Some people measure time by birthdays, by jobs, by marriages, by the milestones of a life that moves in a ‘normal’ rhythm. And then some people measure time by wars.
I was a teenager in 1980s Beirut, which means my childhood memories are stitched together with the sounds of shelling, gunfire in the distance, and adults lowering their voices every time the electricity cut and the radio became the only window to the outside world.
We learned very early that life could stop in an instant. School schedules depended on ceasefires. Going anywhere depended on whether the roads were open and the temperament of the checkpoints’ guerrillas. Normal things like ice cream, a walk by the sea, and visiting cousins or friends required negotiations with checkpoints, militias, and fate itself.
For many of us, who grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, we knew the Israeli invasions, the endless rounds of bombardment, and the ceasefires never really meant peace. Every few years, the country seemed to go through the same thing again.
And yet, somehow, we lived. We studied by candlelight. We built friendships playing cards, backgammon, and chess in stairwells while hiding from shells. We laughed because laughter was the only way we could make sense of things.
People often say that the Lebanese are resilient. But resilience is a complicated word, and we don’t like it much. We have a complicated relationship with this word in particular. …
Many of us left. Not because we wanted to abandon home, but because survival sometimes required us to leave. We built lives abroad, careers, families, businesses. We carried Lebanon with us in the food we cook, the language that slips out when we are emotional, the music and our feiruz with that special cup of coffee… that instantly takes us back to a balcony in Beirut overlooking a city that was always wounded but always beautiful.
The wars continued. The crises multiplied. And then came August 4, 2020, the Beirut port explosion. I was there, but even those of us who were thousands of kilometres away felt something inside us collapse that day. It was not just an explosion. It was the violent confirmation that the country we loved could be destroyed not only by war, but by neglect, corruption, and indifference.
After that came the financial collapse. Savings disappeared overnight. A lifetime of work stolen by a system that treated its citizens like expendable collateral. And then, like the rest of the world, COVID arrived. Honestly, at this time in my story, I’m not sure what came before what … but you get the picture.
There is a quiet grief that many of us carry. The grief of the life that could have been. Because when you grow up in a stable country, you imagine a certain rhythm to life: Work hard. Build something. Retire quietly. Watch your grandchildren grow. Rest. Right???
But for many Lebanese, retirement is a fantasy for most of us. We work and work and work, not only to live, but to rebuild what has been taken again and again.
And now, we watch the region struggle.
From afar, Lebanese scattered across the world follow the news obsessively, the way only people who have known war understand how to do. We watch Israel strike Lebanon again, we watch the war between Iran, Israel and the United States ripple across the region, and we watch missiles and drones cross skies that connect our past and our present.
Even here in the Gulf, where governments maintain control and stability, where systems function, and people are protected, there is still that familiar knot in the stomach. Because the Lebanese nervous system has been trained by decades of instability. We know too well how quickly things can unravel. So we go on with our lives, working, building, raising families, but inside there is always a quiet fatigue. A sense of having lived too many lifetimes already.
And I was thinking a couple of days ago… one of my deep thoughts… now, as I approach my sixties, what would life have been like without all of this? What would it feel like to grow old in peace? To plan ten years ahead without hesitation? To believe that the future will simply unfold?
Yet, despite everything, the Lebanese spirit refuses to disappear. Here comes the word resilience again… UGH!!! We carry scars, yes. But we also carry humour, creativity, stubborn hope, and a kind of emotional intelligence that only people forged in chaos develop. We know how fragile life is. Which is why we celebrate it so fiercely.
Still, sometimes I look back at the long road from the Beirut of the 1980s to today and think of something simple: We were not supposed to spend our whole lives surviving. We were supposed to spend at least part of them living.
