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Meet Me in the Middle (East)

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Airport Conversations

One of the women on my flight to Beirut struck up a conversation with me while we waited in Amman airport for the delayed flight to depart. She had fled to the Gulf to stay with her sister once rockets started falling in her village.

After she left her house had been hit by a rocket and destroyed. She knows because she recognized it when she saw what was left of it on the news.

She offered me chocolate until I took some and told me she would stay with her sister when she arrived. She was all smiles, her weariness showing as she lifted her legs up onto a chair with a sigh, but mostly vibrant and fueled by what I presume to be the relief and happiness of returning to Lebanon.

Another man sitting with us said what everyone keeps saying -- the Lebanese are used to this and are accustomed to rebuilding, they have done it before and they will do it again. This is just the Lebanese spirit. The Lebanese way.

Can you imagine, losing everything you have? Your home destroyed in an instant?

Picture it for a moment. Try. Stop reading this and think. Of your home. In rubble. Pictures scattering in the wind. Broken dishes. Torn clothes and shoes tossed in all directions. All you have is what you took when you left this morning...

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