It’s occurred to me that living in Lebanon is not dissimilar to being in a relationship with someone who has ‘so much potential’ and is ‘actually quite brilliant’ but is utterly self-destructive and incapable of making good life choices. You’re left beating your bruised and bloodied head against the wall and thinking to yourself, this isn’t so bad…right? It would be a shame to let this relationship go…right? A Lebanese friend said to me once that living in Lebanon is not unlike being in an abusive relationship in which your partner hits and humiliates you time and again, but in between beatings they have moments of brilliance that make you want to stay.
I understand what he means.
Beirut, I don’t know that I’ve ever fallen so hard for a city so quickly before. You’re an absolute incoherent mess of architectural styles, zoning, urban (non)planning, unruly drivers, terrible air pollution and congested neighborhoods. But I love you. I’m going to miss the vibrance, contradiction and cognitive dissonance that make you so fascinating and just beyond my reach. The hours I spent strolling through your streets and discovering hidden gems while narrowly avoiding potholes, dog poop and drivers who aren’t paying attention…irreplaceable.
It’s been a tough couple of years for you, what with thawra and then Covid. If we weren’t confined to our homes because of burning tires, riots and road closures, it was lockdowns and curfews. But as with all impediments, you find ways to navigate economic collapse, meaningless destruction, asinine politics, and laughable infrastructure to make a life for yourselves and your families.
I shall miss your eight-directional intersections where everyone has the right of way and the traffic cops have no idea what’s going on. I feel it’s a metaphor for the country at large: the state would do better to get out of the way and just let the people figure it out.
I shall miss your coffee and your cocktails. No city in the world does pubs and cafes as well as you do. Your baristas and bartenders and interior designers are world class, and I hope they can keep making a living wage since it would be a travesty to lose them to other metropolitan cities (although New York City could surely use some of you; strangely, I’ve never had a satisfying cocktail in Manhattan).
I shall miss your delightfully dark humor that only gets better as circumstances grow worse. Although I have a love-hate relationship with your irreverence for rules, news headlines like “The number of fines handed out for curfew violations now exceed number of Corona cases” fill my heart with mirth.
August 4, 2020 is a memorable day for two reasons: One, it was the day I met my now fiancé in person for the first time after two months of talking over WhatsApp (it’s his fault I’m leaving you). Two, it was the day Beirut’s light went out. Minutes after picking William up from the airport in Gothenburg, I started receiving text messages with videos of this mystery explosion at the port. Nearly a year later, I’m still not over how dark the skyline is. It’s unnatural for a noisy city to look so muted.
Yalla, the light will come.
Finally, dear Lebanon, with all of your rich landscape, your fine wines, your beloved cuisine, your dreamy coastline and flashy cars, please don’t forget to look after your best asset: your people. They are the most delightful, obstinate, cosmopolitan, hospitable, enterprising, resilient, traumatized people I know. And they love you. Yet most of them have left or wish they could leave. Please give them a reason to stay.
With all of my love and hope for a brighter day,
Annika
