- I live in a country where a hometown means that everyone knows who I am, what my father does, where my mother is originally from, what car my uncle drives, and who my cousins are married to all at once
- I live in a country where people mix three languages in one sentence without sounding conceited, noting that they can speak any one given language consistently and effortlessly at any given time if they so desire
- I live in a country where church bells and the muezzin call the faithful at once, a scantily-clad lady walks side by side to a woman in a chador, and fighters hail Allah Hu Akbar and Holy Mary before going into battle
- I live in a country where the concept of a family isn’t just an abstract idea, a father is still respected, a mother always adored, and brothers and sisters relied upon for a lifetime, while the bigger family is everybody else in between
- I live in a country where people can hide in shelters away from bombs and snipers on one night, and wake up the next morning as if nothing happened
- I live in a country “where the streets have no name” isn’t just a song, but it is hard to get lost at all
- I live in a country where clichés are simply genuine ways of expressing complicated ideas:Lebanon as a country on a crossroads between East and West, Lebanon where economic resilience never fails, Lebanon where you can ski and swim on the same day!
- I live in a country where there is always a pot of coffee brewing to welcome every guest and greet every neighbor
- I live in a country where honking can express happiness, excitement, sadness, anger, desperation and political affiliation
- I live in a country where people have a joke for every situation and an proverb to teach you a lesson
- I live in a country where shallow head-to-toe branded brats and bohemian keffiyeh-wearing Che-styled revolutionaries sit right next to each other in the same watering hole
- I live in a country where everyone has an opinion on everything, happening everywhere, every single time
- I live in a country where everything can be done and fixed, applied and reapplied, broken and repaired
- I live in a country that claims one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the world as its own and still refuses to die out
- I live in a country where men are affectionately protective of their women, and women take pride in the manliness of their men
- I live in a country where Aristotle can find the purest and literal version of his “political animal,” only getting purer and more literal with time
- I live in a country where food is more than a necessity but a way of life and pretty damn good!
- I live in a country where the best things are free (or almost): a man’ouche, a walk on the beach, a hike in the mountains, a watch of a sunset, a conversation with a stranger, a laugh with a friend
- I live in a country where swearing is an art, creative and sometimes incomprehensible, serving a myriad of purposes on a variety of social occasions
- I live in a country where an open door is an open invitation for all and not a careless mistake to invite the thieves in
- I live in a country where there is a poet for every sunrise and a thinker for every theory
- I live in a country where foreigners want to come live in but don’t know exactly why
- I live in a country where everybody complains about how expensive the cost of life has become, yet they all eventually find a way to get what they want
- I live in a country where the past in never too far behind, the present is lived for what it’s worth and the future is something to be taken care of in due time
- I live in a country that had it not been my country, “I would have chosen it to be”
I…
…live inLebanon.
Eye on the East 