You can't go home again

Last word Thirty-two years after leaving, Jihad Fakhreddine hardly recognises the village where he grew up.

Thirty-two years after leaving, Jihad Fakhreddine hardly recognises the village where he grew up.
Forty years ago, I knew all 1,500 people in my Lebanese village. I knew their names, and they knew mine. I knew their homes. I also knew hundreds of people from neighbouring villages and towns. Since I was seven years old, I had worked in my father's grand store, which was also the village's barber shop and post office. Knowledge of names was useful there. The post was delivered three days a week, and on each of those days our shop was flooded with villagers checking to see if they had received any mail (or cash remittances, which sustained many a family) from relatives in West Africa, the Gulf or the Americas. With his sharp memory, my father could look at someone and instantly tell them whether they had received a letter or remittance that day. People never believed him, and often insisted that he recheck the stack, or allow them to check it themselves. When I was 12, my father died and I took over the store; they never believed me either.

Back then, getting a letter was so exciting that it was news in itself; whenever you received one, the entire village knew soon afterwards, even if it contained little more than greetings and kisses from a relative abroad. After all, letters were our only means of communication with our former neighbours. Sometimes elderly, illiterate parents couldn't wait to get home and have someone read them their letters, so either my dad or I would read them aloud on the spot.

Often, grateful customers rewarded me with their stamps, which I collected. In a time when money was tight and hobbies were few, stamp collection was an inexpensive way to entertain myself and learn about other countries, their capitals, their heads of state and their national symbols. I even had stamps for each of the seven emirates, then independent, that now comprise the UAE. In those days, only people without much education opted to migrate. They were all traders. Their letters were short: a quick description of how things were going at work, then some news about the Lebanese community wherever they were. Reading those letters, I learnt that fellow Lebanese abroad stuck together, bound by a sense of camaraderie in exile that helped them cope with being away. Of course, this made it easier for villagers to leave, knowing they could join a small but strong Lebanese community elsewhere. Whenever someone returned to the village on holiday they would be swamped by well-wishers, who of course wanted to know if the visitor was carrying letters from their loved ones. When the time came, dozens of people would come to see them off - and give them letters to carry back.

In the early Seventies, only a few dozen people from my village were living abroad. That seemed like a lot, but it was nothing compared to what happened when civil war broke out in 1975. Hundreds more left. Eventually so did I, along with most of my generation. Not one of my friends stayed. Throughout the Eighties, even more villagers left, driven out by alternating waves of sectarian expulsions. I miss home. A Palestinian song that many Arab émigrés listen to begins, "Another day has gone by. Our exile is increased one day. Our return is one day nearer." This is the sort of soul soothing that groups of people in exile come up with. Home is everything, and the physical act of return is always one day closer - whether or not it will ever actually happen.

But even if one physically returns, what does one return to? Being in the homeland doesn't mean feeling at home, and it doesn't mean the end of alienation. This is particularly the case when the notion of home stored in an émigré's memory is not altered for decades, even as that home changes a bit every year. Now, whenever I talk eagerly about returning to Lebanon, my friends warn me about the severe depression that can result from going home and still feeling homeless. But I have visited my village several times since I first left, and am under no illusions that it will ever be the village I grew up in. Many more people have migrated to cities, or other countries. Several areas consist entirely of shuttered houses that have not been maintained for years.

The people I now know best are mostly village elders, and they are dying. Every time I visit I have to go offer condolences to another family. I barely know any of the younger generation. Walking the roads and alleys, I feel utter strangeness. People don't recognise me, and I don't recognise them. Often the only way I can get people to remember me at all is by introducing myself as the brother of Salim, who has never left the village.

On my last few trips to visit relatives I brought along a palm-size notepad so I could write down and remember the names of the children and grandchildren who were born since my last visit. But recently I have found myself forgetting the names of the very people I am supposed to be visiting. I have embarrassed myself by calling people the wrong names, and conducted entire conversations without referring to the person I am talking to by name. Often I resort to asking someone about the name of his or her eldest son, then calling them abu or um so-and-so.

Recently, I have found many members of my village's young generation on Facebook. I've even reconnected with some friends my age. As my old village vanishes, the socialising that used to take place in my father's store has moved into a virtual world. The place where I grew up exists only as memories and words on our computer screens. Meanwhile, returning to the real village tends to make me uneasy. I don't hand out the mail anymore, and the community has adapted to function without me. Nostalgia has little relevance to actual social dynamics, and my presence feels like an intrusion. Each visit is like starting all over again, almost as an immigrant. And this is nearly as painful as having to count the days to my final return, whenever it may come.
Jihad Fakhreddine is a Dubai-based Regional Research Director for Gallup, the international polling organisation.