Read on Twitter
I told myself I would not cry. I felt sad, don& #39;t get me wrong, but I had to distance myself so it wouldn& #39;t get too bad. So I sat at my desk, tweeting call outs for work, but I& #39;ve just started. And I can& #39;t hold it in.
Because the older I get and the more distant that country becomes the more my heart pines for it. The more I feel for it. The greater the longing, the ache, the pain. Look at us, out there in the diaspora, building families who won& #39;t know it as our parents once did.
Who won& #39;t know its beauty or its history or its merits. Remember when they called it the Pearl of the Orient? The Paris of the Middle East? We grew up singing & #39;Lebnan la7 yerja3& #39; & & #39;Raje3, Raje3 yet3amar& #39;. We believed those words. We sang them with gusto. Now they feel distant.
Good parents want to give their children everything. And ever since I had my first child, six years ago, I have longed to give her and her siblings a glimpse into her heritage, into mine. Even a fragmented connection to 21st century Leb would have sufficed.
But it& #39;s likely my kids will always know my motherland from a place of deficit and trauma. They will not know it as it was. They will not inherit the nostalgia, no matter how imagined. That means they too are at a loss. Because to have Lebanon in their lives was to have it all.
But that Lebanon, my Lebanon, doesn& #39;t exist anymore. And so I sit here, weeping, yearning for another chance to sit on my grandfather& #39;s lap or see my son run through olive groves or have my daughter pick eggs from my grandmother& #39;s chicken coop.
If the tears wept and love felt for that country were enough to save it, it would be paradise, utopia, a nation among nations. But alas...in the words of the great Fairuz, men qalbi Salam Li Beirut 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💔" title="Gebrochenes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Gebrochenes Herz">
