Being heartbroken was so last year6/22/2023 I think – like most of us – I’m already high-functioning depressed.Caring for her "feels like I'm serving a friend," she added. “But at the same time, it’s heartbreaking to leave. “I’m coming to terms with it more every day, because you have to,” she said. “I feel like I’m being kicked out,” said Serene Abdul-Baki, a 23-year-old writer and psychology graduate who is leaving for the United States, where she has citizenship. “So, to the extent that the country loses the more educated first, the national accounts will be losing a lot of value associated with their higher earnings.”īut many of those who have lived through the country’s tumultuous last eight months, flung from the heights of “thawra”, or revolution, into a free-fall that seems to have no end, feel they have been left with no other choice. Those who have higher levels of education tend to make larger earnings, Nisrine Salti, assistant professor of economics at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Hassan Diab encouraged Lebanese coming back from abroad to bring dollars with them, saying there would be “no limits” to the amount they could carry.īut money coming in from abroad does not make up for the brain drain. Politicians seem to be betting on a similar system in the future. In many ways, the country’s large diaspora has been Lebanon’s workhorse for decades, sending back up to $7bn per year in remittances that kept the unproductive economy afloat – until it sank. Taleb is meeting an immigration lawyer next week. Now it’s like, ‘when are you starting your papers?'” “My parents were always super pro-Lebanon until two months ago. “My anxiety is at an all-time high,” she said. “You can’t escape it,” Rania Taleb, a 25-year-old architecture graduate told Al Jazeera, speaking of the emotional weight of leaving family members behind. The flow of migration briefly reversed – Lebanese flew in from far afield, even if just for a weekend, in order to see with their own eyes the unprecedented spectacle of unity unfolding on the country’s streets.Īt a protester-organised Independence Day parade, dozens of civilian battalions of professionals – including industrialists, doctors, and teachers – marched in place of the invite-only army parade.ĭancing, rolling suitcases and shaking tambourines, the “Diaspora Brigade,” chanted: “Toot toot toot, we’re coming back to Beirut.”Īlmost cruelly, the uprising re-focused the gaze of thousands of Lebanese on their country at a time when the slide towards economic ruin had already been set in motion. Many hoped they could alter the course of history when they rose up against the notoriously corrupt ruling class in October 2019.įor a short while, it seemed to be working. There are, consequently, more people of Lebanese descent abroad than at home. The country is a waiting room, and the queue has reached the airport,” goes a lyric in From the Queue, a 2009 song by Lebanese indie rock band Mashrou’ Leila.Įmigration is by no means new to the Lebanese, with the country’s history marked by war, famine and economic uncertainty that has cast successive waves of its offspring around the world. “We’ve been fighting for 50 years, the same war, we don’t forget.
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