There is no future here, and yet I stay

Why do we stay here? Why do we come back?

Lebanon is a difficult country to live in. It hardly provides potable water and a regular electricity supply to its residents. Most people cannot access their hard-earned savings because of the banks’ many years of mismanagement, corruption and risky lending to the government. It’s hard to come by reliable public transportation or Internet connection. Every day, there is a plethora of small frustrations: swarms of motorcycles driving in the wrong direction, going “3aks el seir,” the booming sound of privatized water trucks, garbage bins overflowing with garbage, and rats and cats fighting each other for a scrap of discarded food. When you look at Beirut from a distance, the city is covered in a persistent smog, air pollution that is blanketing the city in an ominous cloud.

Beirut, my city, is made of endless contradictions. You can have an unpleasant encounter with a disgruntled bank employee, then have your whole day turned around by the man selling you vintage furniture. He invites you in for coffee with the warmest smile, and you say yes because it’s hard to resist his kindness.

When I moved here from the U.S. with my mother in 2005, I was raised in a home full of magic and love. My grandmother lived in the apartment above ours. She picked me up from school and prepared lunch, which we ate together every day. I’m nearly 30 years old now, and my teta is still asking me if I’m coming over for lunch.

My jeddo and I bickered over the television remote—he wanted the news, I wanted cartoons—and my teta would make him compromise by giving me an extra half hour. He grumbled but always caved. I was his first grandchild after all.

Many of us stay here, or return from elsewhere, because it’s where we belong, where we all understand each other without having to communicate much. It’s how Lebanese people can live side-by-side despite the sordid history of a brutal civil war that we still don’t know how to talk about.

No matter how often they’ve seen it, Beirut is still rush to the corniche, the city’s promenade, to catch the sunset. Shop owners throughout the city lay out food for the stray cats on the street. Several vendors in Hamra, my neighborhood, have a cat they have decided to care for as though it were their own. Whenever I walk down Hamra Street, I greet my favorite cats, all of whom I have named.

Men line up by the sea in their plastic chairs, smoking argileh, playing tawle, chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes, and gossiping about their neighbors. I often wonder what these men were like as children—running around the same streets, playing tag or football with each other. Did they know that one day they would be sitting on those chairs for hours, like their elders, complaining about lying politicians, the price of gas, and arguments with their wives?

The recent war in Lebanon is still fresh in our memories, especially given that it isn’t over. Israel still bombs or aggresses on Lebanon every day. We are still grieving the men, women, and children who were mercilessly killed, the heritage that was destroyed, and the olive trees that were ripped from the ground.

Ibrahim Fawaz, the owner of the beloved bookstore in my neighborhood, was murdered in an Israeli strike while he was eating breakfast on his balcony at 4AM. I was woken up by the gut-wrenching sound of the bomb that took his life. I will never forget that sound.

My friend Farrah’s grandparents’ home in Kfarkila, in the South, is in ruins, the olive trees that once surrounded her family’s home gone. She is still savoring the last remaining drops of oil from her family’s final harvest.

Look up at the sky, and you might spot an Israeli drone buzzing over us. If it’s not a drone, it’s a jet that, at any moment, could break the sound barrier. We share a feeling of doom knowing that Israel has broken the ceasefire over 4,000 times, and that they are still decimating residential buildings and targeting individuals in Southern Lebanon—anything that moves, in the name of their national security. We live every day not knowing what catastrophe awaits us. And yet somehow, this makes us more determined to stay.

“There is no future in Lebanon,” we say to each other, but somehow we still plan weddings, dinners, and birthday parties months in advance. We still dream about raising our children here.

Throughout my entire life, my mother has insisted that I shouldn’t put down roots in Lebanon. After the Beirut port explosion in August 2020, she begged me to leave, telling me that not only would Lebanon continue to disappoint me, but it would probably eventually kill me. However, she has never listened to her own advice. She returned to Lebanon to raise me after having lived abroad for 20 years, ready to give Lebanon another chance after swearing she would never return. My grandmother was born and raised in Beirut and has never lived anywhere but the building we live in now.

We desperately cling to Lebanon because we don’t know who we are without it. We come back, recklessly, because we miss it. We hope that we can be part of the change, even when people warn us that Lebanon is rotten from the inside out. Why do we stay here? Because in the deepest parts of us, we still have a twisted sense of hope that Lebanon will persevere. It’s too painful to imagine the alternative.

Sometimes I ask my Teta: “If you had the chance to emigrate elsewhere, would you?”

The answer she gives is no, every single time.