Michael Karam: Lebanese have no choice but to take control of their own destinies

Breakfasts in hotel restaurants are a minefield. Most of humanity sits in silence and personal space, even when a degree of familiarity has been established, is considered sacred. Nonetheless, some brave souls, ablaze with energy, jump in feet first. Like the Lebanese businessmen, one of 40 CEOs on an executive retreat in the Lebanese ski resort of Faraya, who set down his Full English diagonally opposite me (directly opposite would have been too jarring) last Friday.

I can’t remember exactly how we got on to it – perhaps because somewhere amid the initial exchanges I told him my kids were going to school in the UK next year – but the conversation settled on the issue of UK immigration and the number of Eastern Europeans flooding into Britain to find work and, in many cases, start a new life.

“They have a brilliant work ethic,” he said, eagerly tucking into a hash brown. “They do the jobs the British don’t want and they improve themselves by going to night school. I’d employ them.”

He also believed that it was a new wave of immigrants that had sustained the US economy in recent years. “The last lot had gone soft. Bad habits set in by the third generation, so you need new people who are hungry and full of commitment. Your children will do well in England. They’ve grown up knowing no one’s got their back. It’ll give them an edge.”

I’m not sure about my kids’ “edge” at the moment, but he had a point. The Lebanese reputation for business is founded as much on knowing that they have zero support from the state, as much as it is based on any entrepreneurial flair. They have been raised knowing that getting anywhere in life must be done by hard work and nothing else, with financial security the non-negotiable end game.

“The benefit system in the UK, and other places, has created a generation of idlers,” he added. “It blunts ambition. Here in Lebanon we have no benefits and we have no pension to talk of and so we go after it ourselves.”

His attitude was similar to that of a delegate I spoke to at dinner the previous night who had been more philosophical than outraged at how the Lebanese private sector had been mauled by the impact of the Syrian civil war. “Yes, it is disastrous,” he conceded. “But we Lebanese have adapted to a business rhythm over decades that is characterised by highs and lows and we have learnt to milk the highs and insulate ourselves from the lows. In any case, this is my country and my business is here. I have no choice but to stay and make it work.”

And both echoed another senior manager, who, at the same dinner, put me in my place when I ventured that only a fool would put his money in Lebanon these days. “You grew up in England didn’t you?” he said. “Beirut is my home. It’s not about how safe my investment is. It’s about living in my city. If there is a bomb or if there is war, we deal with it.”

So there. I was different. But I knew this. Twenty-two years after coming “home”, I still don’t feel truly Lebanese. I am not imbued with the idea that, as our man so brilliantly put it, no one has my back and I don’t risk all in a business environment that would give most investors a cardiac episode.

But patriotism has its limits. According to the latest figures of the Potential Net Migration Index released in-mid January, Lebanon dropped to -4 per cent compared to +15 per cent in 2007. Simply put, more people now want to leave Lebanon than who want to live there. In 2007 the reverse was true.

It is something of which the political class, now in its ninth pathetic month of trying to form a government, should take note. In the meantime, I guess it’s business as usual.

Michael Karam is a freelance writer based in Beirut