A Season of Goodbyes

While spring has only indecisively tiptoed its way back to Beirut, the end of the school year is already inching closer, which means the inevitable graduation of the class with whom I began this master's degree endeavor. I would have been one of them, if I wasn't willingly delaying my thesis for a myriad of reasons—not least of which my desire to stay in Lebanon for as long as possible.

The ebb and flow of arrivals and departures in Beirut seems to follow a migration pattern mirroring the academic calendar. And while I have already seen some very dear friends leave Lebanon in the past year and a half, the next two months are filled with the exodus of many people I have grown to care about since I have come here.

I have come to the strange realization of how fragile the social nest I have built here can be, and how unwittingly reliant it has been on people who have always meant to leave, at some point or another.

While these goodbyes are not eternal adieux thanks to the magic that is this little thing called the Internet, I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that some pillars of my life in Lebanon will no longer be here. Spoiler alert: melancholy ensues.

Hours spent over beer, froyo or drunken dinners, talking about politics, relationships, the annoyances of everyday life, or otherwise surviving encounters with a creepy serial killer*... now come with the sad twinge of knowing they will soon be gone.

I have always been the one who leaves. And though every time I packed up and left, the sadness of saying goodbye was real, I was the one who had made the choice to move elsewhere; I was the one who could distract myself from farewells with the excitement of somewhere new.

I have had some funny conversations with Lebanese friends, where we came to the conclusion that we should stop building relationships with foreigners to avoid putting time and energy into people who will eventually go (the one exception to the rule in these scenarios being me, as everyone kindly indulges my fantasies of staying here forever and ever).

But even the Lebanese are not "abandonment"-proof. There are approximately three times more Lebanese people outside than inside the country. For many, their life goals involve emigrating to Dubai, Paris, London, Abidjan... being anywhere but here, for reasons both personal and circumstantial.

This is a nation of transit and transitions. And yet here I am, oddly picking this part of the world to finally try and stay put for a while.

*Not really a serial killer... as far as we know.