Why Lebanon Will Always Be Home to Me
As a child who earnestly anticipated her summers in Lebanon, I remember distinctly praying each night for weeks leading up to trip departure that our two-leg journey from Los Angeles would go smoothly and safely. Should a crash befall us, may it be on the return from Beirut, I pleaded with my Creator. I wanted so desperately to spend a fun-filled vacation in the Land of the Cedars. Reflecting on that memory now as an adult, I’m baffled at how willing I was to embrace the worst, so long as it presented itself aptly in the sequence of events. Yes, folks. That’s a gauge of how enamored I was with my ancestral homeland. Chilling? Or just plain foolish? As many of my readers already know, I made Lebanon home in 2011, a full decade ago. I was a fresh MBA graduate and in between jobs and world regions. I found myself in the Levant on an ambassadorial mission for my alma mater MIT. When it ended, I decided to linger and look for work. I was fed up with hearing that as a summer tourist in L