Tag: Coming back

Le Plus Beau Pays du Monde

Photo by Sara Calado on Unsplash

Me revoilà à trente mille pieds d’altitude, quelque part entre Paris et Oslo, bien calé dans mon 8F habituel. Rapide passage dans les contrées nordiques pour présenter mes vœux quelque peu tardifs à la Norvège, cette amie qui m’aura inspiré bien des lignes dans ce carnet, avant de m’envoler en fin de semaine vers le plus beau pays du monde.

Chers amis, je suis à l’image de ce pays où je suis né: je n’en suis pas à une contradiction près. Mes compatriotes citeraient un adage de ce coin du monde selon lequel le macaque est gazelle aux yeux de sa guenon, et ils n’auraient pas tort, mais aujourd’hui, contradiction oblige, je clame haut et fort la beauté de ce petit pays au bord de l’oubli, de mon 8F, à trente-mille pieds au-dessus de l’Allemagne.

Oui je sais, les routes sont défoncées, les coupures d’eau et d’électricité monnaie courante, les institutions aux abonnés absents, et la corruption bien enracinée dans la normalité des administrations. Je sais aussi que malgré la misère qui gangrène le pays, les restaurants et les discothèques sont hors de prix et ne désemplissent pas, les pistes de ski sont noires de monde et les billets d’avion de la compagnie locale se négocient à prix d’or. Le pays n’en est plus à une contradiction près.

Oui je sais que le pays est exsangue, que ses forces vives et moins vives émigrent par milliers, que ses enfants maudissent le jour où ils y sont nés. Mais je sais aussi que l’avion sera complet ce samedi, rempli de ceux-là mêmes qui pestent contre le pays qui les a vu naître, mais qui ne peuvent se résoudre à lui tourner le dos, et qui reviennent année après année se faire plumer dans les restaurants et les clubs et risquer leurs vies sur les circuits défoncés de formule 1 que sont devenues les routes du pays, le temps de quelques jours de vacances.

Que voulez-vous, nul ne peut résister à ce pays une fois qu’il y a gouté, car voyez-vous, malgré toutes les cicatrices que ces dernières années lui auront laissé, malgré ses infirmités, malgré ses contradictions, et peut-être grâce à elles, ce pays invivable et imbuvable reste quand-même, et de loin, le plus beau pays du monde.

Let the board sound

Rabih

On coming back for good

Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent
Pour partir, coeurs légers, semblables aux ballons,
De leur fatalité jamais ils ne s’écartent,
Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours : Allons !
Charles Baudelaire

Photo by InstagramFOTOGRAFIN

People sometimes ask me if I’m ever coming back. Like for good. 
Most if not all of them are Lebanese and the question is usually rhetoric. Something you ask to keep the conversation going. To break the ice. And to that I usually have two or three interchangeable answers like “For sure!” or “Nah, don’t think so” or “Dunno man, it’s complicated” depending on the person asking and how much appetite I have for more rhetoric chitchat. 
But sometimes, the question begs for real answers. Reassuring answers actually. Your grandmother needs to hear that she will not remain heartbroken forever. Or your friends contemplating the road you took want to hear that leaving and coming back are two sides of the same coin, or maybe that they are not. And to that I usually come up with a diplomatic one-size-fits-all answer, because there is no point in making people sad or keeping them hanging, especially grandmothers, for the true answer is not a simple yes or no. 
You see, if you have lived in another country for months, a couple of years, or maybe a bit more, you might still be talking about coming back. But once you’ve been there long enough, “coming back” starts to sound like “leaving” to your ears and boy has it already been hard the first time.
Think of it in terms of investment: the time and effort you put into learning a language, calibrating yourself to new social norms, building a career, a network, making friends, getting yourself a home, feeling at home, securing an education for your children. The time you spent learning to like a country and its countrymen, even love them. As the list goes on, you are less eager to let go and besides, you had already done it once when you left what was your home country a long time ago.
Think of it in terms of commitment. Whether out of love or reason, this new country is now yours and you his, for better or worse, till death do you part as they say. And you do not get off a marriage unscathed.
That is my point. There is no leaving and coming back, there is leaving and then leaving once more.
But then again, when you think of it in terms of heartache if such a thing is even possible, you realize how great a deal of your life you left behind when you moved overseas, including parents, friends, memories and even food, and how your heart aches for it, how you crave it more than anything.
“Breakfasts outside with thyme mana’ich, labne and thick Lebanese coffee, evenings with friends playing cards, dining or relaxing with a beer watching the world cup from a terrace on the heights of Beirut, while the sun sets on the Mediterranean and the fishermen’s boats start lighting like fireflies in the sea, …” as I put it in a previous post.
The true answer? 
Few people would understand that you can love a country with all your heart and care for it even if you left it long ago in the pursuit of some kind of fulfillment, even if you would not come back for good, especially if you do not come back for good. And that this love is heartbreaking.
That if you do come back to the country of your ancestors, eager and joyful as you are, you are still leaving a part of you behind, in another country you learned to cherish, and that it can be devastating.
That leaving is seldom a reversible process and that there is no such thing as coming back to the way it was before, that this 16 year long stint is not just a bracket in your life you can close at will and that there is no right or wrong answer to the problem.
– So do you ever think of coming back for good? – I do. More than you think.- And will you? 
Well, can I take the wound of another separation? One is not enough already? But for Lebanon, maybe… 
So I always end up saying “God knows Grandma, God knows…” as I walk the thin thread between the love of my life and my life’s true love, my heart silently longing for both. 

For France, 

For Lebanon.

Let the board sound

Rabih