Denial of Moving On

little helper packing up the apartment.

I've been telling myself for the past three months to stop thinking about our departure date. I wanted to just enjoy what was happening now, and not think about our time in Lebanon coming to an end.

After that fatal car bomb that rocked Lebanon back in October, our decision to leave was thrown back-and-forth. The constant weighting up of pros and con was tearing us apart. I’ve learned it doesn’t matter where you are in the world it’s the same three factors when it’s not only your decision – family, work, lifestyle.

Lebanon stabilized quickly after the incident and we returned to our daily routines as ‘normal’ as could be. Mikey’s contract was due for renewal & we were keen to rollover into another year working in Beirut. However, biggest bombshell dropped on us was the news of another baby on the way!!

Completely caught off guard with the idea of another little traveler on board, and we found ourselves agreeing that moving closer to family for support was the right decision for us, “even if it’s temporary” I reassure myself.

In my denial about leaving, I kept telling myself “Beirut is not over yet, no need to pack now” but there was an apartment to pack up and supplies in the kitchen cupboard to be eaten served as a reminder.

“10 cans of foul madams to get though (Middle-Eastern baked beans). Should I take a few cans with us to Switzerland?”

The mental list of what will stay and what will go lengthened as I made my way from one room to another. Will shoes be sacrificed for toys? Leave the towels, take the toothbrushes…but no action was taken… “Beirut is not over yet, no need to pack now.”

While packing decisions seemed so daunting, I threw myself into several creative projects that consumed all my time right up to our last days. Knowing that I was leaving town (even if it’s temporary) was the push that I needed to act on my dream projects that I always feared or doubted I couldn’t do. Faced with “now or never”, I went head-on into my work knowing I had nothing to loose.

I lead my first photo essay workshop and photography exhibition titled Lens on Life, filmed a short doco on Lebanese artist Rafik Majzoub and worked alongside prominent Lebanese documentary filmmaker Carol Mansour. Working alongside some of the most inspiring, intelligent, and honest women I’ve ever met has been a positive life-changing experience which I will be forever thankful.

And the results amazed me I’m proud to say. It’s the most exciting work I’ve done in years. As it turns out, I always had a strong sense of self, a sense of my personal limitations and boundaries I could push if I had the confidence. I just had to learn how to listen to myself and how to express it.

That’s the very reason why I love traveling it’s the learning experience of living with the UNCOMFORTABLE that continues to help transform yourself and your relationships with our family, friends and work.

We landed in Lebanon in a place of self-doubt, uncomfortable with our new surroundings, no bearings, no signposts. The exhaustion that comes with constantly getting lost and feeling frazzled can be erased with one decent short conversation that ends with a "we should catch up, what's your number?" We plunged ourselves into Beirut, new house, new acquaintances, a brand new life.

I still had the feeling I wasn’t ready to leave, but the decision was made and we’d given notice to our landlord. The weeks quickly counted down to days and the melancholy of knowing what's about to be missed settled in like one of Lebanon’s ominous storm clouds.

 While you're handing over the keys, your trying to disconnect your heart from the neighbourhood you've grown to love, the people you used to greet in the elevator and at the local grocer everyday. 

Farewell to dear friends at the nursery

We’re not going to see Mateo’s friendships grow and bloom, he won't be stoping in for a treat at the corner store again.

One last treat yippee!

My thoughts tried to savor each final moment. “Tonight is our last night in the apartment. Tomorrow we will walk the Corniche one last time, go to Café Younes for one last coffee, and then we’ll spend our last night in Hamra and share a last meal with friends.”

Seven bags with all our belongings and a truckload of memories are squeezed into two taxis heading for the airport. Looking across at Mikey holding his hand, he says “I don’t know how expats do this all the time. I’m never bloody moving again” I laughed, but there were tears forming. Cities are flashing through my mind, we’ve been here before, and we will be here again, we wouldn’t give it up for the world.

