The testimony of a Lebanese expat unable to return
Opinion piece by Tala Karkanawi, Staff Writer
April 27th, 2020
I am a Lebanese/Saudi Arabian student living in London for my first year of law school.
When I packed my things to move to London, I had never imagined I would be put in a situation where I would be unable to return to my own country, to return to Lebanon. The corona virus pandemic has undoubtedly taken over the world, separating friends and family from each other.
When I first came to London, it was the 17th of January 2020. For my first trip to London, I had booked my returning flight to Lebanon for exactly 3 months later - on the 17th of April 2020. This would’ve been a couple of days ago. However, it is sad to stay that its now the 27th of April, and my return back home to my family, my friends, and particularly my mother looks like an impossible dream to me in an unforeseeable future.
What has made my situation the more tough and difficult than the thousand of other Lebanese students and expats is that I do not hold the Lebanese passport nor any Lebanese identification. The reasoning for this is that, as we are hopefully all aware of, there is a lack of right for a Lebanese mother to pass on citizenship and rights to the Lebanese passport to her children with a non-Lebanese father. Since I have lived all my life in Lebanon, have studied in Lebanon, and my family is 100% Lebanese, I identify myself as Lebanese no matter what my identification says about me. Yet, that has not been enough to get me on a flight to Beirut International Rafic Hariri Airport.
When the lockdown was imposed in the UK, my friends (who are also Lebanese) and I found ourselves stuck at the university campus. I am not going to lie, we weren’t that sad about it, initially. However, weeks passed by and our days became a series of dull routines. I was quarantined with them, and still am, and because of that I consider myself lucky acknowledging that many people are quarantined alone and in unsafe environments.
The day news arrived regarding planes that can take us back to Beirut, we were all so happy and we immediately expected that we’d be going on the next flight.
What we did not expect is the humiliation we were going to go through and the hopeless expectations we so evidently had.. It wasn’t about us being naïve that ‘oh this is going to be easy, going back to our own country.’
As part of the procedure, we began by calling the Lebanese embassy in the UK. They took our contact information, our address, and any extra personal information they needed about us. Later, when I took it upon myself to call them, they asked me for a picture of my Lebanese passport, which I do not hold. I told them I unfortunately do not have it. The guy on the phone was shocked because I sound 100% Lebanese. I told him I am Saudi Arabian with a Lebanese mother and I wish to return back home to her. The man on the phone from the embassy sympathized with me and my situation, and he went ahead and listed my name amongst all Lebanese students.
We never got a call back. None of us did. Only one of my friends returned, and apparently the amount of ‘wasta’ (social economic-political connections in the Arab region) she had to make was unbelievable.
It all goes back to the so called politicians that we have back in Lebanon. Not only did the situation become harder for my friends, it was the hardest for me amongst them all. I do not even carry the Lebanese passport, going back home, especially in time for the holy month of Ramadan definitely became a possibility I did not see being manifested anytime soon.
My friend who did make it back to Lebanon, and who was ‘accepted’ on the flight as though it was a college competition, noted she had to pay the price of circa 1200 British pounds. That is excluding any extra baggage which is around 250 British pounds. Students were promised a 50% discount, however this was not apparent and she was told to just ‘go with it if you want to come back to lebanon.’
The entire process has been, and is unbelievable. The ticket is too expensive especially for students, who are returning back to Lebanon due their inabilities to pay rent, tuition, or for healthcare due to the economic situation.
I highly doubt my name or any of my fellow Lebanese friends’ names are going to be on that list anytime soon. T
Even though the ‘new’ government is working a tremendous job at stabilizing the country, pandemic wise, a lot of other changes are needed to happen in order for Lebanon to actually start developing, I would argue. One of the changes is to eliminate the so called ‘wasta’ once and for all because it is causing a lot of pain and damages for the people that are actually in need.