Watching Lebanon, from Far Away

Lebanon got a "new" prime minister yesterday, a billionaire named Najib Mikati. This is the third, non-consecutive, time he has served as Prime Minister.

I follow the news of Lebanon because two of my great-grandparents came from a small town in southern Lebanon. I'm far removed from the place, by thousands of miles and a century. I don't speak a word of Arabic; my own father knows nothing but "grandma" and a few swear words. I was raised a regular old Roman Catholic, not a Maronite. And I've never been there, although I would have liked to go.

I don't know exactly where my Irish ancestors came from. My Lebanese great-grandparents, however, have a town connected to their names. I would like to set my eyes on it one day. But my whole life, there's been a reason not to go: civil war, foreign occupation, being a graduate student with no money, taking care of my kids, etc.

In early 2018, I went to London with my oldest child. I hired a car at Heathrow and during the two-hour rush hour drive to my friend's house, I found out the driver, George, was originally from Lebanon. He told me he fought during the war and escaped to the UK in the 80s to avoid the Syrian forces who had just detained his cousin. And he told me I should visit Lebanon. Go to Beirut, go to the beach, go to my great-grandparents' town.

George was deeply hopeful about the future of Lebanon. He'd been spending a lot of his time on WhatsApp, encouraging people back home to vote for new representatives in the upcoming general election. (If you'd ever like to have your mind turned inside out, try to figure out the Lebanese system of governance. It's a real lesson in the lasting wounds of colonialism and the inane realities of a sectarian society.) George believed things were changing. That's the thought he left me with at my friend's doorstep.

Things didn't change. The following year, the Lebanese government tried to levy a tax on WhatsApp, sparking huge public protests. Some people said it might be the beginning of a peaceful revolution. It wasn't. It was the kickoff event of an economic collapse.

For the past two years, I've been unable to tear my eyes away from what little news of Lebanon I can find here in America, or on the English-speaking web. There's very little. Lebanon isn't the kind of country people care about unless they have a personal connection to it. At best, it and its capital Beirut are bywords for the intractable messiness of the Middle East. At college in Boston, we called beer pong Beirut. Presumably because some east coast kid in the 70s or 80s thought the falling ping pong balls looked like the shelling of a once cosmopolitan capital city. How droll.

To say it's hard for me to develop a cogent understanding of events in Lebanon would be a gross understatement. There are too many sects within the country, too many influences and pressures from outside the country, too many conflicting interpretations of history. I watched protest coverage in late 2019, trying to understand which party did what, who was mad at whom. I read articles about the humanitarian crisis of Syrian refugees and was shamed by the fact that Lebanon, a tiny country, had an estimated 1.5 million Syrian people living within its borders while my vast and wealthy country refused to let Syrians enter. I looked at the aftermath of the massive explosion on August 4, 2020, furious that a government could let such an "accident" happen through gross negligence, and even more furious that my own government gave so little in aid. Like I said, it's not a country that most people care about.

The latest reports out of Lebanon tell us that more than three fourths of the country is currently living in poverty. Last spring, I read that the Lebanese currency had lost 80% of its value since 2019. By summer, it had lost 90% of its value since 2019. There's no bread. There's no gas. There's no medicine. And as far as I can tell, there's no solution.

I certainly don't need to look halfway around the world to find examples of suffering, or to find people whose lives have been marred by a government that should represent them but has absolutely no respect for their lives, safety, or health. There's plenty of that right here in my own country, in my own city.

What can I say, I care. I care about the place where my great-grandparents came from because to not care seems, well, horrifying. It seems like a betrayal. So I watch and donate what money I can to NGOs. I sign petitions. I call the offices of my senators and congressperson and ask them to notice Lebanon. And it all adds up to little more than nothing. But it is more than nothing.

Image: Concrete buildings in Beirut. Photo by Jo Kassis from Pexels.