Why Lebanon still grabs my attention

After three and a half years in Canada, I found myself once again sucked into the politics of my native Lebanon. Lebanon, since the end of 2019, has been facing a severe economic crisis. Several large-scale popular protests shook its political establishment. People have had enough of the economic situation, the corruption, and the rule of the jungle. Even for some, they had enough of the rule of Hizballah (the Shia Islam radical terrorist group). Yet, I who has renounced Lebanon. Who for years have been trying to leave Lebanon and now finally in Canada. I who am more and more trying to think of myself as Canadian as my citizenship application is being processed. I find myself sucked again into the cesspool that is Lebanon affairs and Lebanese politics.

I find myself trying to go on YouTube to find news footage of what is going on in Lebanon. I find myself liking Facebook articles and posts related to Lebanon. I find myself even writing posts about Lebanon. three so far, with this one included.

You can get the Lebanese out of Lebanon, but you cannot get Lebanon out of the Lebanese

In Canada, I have interacted and befriended people from different backgrounds and different nationalities. My best friends have been immigrants from varied nations such as Russia, Pakistan, and Israel. I have known and befriended Americans and English Canadians. Quebecois and French. Romanians and Indians. Iranians and Egyptians. And I have found more in common with them than I did with most of the people I knew back in my native land. Even from a linguistic perspective, I am more at ease in English than Arabic. I write better French than Literary Arabic. Yet why this fascination with Lebanon. Why now when so much is going well for me here.

Yes, I still have family in Lebanon, most notably my parents. Yes, my sibling lives in the Arab Gulf and does not seem to want to leave. Yet, if I had my way, I would get the three of them to come live here. If not here in Montreal, then in Canada or at least North America.

Lebanon greatest diva فيروز (Fayruz) sang “زورونيكل سنة مرة” (Visit me every year once) “حرام تنسوني بالمرة” (it is a shame to forget me altogether), years ago. This song might have brought me to visit Lebanon in 2018 for Christmas. Yet for the joy of visiting my parents and wearing light clothing outside in December, I can’t for the like of me see anything that is intrinsic to Lebanon the place, that was positive in that trip.

You see, I am a child of the civil war: one of the world’s most violent civil wars, the Lebanese civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1989. And this war is what I see when I look at Lebanon today. I think of my fellow Lebanese going through something similar soon, and it scares me. I know that my entire immediate family would make it far away from there when the time comes, and weapons are drawn. But it scares me that those people with whom I have but a dialect in common would suffer what I suffered during my first eight years on earth.

Lebanon AI Meetup

Another thing that draws me is the missed potential of this land. Before I left, I had started an Artificial Intelligence online group that mushroomed to include a lot of Lebanese up and coming technology talents. When people think of Lebanon, a lot comes to mind. First a deadly civil war. If they know more, then beautiful beaches and mountains. For the politically inclined, the terrorist group Hizballah. Beautiful women, of course. Maybe banks. But last on that list is a vibrant technology scene (at least before the latest crisis).

Indeed, the Lebanese are the technologists of the Arab speaking world. Working in Lebanese IT for years, I always hoped for peace with Israel because of the doors it would open for Lebanese technologists. I remember years ago reading a book called “Startup nation” about Israel’s technology scene, then trying to gift it to an acquaintance who was also a supporter of Hizballah in Lebanon (he didn’t end up accepting the gift). For me, it was fascinating that back then, in 2011, the former president of Israel Shimon Perez, who wrote the forward to the book, identified Artificial Intelligence as a key technology for the future. Perez, who was a big proponent of peace in the Middle East and - as I would learn from that book - one of the major figures in Israel’s industrialization.

Some Arabs look to Israel with envy. I have always looked to it as a role model to emulate in Lebanon. The Lebanese could have done so much better for themselves if they chose the path of industrialization and technology. Instead, the post-war economy was built on real estate and tourism. The technology scene was an accident. The result of kids playing video games and using the internet and deciding to become computer scientists and engineers. They were lucky that a strong educational system that catered to them ( I lament the current financial troubles of my old Alma-Mater, the American University of Beirut, whose loss would be felt in the economy for years to come).

Yet, most choose the path of emigration from Lebanon. I have learned that a lot of those who continued my Lebanese meetup group ended up outside Lebanon working and doing AI and Data Science.

I know that if I am ever to return to Lebanon, I will not get a comparable opportunity than what I have here. I know that life would be much worse than when I left.

And Yet…

Yet I guess, you cannot forget where you came from. And if my immediate family members leave, some childhood friends will be bound to remain in Lebanon. I suppose it is the same with any immigrant group. They still follow the situation in their native lands and would act out of some sense of attachment to that land. Even those who never want to go back there. And maybe who knows. Perhaps one day Lebanon like a phoenix will rise again from the ashes to become a modern nation. And maybe that will happen through the effort of émigré like me who have sought to publicize the plight of Lebanon as well as the Lebanese who live there.