Beirutista

As a Lebanese-American who called Southern California home for two decades, access to anything from the motherland half a globe away was absolutely sacred. My brothers and I would squeal with delight whenever we’d visit the Middle Eastern stores in Anaheim and Orange County. Scanning the aisles, I remember ogling products that had been crafted in Lebanon and exported to communities across the world dense in the Lebanese diaspora. One of my first and fondest recollections is the pistachio halawa by Al Wadi Al Akhdar . That circular tub with the forest green lid is forever seared in my memory. My parents always had two or three stocked in the pantry, alongside bottles of Al Wadi’s fragrant orange blossom and rose waters that Mom reached for regularly throughout the year, whether for baking maamoul (stuffed Lebanese semolina cookies) or concocting lemonade from scratch. Al Wadi Al Akhdar’s pistachio halawa is crafted from 100% pure sesame seeds tahini, sugar, and halawa extract. In 20...

I'm certainly no famed columnist, but I'm framing this blog post as such. Lately, a number of my readers in the diaspora have been probing me in their attempt to make sense of the situation in Lebanon. It's no enigma that the media (and social media to boot) highlight a narrow view of present-day life in Lebanon, while the reality is often starkly different. Here I endeavor to illuminate how things are on the ground, and how our lives have genuinely been impacted by the various crises gripping the country. Dear Beirutista, I just want to understand how you -- and the folks living in Lebanon -- are coping during these austere times. Having lived there for years with my husband, we tried to hold out hope for months into the revolution, but after the August 4 [2020] explosions, we deemed the situation too dangerous and resettled in the United States. I know it’s so stifling with the banks stealing everyone’s savings. I find it weird that no one seems to be mentioning the real ...