FOR MANY LEBANESE,; WAR IS NEW REALITY: BUT WILL THEY STAY?
by Katherine Zoepf
New York Observer
September 11, 2006
AMMAN, JORDAN–By now, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan
is winding down his latest Middle East trip, a grueling 11-day tour
that has had him hop-scotching from Beirut to Tel Aviv to Tehran
to Damascus to Ankara. The trip was organized in order to shore
up regional support for a Security Council resolution that ended
the month-long conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militia,
Hezbollah, and to discuss Lebanon’s reconstruction. So far, the most
concrete result of all this diplomacy appears to be a plan, still not
yet firm, to lift Israel’s naval blockade on Lebanon later this week.
But even if Mr. Annan succeeds and the Israeli blockade is lifted,
it will still come too late for Jack Yacoubian, a Lebanese Armenian
goldsmith that I met in Amman yesterday. Mr. Yacoubian, who is in
his early 30’s, has spent his entire life in Bourj Hammoud, Beirut’s
Armenian enclave. He recently lost his job with a large Lebanese
jewelry company because the Israeli blockade has made it impossible for
his employers to ship their products to overseas customers, mainly in
the Persian Gulf countries; about 170 employees were laid off, he said.
"I have lost my work; I have lost everything," Mr. Yacoubian said.
"Many of us Armenians are jewelers, and our business has been ruined.
Our boss tried to help us; he paid all of us out of his own pocket
for a whole month, even though he couldn’t sell anything. But after
that it was all over. He finally had to let us go."
When I met him in Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport early
yesterday morning, Mr. Yacoubian was on his way to seek his fortune
in Bogota, Colombia, where he has friends that he believes may be
able to help him to find a new job. He doubts that he will be coming
back to Beirut any time very soon.
"I will give it two months, three months, in Colombia, and then I
will see what is the situation in Beirut again," Mr. Yacoubian said.
"But I do not feel very hopeful now. I think that Lebanon has many
difficulties still ahead."
Whatever promises to aid Lebanon or to support its troops near
the Israeli border that Mr. Annan succeeds in extracting from Arab
leaders this week, rebuilding Lebanon’s economy will take a very long
time. Many highly educated or specially skilled Lebanese like Mr.
Yacoubian, even including some of those who stayed throughout the
war, are now making very painful and personal choices: about whether
to stay in their country, or to seek greater stability and better
opportunities overseas.
Many Lebanese who fled during their country’s long civil war had
returned in recent years, and thanks in large part to their skills,
energies and investments, Beirut had once again become a thriving
Mediterranean capital. But many middle and upper-class Lebanese have
dual passports, and extended families abroad. They have ambitions
for themselves and their families that are not necessarily rooted in
Lebanon, and they have options.
"How many times in your life can you rebuild everything?" a middle-aged
Lebanese woman asked me the other week in Damascus. "Two times,
three times maybe? You rebuild your home, your business two or three
times. And after that maybe you say, that’s enough, and you find a
home someplace else."
A extraordinarily cosmopolitan people, many Lebanese, particularly the
educated elite, are asking similarly agonized questions these days,
trying to figure out whether the ceasefire will last, trying to decide
whether they can bear to start all over again in the midst of such
a tenuous peace. Loving your country is all very well, they say, but
what good is patriotism in the face of domestic factionalism and the
constant threat of Israeli attack? What sort of crazy devotion would
make an educated, ambitious young person forsake other opportunities
in order to stay in such a place?
In Beirut last week, and among the groups of Lebanese who remain in
Damascus and Amman in recent days, I’ve heard these questions asked
constantly. How the majority will eventually decide to answer them
will have a huge effect on Lebanon’s prospects for a speedy recovery.
Among those Lebanese who have already resolved to stay, there is
naturally some resentment of those who are on the fence. A young
university professor that I met in Beirut last week spoke witheringly
of his privileged students, most of whom had fled to Europe or the
United States with the onset of Israeli air strikes, and some of whom
have said that they don’t plan to return.
"These kids are rich," the professor told me bitterly. "That means
they have the chance to decide whether or not they are Lebanese."
For parents, the questions are even more difficult. It is impossible
to spend much time in Lebanon these days without hearing a great deal
about the effects that the war has had on Lebanese children, about the
unusual tearfulness and aggression shown by even normally even-tempered
young children. A Lebanese friend, Patrick, spoke of his decision to
send his 10-year-old daughter to stay with relatives in Europe during
the worst of the fighting, and then his eventual decision to bring her
home again, despite some relatives’ urgings that he educate her abroad.
"These children, this generation, knew nothing of war," Patrick said.
"When I was a teenager, we used to go out dancing, and we’d hear
explosions. We’d leave the club for a few minutes, pull people out
of the rubble and take them to the hospital, and then go right back
to drink and dance. We didn’t think anything of it. This was normal
life for us.
"I had really thought that for my daughter it would be different,"
Patrick continued. "I felt angry when the fighting began, and I decided
to send her abroad, so that she wouldn’t see this. But I’ve decided
to bring her home. She will start the school year here, whatever
happens. She is Lebanese, and this fighting, these bombings, are her
heritage. She is 10 years old; she is old enough to understand."