Introducing my son to Lebanon helped me heal my relationship with home

The writer's son, Dia, during his first trip to Beirut. Nasri Atallah / The National

As the wheels touch down on the tarmac at Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport, my wife and I turn to our 20-month-old son, Dia, kiss his soft head and whisper: “Welcome home.” Then we both cry.

It’s his first time in Lebanon – a trip long delayed by an interminable war. Like many Lebanese born in the diaspora, my relationship to the country has always been complicated.

Raised abroad, I absorbed it through Sunday meals at Lebanese restaurants in London, family stories and summer visits. As a teenager and young adult, I would go on to live there for 10 years, turning it into a site of belonging and often heartbreak.

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For the past five years, I’ve been estranged from it. I had seen a lot during my years in Lebanon, but nothing broke me like the August 4 Beirut port explosion. I felt I lost too much that day. I almost lost my father, who was in a building by the port. We couldn't locate him for hours.

I lost far less important things – our company's brand-new office, my car, work projects. After that trip, I left broken. Something had snapped in my already tense relationship with a country that was often exhausting to live in, however much I loved it.

Since then, I’ve only returned for work, family emergencies or deaths. My relationship with Lebanon calcified into something unpleasant.

Dia at the American University of Beirut, the writer's alma mater. Nasri Atallah / The National

But something shifted on this trip. I came back as a different person. I came back as a father.

Lebanon today feels hopeful but precarious – a country both limping out of war and still staggering from the collapse of 2019. The streets are tired. Shoots of wild grass protrude from the pavements and highways. I have become obsessed with these unkempt public roads. They remind me of the way Lebanon looked at the end of the civil war.

The country has the air of an aristocratic home fallen into disrepair – once proud, now crumbling, its residents unable to afford its upkeep. But still full of life and stories.

But none of that matters when I see my son here. To see how he belongs to this place. He’s surrounded by doting grandparents. Even the neighbours beam when they see him. He devours zaatar and stuffed vine leaves. He’s wide-eyed with curiosity.

As Lebanese, our link to the motherland can often be tied to the kind of nostalgia these scenes can evoke. Nostalgia is a powerful, sometimes dangerous thing. It led many in our diaspora to invest life savings in Lebanon out of duty or hope, only to watch them vanish in the banking collapse. I used to be so weary of that dangerous form of nostalgia that led people to be irrational. But I find myself understanding it this time.

Dia outisde the restored Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum in Beirut. Nasri Atallah / The National

For me, returning to Lebanon has always carried a hint of regression. Like anyone revisiting their parents’ home, you slip back into old habits, old roles. You unlearn everything that’s happened in the intervening years.

But this time is different. There’s no regression – only transformation. I’m here not as a son, but as a father. I’m not trying to make sense of my place, I’m building a bridge for my son between his heritage and his future.

In a recent therapy session, while speaking about my connection to the Mediterranean, I had a surprising realisation: it wasn’t the sea I was so anchored to. It was the mountain. I wanted to see if Dia had the same connection.

On a visit to Jaj – a village 1,200 metres above the historic coastal town of Byblos – my wife’s aunt left some cherries unpicked in the garden just for Dia. He picked them himself, dropping them into a plastic tub with glee. Nour noticed the cherries at the top had been pecked at. “The top of the tree is for the birds,” her aunt said. “The bottom is for us.”

One simple sentence. Centuries of understanding how to live with the land, not just on it. And now, my son is learning that wisdom. And through him, so am I.

Dia with his mother Nour. Nasri Atallah / The National

Back in Beirut, we realise the city is not exactly toddler-friendly. Pavements are often a suggestion. When they do exist, they’re broken, cluttered, blocked by scooters and cars. Electrical cables dangle from poles. It's whatever the opposite of baby-proof is.

One afternoon, Nour suggests we might find more space to roam by taking Dia to my alma mater – the American University of Beirut. I haven’t set foot there in years. I don’t often reminisce about my time there, or much else.

But walking through the main gate feels like a reckoning. I tell the security guard I remember my student number – a strange fact to recall from 2001. He pulls up my record, and there it is: my old ID photo. I barely recognise the boy in the image – fresh-faced and naive. Closer in age to Dia than to me now.

I’m carrying my son and pointing at the ID photo on the screen, wondering if he’ll recognise me. He smiles. Maybe he does. Maybe he’s just happy to be here too.

As he runs around the grounds of the 19th-century campus, I remember something Nour told me recently – about mycelium networks that connect trees underground, allowing forests to share resources and nutrients.

That’s how I feel, watching my son plant his feet on this soil. He’s connected to people he’s never met, to land he’s never seen. And in watching him, I realise I’m part of that network too, in a way I haven’t felt in years.