A new adventure, a new baby, is exciting, terrifying and exhilarating. Stepping forward and moving on, means that that something is being left behind. And sometimes it would just be so nice to take it all with you.

Striking at the Heart

It is surreal to hear a car bomb explode. Yesterday, unexpectedly, on a peaceful Friday afternoon, a big boom rings in my ears, vibrating windows rattle my teeth and I see a pillow of black smoke rising up above the suburban skyline a few kilometres from our home in Achrafieh.  My son Mateo is having his afternoon nap and sleeps through the blast. Phew, I don't have to hide my fear. I call my husband immediately, this is big, maybe he knows what happened.

The mind wanders “Achrafieh is the safest neighbourhood in Beirut” I recall our real-estate agent affirming us just 5months ago. Mikey has no word as yet, and I’m piecing scenarios together; maybe it’s an accident on a construction site, or God forbid, a fire in an apartment block. I am both numb and preoccupied with images of death and destruction. Twitter feeds are fast and furious “a car-bomb” is confirmed within minutes.

The lens through which we understand violence is how we make sense of our existence in the world. To put a distance between ‘us’ and ‘the explosion’ is necessary to make logic to the violence, and logic to our safety. I am used to mapping equations of violence hundreds of kilometres away from us – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria - not Lebanon, Beirut, Achrafieh, Sassine Square.

The distance gets narrower and narrower. Striking at the heart of Beirut. Our home.

Phone calls, emails, and texts begin. “We are fine,” I tell my family. "It was two kilometres away so don't worry.” But the reality hits home, a car bomb happened in my neighbourhood.

Thus, before it was announced that there was an actual target to this bombing, and that the target's name was Wissam al-Hassan, a high-ranking Internal Security Officer working against the Assad regime, the wounds of Lebanon’s past re-opened. Conspiracy theories between Muslim-Christian tensions, of Israeli plots, of Iranian terrorist groups, and of the Syrian civil-war spilling across boarders quickly seeps its way into paranoid Lebanese psyche. Mine included.

Now that we know the target, the violence seems easier to frame. It somehow becomes less terrifying that this was an assassination, and not just a car bomb in a dense civilian and commercial space whereby no one and every one is a target. However, most tragically, as people in urban warfare quickly find out, you never ever learn to forget the car bomb.

Paranoia is the inevitable by-product. You never know where it might be, in which car, what time will it go off, who is targeted, why, you never know anything except after it goes off, tearing everything in its vicinity to shreds. What many spectators watching the news safely from behind their screens don’t realize are the long-term effects that car bombs have on the population. Any car that looks suspicious starts resembling a potential bomb.

And now our family is torn. We want to stay in Lebanon and carry on as if nothing happened now but that is an impossibility, the event is lodged deep in our soul for the rest of our life. We need to know we are safe when we walk out on the street at any given day, place, and time.

Paranoia is a bodily experience. Every time you step out of your home, you feel the heart pounding, the pulse racing, the picking up in speed as you walk. Now imagine, if you will, the people in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine or any of the wretched countries where civilians have to endure the indescribable terror of car bombs for extended periods of time, just put yourself in their shoes and try to picture how your life would be affected.

In the five stages of grief, anger is number two, and although many of us remain in the fog of sadness and shock - many have now moved towards anger. Anger is all about retaliation and negativity. There is no good that can come from anger - it eats at us, it engulfs our thought process, it stops us from seeing clearly.

I've stayed away from the online forums because I knew people would feel the need to vent, to attack. I understand why they need to, but I also know that it won't bring me any peace. There needs to be discussion - we don't need finger pointing.

There is nothing more soothing in a time of grief than community coming together as one. Just as there is nothing more destructive than a community tearing each other apart.

In a time of grief and great tragedy we need to do what expats do best. Join together as a truly international community and show that it doesn't matter where you're from, or which God you pray to, we are all in this together. We all have the same wish. To come home to our families at the end of each day. To be safe.

My thoughts and prayers are with the affected families whose sorrow and suffering is too great for words.