To fly home to Beirut or not? The dilemma of a Lebanese expat

A picture taken by Fatima on one of her flights back home to Lebanon. Photo: Fatima Al Mahmoud

It’s one thing to sit in a newsroom and read dozens of headlines about the possibility of a full-scale war in Lebanon as an objective journalist who covers conflict every day. It’s another to sift through them as a Lebanese expat whose loved ones live in the country at risk of said war.

Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in border clashes for almost nine months now, with threats from both sides of further escalation. This has raised concern among the international community, with several countries issuing a travel ban to Lebanon and urging their citizens to leave as soon as possible.

I know for a fact that these warnings have put a hold on summer plans for some of my foreign friends who were looking forward to visiting Lebanon, but the reality and the weight of these threats and warnings is far heavier – and more grim – for Lebanese expats and their families.

I speak for myself when I say that while I’m physically distant, my mind constantly finds itself wandering back to Lebanon and the people I care about back home.

Every morning I call my grandparents who live in the south of Lebanon, which has been subject to Israeli strikes almost daily since October, to check up on them. These are people who have lived through one too many wars in their lifetime, from Israeli invasions to the Lebanese civil war and other sectarian conflicts, and the trauma is finally catching up with them.

“We can hear the strikes, but they’re distant,” says my grandfather, as he attempts to remain calm and composed. “There’s nothing we can do, we leave our fate to the hands of God,” he says.

My grandfather had lost the family house he poured blood, sweat and tears into building, in the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war. All he wanted was to have a warm, welcoming home for his children and grandchildren to spend every summer at. He was able to rebuild the house, thankfully, and despite his best attempt at putting on a brave face, I can sense his heartbreak over the realisation that no one will be spending time there this year, as it is located in a town barely six kilometres from the Israeli border.

My grandmother is more frightened, more visibly shaken by the sounds. Still, she tells me: “Don’t worry about us, just take care of yourself, and maybe consider not coming this summer.”

But how could I not?

I, like many other diaspora I know, spend the entire year looking forward to my summer trip back home. Close to 400,000 people arrived at Rafic Hariri International Airport in June alone, the majority of whom are expats, according to the General Director of Civil Aviation, Fadi Al-Hassan. This is almost as many people that arrived at Beirut airport in June of last year, before cross-border fighting and before the Gaza war, he told media outlets.

The reunions, the parties, the hikes, the family outings, the food, the feasts, the beach, the road trips, the sunsets – I can spend a lifetime talking about summer in Lebanon, but I’m afraid I would be romanticising it.

If you’re on the Lebanese side of TikTok, then you’ve surely seen the dozens of videos calling on expats to come home and advertising for summer in Lebanon, against all odds.

One video published on Live Love Beirut’s page on Instagram shows a crowded Beirut airport with the satirical caption: “No one is going to Lebanon this summer, it's dangerous.” Another clip is a meme of a person dancing mid-air captioned: “Me after booking a flight to Lebanon and ignoring the news.”

While I understand and appreciate the sentiment, I don’t believe toxic positivity and denial are the way to go.

For starters, let me address the elephant in the room. For people living in south Lebanon, the country IS at war. Hundreds of civilians, including children, have been killed, tens of thousands of people are displaced, and pupils have lost an entire school year.

While the cross-border fighting has relatively been contained thus far, with attacks scaled down in the last week, Israel has shown through its crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank that there is no red line it is not willing to cross.

So is there cause for concern? Undoubtedly. Will it stop me from getting on a flight to Beirut later this month? Probably not.

It is a conversation I have with my fellow diaspora friends every single day. Our group chat is an exchange of reasons of why we will or won’t be flying back home for the summer. It’s also a topic of discussion that I’ve coincidentally overheard among other Lebanese people.

“Our flight is in a few days but I don’t know if we’re actually going,” says one woman in a Lebanese accent sitting near me at a cafe. “I really want the kids to spend their summer vacation in the mountains with their family and cousins,” she tells her friend.

“We decided to fly to Lebanon next week,” her friend responds. “But I’m not going to unpack our suitcases in case we have to quickly escape,” she continues.

I smile to myself upon hearing this, the ways that people are willing to cope with a potential full-scale war only to spend a summer in Lebanon is amusing to me. And I don’t judge, because I understand.

I was discussing my leave with my manager when she asked me how I felt about travelling back home with all the warnings and travel bans on Lebanon.

“For other countries’ residents, it’s a vacation that can simply be replaced with another equally beautiful destination,” I told her.

“For me, it’s the choice to be with my family, and not far away from them, in case anything happens.”

Does that mean I’m not looking forward to a (hopefully peaceful) summer break in what I subjectively believe is a beautiful country with plenty to offer? No, but it also means that my guilt won’t eat me alive for abandoning my family, more so than it does everyday for choosing to leave a country that never loved me back as much as I love it.