The Returnees

In her book, Returning Home, A Post-War Lebanese Phenomenon, Professor of Psychology Dr Amal Malek discusses the experiences of Lebanese returning to their homeland after the civil war. Among those returnees was Dr Malek herself, along with her family. In an interview I did with them recently, she and her husband, Rene, elaborated on the experience and how it affected their family. Some of what I learned in that interview shows up below.

The return of any emigrant is inevitably compounded of nostalgia, trepidation and hope. As Dr Malek points out in her book, the returnee comes back to some degree a changed person: "...a process of reintegration into one's own culture has to take place." Things that used to be second-nature no longer come naturally; behaviors that may have been unacceptable before departure have now become normal to the point of becoming unconscious. How will the returnee fit, and how will he/she be received by those who didn't leave?

In the case of Lebanon other factors come into play. A vicious civil war intervened and changed the society in important ways - deepening the rifts that already existed, creating new ones, changing behaviors both within and across those rifts, and profoundly changing people's experience of life itself. Again quoting from Malek: 'We were home, but the war had changed our country from the way we knew it.'

Explaining what I mean by all this starts by pointing out (again) that Lebanon is a profoundly schizophrenic society in some ways. Like a drought-stricken terrain, it is riven by cracks and splits of all kinds. Sectarian and tribal differences are only the most obvious. Traditional social distinctions based on social position, profession, rural or city origin and so on abound. In the hinterland, and even in the majority of agglomerations, social organization is still very conservative and this web of social positioning is still very strong. All this doesn't merit the term 'schizophrenia', of course. That aspect comes from the war and the effects it had on already serious sectarian and communal divisions. What were previously bridgable divides became progressively less so, and in some cases have become, or are in the process of becoming, chasms.

But...what my 10-word synopsis of Lebanese social structures obscures is that, for all its divisions, Lebanese society before the war was deeply social, and very intimate. This is very important in the evolution of things during and after the civil war. Here's some annecdotal evidence to give a flavor.

In the 'good old days' I very frequently took long 'service' rides. If I had business in Beirut I'd usually catch a ride down the mountain with a friend, and then grab a service to get back to the village in the evening. The ride - a fairly torturous mountain road - would take the average American an hour and a half or so. In other words, it usually took my service about 45 minutes. Services to other locations were equally hair-raising, but also very convenient. I once went from Aleppo (poor Aleppo!) to Damascus and came pretty close to arriving before I'd left.

In those days, the services waited on designated street corners depending on their destination. The driver would read the newspaper, eat sandwiches or chat with other drivers until his car was full. Prospective passengers got in the car and waited patiently until it filled up. With the fifth passenger the driver would jump in, gun the motor, and  dive into traffic with an acceleration that left your stomach at the curb. That same acceleration normally continued all the way up the mountain until we finally shot into the village somewhere near escape velocity.

Other than the driving, what was interesting about those service rides was the social experience. Sometimes one or two of the passengers would have an acquaintance or even a family relation. Most often, however, that wasn't the case. No matter: within moments a lively conversation was inevitably en route. The fact that we were travelling at warp speed, skidding along cliff overhangs, making dents in the roof with our heads was of no concern. Our 45 - or, with traffic, 47 minutes went by in a congenial atmosphere of jokes, stories, challenges, assertions, counter-assertions and whatnot. If someone needed vegetables or a watermelon, we all stopped. If someone got out before the final destination we had a little more room to breathe and the conversation resumed. I learned a LOT of Arabic in services.

The contrast between then and now could not be more stark. Service rides are now a good time to reflect on one's life, since no one is talking. The reason is simple: no one wants to exchange self-identifying information. In a country where your name, your clothes, your haircut and even the way you pronounce certain letters can instantly identify your origins, everyone is trying to avoid broadcasting more than the absolute minimum of information.

This is not a trivial matter. During the war services were often stopped and passengers either lived or died according to what community they were from. This hasn't happened recently, but - and especially with the spillover of the sectarian war next door in Syria - this is never far from anyone's mind.

