(Credit: Elie Mhanna/L'Orient Today)
I see what’s happening to us in their eyes. I hear it in the intonation of their voices. For the past three weeks, months or even years — whenever I meet someone I know here in Paris or am introduced to someone unfamiliar who learns I'm Lebanese — I see the same expression on their faces. I see our struggles reflected back at me.
Every time, it’s the same dismay, the same desolation, the same "I'm sorry for what’s happening to you." I witness the same way of looking at ourselves, often with downcast eyes and clasped hands, sharing the pity and embarrassment of those fortunate enough to have been born on the right side of the planet — those lucky to have never encountered real disaster, to have never tasted the acrid scent of dust and blood. They’ve never been jolted awake in the middle of the night by the sound of an airplane or the explosion of a missile tearing their city apart.
Each time, the same questions arise, whether in person or by message: "Are your parents safe?" "What about your family?" "And your friends? How are things 'over there'?" This "over there" is their way of describing our broken corner of the world, where everything has become overshadowed by the word ‘war.’ It’s a place filled with clouds of smoke and mountains of ash, where lives, bodies and memories we can no longer count languish and disappear. How are things going? How do we respond? What do we say? Where do we even begin?
Head and heart in Beirut
Like all those far from home, I wake up each morning with the fear of discovering what happened during the few hours when exhaustion finally got the better of me — a fear of knowing how much my country, my city, might have changed or been disfigured in the matter of a few hours. The fear of what the latest wave of Israeli barbarity might have destroyed or made disappear in the night. Every morning, I wake up wondering what has happened to us and how it came to this. Like all those far away, my heart and mind are still in Lebanon, even though I’m not physically there. All that remains of my connection to my city is my phone, my TV screen constantly tuned to local channels and the distant voices of my friends and family who break off, telling me they’re holding on. Days pass with this strange feeling of being permanently jet-lagged — of having to keep living, getting up and putting on a brave face, even though my thoughts and emotions remain ‘over there.’
‘How are you?’ Whether we’ve left or stayed, we all feel helpless, abandoned and alone. We feel like we’re in the middle of a shipwreck, without a captain or crew. We feel insignificant — as if we’ve been thrown into the fire while the world watches our slow burn, offering mere statements of sympathy: "I’m sorry this is happening to you."
Whether we’ve left or stayed, we feel as though decisions about our fate are made behind our backs, and what’s inflicted upon us hits us straight in the heart. Whether we left or stayed, life is now wedged between two Israeli attacks. It navigates a narrow path, waiting for the next sonic boom, the next strike, the next cloud of smoke over the South, the Bekaa or Beirut; the next call for blood donations, the next wail of ambulance sirens and the next body count. The next image of a village or neighborhood disappearing.
Avichay Adraee and the sound of drones
‘How are you?’ Those who have remained in Lebanon, whether by choice or necessity, no longer sleep. If they aren’t dead, they are no longer truly living. Even in supposedly safe neighborhoods, they are never truly safe, never secure. No matter where they are or what they do, the ominous roar of a drone follows them everywhere, driving them to the brink of madness. It’s a constant reminder that on this side of the world, there is no respite. The looming threat of the unpredictable, the sense that something could happen at any moment, never leaves them.
Every evening, at roughly the same time, a man by the name of Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army's Arabic-speaking spokesman, his face the embodiment of hell, appears on our screens. He shows a map of a Beirut neighborhood, warning us it must be evacuated immediately because it will soon be bombed. This map, seen from above, includes residential buildings, shops, hospitals, schools and mosques that will vanish within minutes. These images, delivered by Adraee with surgical, demonic precision, depict men, women, children, families — lives and memories that will cease to exist. Every night, Adraee announces the destruction of another part of our country with cold indifference, as the world watches in silence.
A few minutes later, with grim punctuality, the roads fill with people fleeing, carrying fragments of their former lives in makeshift suitcases. Then come the explosions, the clouds of smoke, the children ripped from sleep by the roar of planes and the exhausted parents who no longer know how to comfort them. Meanwhile, those far away call frantically to check if their loved ones are still alive. This is life in Lebanon, on the wrong side of the world, where our lives are reduced to dust on the scale of human lives...
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour
