By An-Nahar – Ghadir Hamadi — Beirut: By the time December is around the corner, Lebanese abroad are dreaming of visiting the homeland for the holidays and arriving by the planeload. In recent days many of the flights are overbooked and Beirut’s streets, bars, malls, and restaurants are all packed with revelers. Why? The reasonable answer is that the Lebanese diaspora reverses itself on holidays, as Lebanon’s far-flung family come back from work and lives abroad to spend quality time with their families and loved ones. Nothing will discourage them —not long flights, not bad weather, and definitely not the bad mood of Lebanon’s ongoing political quarrels. The Lebanese have long had wanderlust. Ancient Phoenician merchants roamed the Mediterranean, setting up cities such as Carthage and Cadiz. In the past century and a half, waves of Lebanese have left for the Americas and West Africa. With millions of Lebanese and their descendants now living in Brazil, millions more in the United States and an estimated quarter million in West Africa. They do everything from managing restaurants to diamond trade and have proved to be the talented business persons and skilled executives the country is known for producing. “My plane was packed with Lebanese flying home for the holidays, and when it landed we all shouted ‘Beirut’ and clapped hysterically,” Jad Hussein, a 25-year-old high school Biology teacher working in Qatar, told Annahar. Hussein was sitting with his friends-mostly Lebanese who work abroad- smoking hookah at one of Hamra’s bustling cafes. Across Beirut, malls were packed with fashionably dressed shoppers, and large families walking together talking loudly and laughing simultaneously, and food shops were doing brisk business for large holiday reunion meals. 65-year-old retired nurse, Om Shareef told Annahar, “My husband and I each worked two shifts almost all our lives to support our children’s education.” Her four children are now spread across the Gulf. “I’m proud of the good jobs they secured for themselves, but I miss them terribly every day,” she added. Her three married daughters all came home for the holidays, but her eldest son Shareef was unable to take a break from the engineering firm he works for in Saudi Arabia.

For some families, Lebanon has become a place for reunions but not an employment market. “We’re all here for the holidays but none of us live here anymore,” said Rita Ghulmiyyah, 25, an architect based in Dubai who was born in Beirut. There are seven people in her family, “four of us are now scattered across the globe.” Dareen Jamaleddine’s father surprised them by coming home from Canada, a day before Christmas. “I couldn’t believe my eyes when he walked in, I just sat on the floor and started bawling my eyes like a baby,” said Jamaleddine with a grin. “I haven’t seen my dad who works in Canada for over a year, seeing him walking through the front door knocked the air out of my lungs.” “We all know how expensive planning a trip to Lebanon can be,” her father, Mohamed Itani, said. “The cheapest flight from Toronto to Beirut right now is going for at least $3000 (CAD),” he added. Aliyah Hammoud concurs. “My fiancé works abroad as an accountant, but the skyrocketing price of airplane tickets stopped him from coming home for the holidays,” she said.

For Lebanese arriving home, however, the thought of long afternoons spent in the kitchen nibbling mom’s home-made dishes and laid-back evenings curled up on the sofa, catching up with family under the colored holiday lights, is priceless. In the globalized economy, this is still a place to call home, and for families to meet for gatherings that keep the Lebanese spirit alive as one of the country’s greatest exports is the talents of those born or descendant from the Levant.