Here's an annecdote that demonstrates the starting point - the degree of mutual separation and ignorance that already existed before the war, and which blossomed during the war into the poisonous atmosphere of today. Soon after my first wife and I accepted the teaching job that brought us to the Druze village of Baaqline, we were invited to lunch by a Christian family of our acquaintance. The lunch took place at the family's mountain home, probably 20 miles as the crow flies from Baaqline. During the meal we were asked innocently by someone what village we were going to be living in. Our answer was met with a moment of stony silence. Finally, a member of the family cleared his throat and said the following: 'Didn't anybody tell you that's a Druze village? You should move out immediately. The Druze cannot be trusted; they kill Christian children and use their blood in their secret rituals!'

I'd heard the blood libel before, of course. Until that day I had no idea it had a whole other life that didn't involve the Jews!

Despite this, before the war people of all backgrounds mixed quite freely in Beirut. Marriages between Druze and Christians were reasonably frequent, and created ties between nearby villages. Muslim-Druze marriages occurred too, although I rarely, if ever, heard of a Muslim-Christian marriage. However, there's probably a different reason for that: Christian-Druze marriages were facilitated to a degree by the fact that the Druze enforce no conversion process on a spouse from outside. There simply is no way to convert to Druzism. Christian communities, being quite European in orientation, also were reasonably tolerant of marriages outside the faith. Therefore, once the inevitable family objections had been dealt with these marriages were fairly well accepted. Marriages involving a Muslim partner, however, often ran aground on the requirement that the non-Muslim member accept Islam - and thus effectively leave his or her community of origin. For this reason, these marriages were generally between very secularized couples. Since there was (and still is) no civil marriage in Lebanon, these couples would often fly to Cyprus or elsewhere to get married in a civil ceremony which would be recognized as legal upon their return. Such marriages are still quite common: I've heard of and met several couples who've had to resort to this approach in just the few weeks since I arrived.

War always dismantles societies to some extent. If there's anything good to be said about war, it might be that sometimes the society that emerges afterwards is better in important ways than what came before. For example, post-war Japanese society was quite different than what existed before, and probably much better suited to the challenges of the post-war period. England also experienced a discontinuity; the Victorian society of the Empire gave way to a much more fluid post-war environment.

Lebanon is a different case. And it seems to me that many people returned not fully realizing this fact. In a sense, they were drawn in by false hope and an idea that something new and wonderful could be built on the foundations of the pre-war past.

What happened here in Lebanon - in another sweeping generalization - is that society became less, not more, fluid. Each community retrenched behind its boundaries, mistrust continued to build and cooperation became ever harder to find.

When returnees arrived at the airport, they were prepared to deal with physical hardship, damaged roads, bad plumbing, occasional electricity. It seems to me from my conversations that many of them must not have realized that the very social issues that had caused the war had actually deepened. My friends May and Muhammad returned to help rebuild the cultural and artistic life of the country. And to demonstrate that creative work could be done here and thrive. Amal Malek returned, as she told me, 'to reconstruct minds.'

What they found when they got here was a much more challenging environment than post-war Britain or Japan. How does one rebuild when there's no trust, no shared discourse, no feeling of being together in a common enterprise?

How does one rebuild when each moment of quiet is another calm before the storm? When even in the absence of battles, one group is tearing down what another is building? When decades of war and mutual self-destruction have not yet proved to everyone's satisfaction that zero-sum only ends up bringing zero to all; instead of shared progress, shared destitution?

This is my take on the topic and I'll be curious to see what feedback I get from those who've talked to me about this issue. As I wrote it I sensed that I wasn't going exactly where I'd expected when I started typing, that I was coming to a darker conclusion than I had originally intended. The weight of dozens of conversations with many people seemed to be narrowing my options. Not all of these were with returnees; there are also those who stayed behind and resent the returnees for their freedom while being dumbfounded at their choice to come back.

Personally, I have nothing but admiration for the Returnees. I just wish I could say that their country had met them halfway. Or half of halfway. Or half of that.