Sitting in Melbourne, I hesitate to share my grief for fear of people saying I’m not close enough to the situation in Lebanon to feel this grief. But the uncertainty is paralysing.
My 68-year-old grandmother and I don’t share the same language. She speaks Arabic and, while I can understand her, I respond in English. I like to blame my parents for this . Raising us in suburban Melbourne, far away from where they spent their own childhoods in, they didn’t think to teach me. Or they didn’t have enough time, focusing instead on their small business.
Every time my mum says goodbye to hers, she weeps as if she’s a teenager again. But this time, saying goodbye felt different. I found myself thinking, what if this is the last time we would ever see her? I wondered if my mum was thinking the same thing.Despite the escalation in tensions, I could sense that Teta was grateful to return home to Jounieh, the city on Lebanon’s coast that she’s lived in her whole life.
In the six months since we said goodbye, and as the conflict in the Middle East has escalated, moving from Gaza to Lebanon, I’ve developed the anxious habit of checking my Teta’s WhatsApp status throughout the day. I rarely call or message, mostly because I don’t want her to worry, but it is the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before going to sleep. “Active now” is reassuring. “Online 10 hours ago” fills me with dread.
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