sea at Rawsha, where Daddy saw an angel and it saved his life. Through his careful harvest of the olives in our backyard in California, we experienced his joy of his homeland. The American University of Beirut and his loyal best friend from his childhood village, together unlocked the opportunities that catapulted my father into a career as an organic chemist in the U.S.

Many people see Lebanon as just another Middle Eastern country, suffering from war, strife and conflict that every other one suffers. But, Lebanon is different to me. I have spoken my heart about Palestine, but right now, my father's Balad is breaking my heart.

In this moment of their devastation as a people and a country, perhaps you may discover a longing for Beirut, a city you never knew you dreamed to visit - the home of the Phoenicians.

Lebanese people are proud. They have held tightly to the long Christian heritage that dates back to the first churches. They speak "Lebanese", not "Arabic". It IS Arabic, but they want you to know they are proud, because they can boast of having the largest indigenous Christian population in the Middle East.

The earliest Biblical writings elaborate about Lebanon's breathtaking scenery: the famous Cedar of Lebanon, sites of pilgrimage and miracles, the temple of Baal in Baalbek, Tyre and Sidon.

"The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like the cedar in Lebanon" (Psalm 92:12) ... "The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted." (Psalm 104:16 NRSV)

In the woods of his village, Baba would spend time alone writing poetry and reading by a natural spring, Zoo' ee. Nature was his preferred place of worship, though he was a very religious Orthodox Christian. As a naturalized citizen of the United States, my dad still dreamed of his beautiful home. He grew up bil dai3ah - "the village". He had 9 siblings, and his mother nursed her own children and some of her grandchildren. During the civil war, their family was known to provide medical aid to the suffering, a tradition that has been renewed as Syrian refugees have been fleeing into Lebanon over these recent years. It was an Orthodox Christian village where his fondest memories were with two goats and his cow, Futna, that lived in their house. Her milk was used to make Shankleesh, strongly pungent fermented yogurt balls which they would roll in Zaatar, a mix of native thyme, sesame seeds and sumac. His village is famous for having the best Shankleesh in Lebanon!

You have your Lebanon and I have mine.

You have your Lebanon with her problems, 

and I have my Lebanon with her beauty.

You have your Lebanon with all her prejudices and struggles, 

and I have my Lebanon with all her dreams and securities.

Your Lebanon is a political knot, a national dilemma, a place of conflict and deception. 

My Lebanon is a place of beauty and dreams of enchanting valleys and splendid mountains.

Your Lebanon is inhabited by functionaries, officers, politicians, committees, and factions. 

My Lebanon is for peasants, shepherds, young boys and girls, parents and poets.

Your Lebanon is empty and fleeting, whereas My Lebanon will endure forever.

- Gibran Kahlil Gibran, "The Eye of the Prophet" 1920

Daddy loved Khalil Gibran. Poetry and nature were his heartbeat. One of his best friends encouraged me to read, "The Broken Wings". I wept. Lebanese writing, full of passion, spirit, and heartache moved me deeply. I felt like through Khalil Gibran, perhaps I could better understand my Dad. He was an introvert and held the highest standard for ethics and morality: honest to a fault. Some of the best advice and invented cliches in our family came from my Dad.

Truly, this crisis is a loss to us all. Beirut is the Newport Beach of the Middle East - some say the French Riviera: progressive, beautiful, strong and rich with culture. In the moment of an explosion, culture, families, history, stability, hope have been shattered.

The international community must hold the government accountable. An international investigation must be demanded. We can press our Congress people, the U.N. Yes, send support.

There are many links that may have come your way. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, many NGO's lost their support and their presence in Lebanon. A number of them were well established and already responding due to the flooding of Syrian refugees into Lebanon. Donating to a vetted organization with feet on the ground is important at this time. Here are a few that I am connected with personally.

Preemptive Love
Antiochian Orthodox Church
Caritas Lebanon/Catholic Charity Organization
Living With Power/Dr. Lina Abujamra Medical Teams

I'm not from here. I'm not from there. I don't know from where I am.

There's a disconnect built-in to who I am. It's always been there, even before the day I selfishly told my dad not to speak to anyone at Back-To-School night in 3rd grade. "Baba, they'll hear your accent and then everyone will think I'm weird." He never forgot that night, the night I was embarrassed that he was Lebanese, that he spoke Arabic, and that he was my dad.

In 4th grade we finally had a non-white kid enrolled in class. At home my parents referred to her as "Oriental". Political incorrectness needed time to develop through the 80's and the 90's, and at the time the differences between Korean, Chinese, Japanese or any other Asian was lost to most of the people living in upper-middle class coastal California. Lessons learned, the strongest Asian communities established themselves not too far from where I grew up. At home, our conversations revolved around how well the "oriental" girl did in school and that I should be at the top of my class. "We sacrificed everything to come to this country so that you could have a better life," they would remind my siblings and me. Who knew how much they sacrificed? We lived well. I was born into a home they had purchased, at a time when my father worked in a research lab for a great company.

Through elementary years, an understanding established itself and we joked that in our family, we spoke in English, but yelled in Arabic. Anyway, Arabic sounded like people yelling, and the cuss words were far more colorful than English curses. My Dad was a professional language enhancer, as are many Lebanese. When his anger raged, we'd fearfully giggle as little droplets of sweat rolled down his forehead. Blood levels would rise up past his thin, pursed lips and he'd curse the religion of the mother of the owner of the dog who pooped on his lawn. His creative cursing might have been an overflow of the inner poet. Eloquent and refined, when at peace in nature, his studies of Rumi and Khalil Jibran would find themselves slipping from his pen into a palm-sized journal he kept in his study. My Baba was a naturalist and literary artist.

Struggling year after year, I strove to please my parents while desperately trying to gain a postition of belonging among my classmates. My academic determination was fueled by the fire under my bottom lit by my father's extreme expectations and definite disappointment. Mama sympathized with my need to have friends and get along. Knowing he would never let his young daughter out of his sight for an entire week, she lied to my father when papers came home for us to go to 6th grade camp. "She will not graduate the 6th grade if she doesn't go!" I remember weeping and waving at my mother standing in front of the school wiping the tears from her cheeks as the bus drove away. It was the first time I would sleep outside my own bed without my mom and dad along.

His mission of love as a father was to protect us. To Baba, America was the land of opportunity and the land of too much freedom. Until I had my own daughters, the realization of the depth of his fears didn't make sense. As an immigrant from a rural, conservative mountain village in Lebanon he anchored his family in California. There was no village to raise the child. The cloak of his strict protection and demands for my excellence grew anxious standards within me, but I wanted nothing more than to make him proud.

Indian friends of mine call American-born Indian children "coconuts" - brown on the outside, but white on the inside. My Indian prayer mentor says I'm the opposite. Both of my parents come from former Roman provinces that were later conquered by the Crusaders, then grabbed by the Ottoman Turks, split and granted to the French and English and finally released into independence. We look like Italians, with Romanesque noses and foreheads, but more fair-skinned. But always, in the depths of my being, I wished for a uni-brow, warm brown skin, and deep, black eyes because so often I wanted to be what my father wished for himself - the perfect Lebanese daughter.

Mannee min Hon. Mannee min HoneeQ. Mah Ba3rif min wein ajeet.