A Young Woman from Beirut is Changing the Lebanese Countryside. Will She Win Against Chaos?

More and more Lebanese are emigrating—they can’t imagine life in a country on the brink. Hanadi Nasser has no intention of leaving—she’s keeping up the fight. She still believes she can change her country.

The first explosion she remembers didn’t terrify her.

It was summer, she was playing in the sun-baked Beqaa valley with her siblings and cousins. They were having a water fight. Their soaked clothes clung to their bodies. The quiet in the area was broken only by laughter and squeals—until they were drowned out by the boom of an explosion.

“We ran home, still whooping with laughter. We knew nothing would happen to us, because the echoes of the Israeli air raids were coming from far away. Mohamad’s pants were soaked and falling down, he was holding them up awkwardly. That’s what stuck in my memory the most: a teenage boy with his boxers sticking out, racing home. Hilarious.” This is how Hanadi Nasser remembers the war between Hezbollah and Israel that went on for more than a month in 2006.

She was nine at the time. She also remembers the bombed road leading to her mother’s home village. “We had to change cars. We drove as far as a crater and walked to the other side. Then one of our relatives picked us up. Apart from that, it was a normal summer, we stayed in Beqaa until September.”

The second explosion, 16 years later, and which she can’t erase from her memory, changed everything: it brought paralysis and emptiness. 

After the explosion at the port of Beirut, Hanadi stopped believing she could change her country. With the deaths of over two hundred people and the apocalyptic destruction, she lost hope that a system steeped in corruption and based on religious divisions might collapse, and that Lebanon would rise to its feet.

Life in Beirut became unbearable. Colors faded, people stopped smiling, the city plunged into apathy. “It hurt. Because I’ve always loved this place. I’ve spent my whole life here.”

 

What are you fighting for, Hanadi?

Hanadi adored the energy of the capital: the constant changes, the traffic—even the chaos on the streets. These were the very streets where she’d fought for change over the last seven years. It was here that she’d fled police aggression, set fire to tires, shouted slogans, gotten teargassed. This was where she’d hoped things could be different.

“It started in 2015, with the trash. The whole of Beirut was filthy, because the government was ignoring the fact that the landfill had reached its limits. It stank like hell, because it was right in the middle of summer. Awful,” Hanadi says, frowning at the very memory. “I met up with some activists I knew. We said we couldn’t leave it this way. We created the group You Stink! We wanted to force the environment minister to resign, we even occupied the hallways in the building where his office was, but they chased us out.”

At first she hid her activism from her parents. She didn’t want to worry them. But it soon got out, because the Nassers saw their daughter on TV. “When they interrupted the broadcast from an action in parliament, my mom saw they were truncheoning us. When I got back home—safe and sound—she was barely alive, she was faint with pain.”

Hanadi’s parents didn’t stop fearing for her, but they accepted her choice. “My dad would test me before every protest: why are you going there, what are you fighting for, what are your demands. He wanted to be sure I knew what I was doing.”

In 2019 the Nassers went out into the street along with their daughter. Hanadi was proud of them. “Imagine you’re blocking the street, a revolution is happening, tires are burning, and your parents are there with you. Amazing!”

Hanadi didn’t stop with just protests. In 2017 and 2018 she worked for a non-governmental organization that revealed information about the budgets of individual ministers and financial scams. And at the end of 2018 she got involved in helping people who’d been arrested at protests.

“I was the only person working the hotline. I had to be available day and night. Now I don’t know how I put up with it. We got more and more reports as time went on, people would call with all sorts of problems, for instance when they’d lost their jobs. They didn’t know who to turn to. In Lebanon there are no pro bono lawyers, and we were offering free legal advice.”

Such intense engagement takes its toll: after the explosion at the port, when she was facing breakdown and burnout, Hanadi quit the legal NGO. For a moment she stopped believing she could make a difference. She didn’t know what to do next.

 

Lebanese Say Halas

But who in Lebanon really does know what to do? The present is overwhelming, the situation is so surreal it’s lost its power to surprise—people come to believe that things could always be worse.

“If you don’t create a defensive bubble, an escape, you’ll go crazy,” says Hanadi, as we sit on a Friday evening at a bar in the fashionable, Christian district of Mar Mikhaël. Some bars and restaurants are still full and lit up, but only on one side of Rue Arménie. The buildings opposite are drowning in darkness and oblivion. But as recently as 2018 the street was jam-packed, finding an open table was a challenge, there was nowhere to park—the traffic police would do it.

“What’s going on in our country tears me apart inside, but there’s no way to dwell on it constantly. Sometimes you have to switch off: go out into the city, go away. Just live normally.”

While you still can—the state is on the edge of bankruptcy. With every day, the Lebanese pound loses value; electricity and water are growing harder to access. To say nothing of the internet, which has gotten much more expensive and might soon disappear entirely, if the government doesn’t supply the state company with diesel for generators.

“Even during the civil war it was easier,” says Hanadi’s mother, Jihan. “There was some money, some food. But now it’s harder and harder to get milk, meat, cooking oil.”

Jihan, a cheerful 50-year-old with short, dark hair works for the Beirut school administration. Before the crisis she earned $2,000 a month, now she earns $80. “How can I survive on that?”

Access to a generator costs $200 a month, and gasoline—though it costs half as much as in Poland—keeps getting more expensive. The Nassers have no savings—they burned through them building a multi-story house in the home village of Hanadi’s father Rafik.

“Makes a better investment than holding money in a bank,” says Rafik, taking a drag on a cigarette. “I’m glad I’m penniless. I wouldn’t be able to get to my savings anyway!”

The banks have been restricting withdrawals since 2019. Even taking out $100 from an ATM can be a problem. After three years, some people are saying “halas”—enough—and trying to get their money back. The first was 42-year-old Hussein al-Sheikh Bassam, who on August 11, 2022 forced the bank to pay out $35,000 in savings. The only way he managed was to enter the bank with a gun and a gasoline canister, fire three warning shots, take the bank employees hostage and threaten to burn the place down. Lebanese people hailed him as a hero. A few people followed in his footsteps. On Friday, September 16, there were at least five “attacks”—or “robberies”, as some media describe attempts to recover money—the most in a single day. The banks announced they were closing—first for three days, then indefinitely. In the end the pause lasted a week.

 

An IT Worker Searches for Treasure

Rafik quit his job in IT last year, though he has a few years to go until retirement. “I was working six days a week in three different schools. Now that would earn me a hundred dollars a month. I haven’t got the energy for it anymore.”

Now he looks after his flock of goats and sheep. And he makes cheese, including mild labneh, which we eat with olive oil for breakfast. He’s great at it. “It’s simple! It just takes time and patience!”

Those are qualities Rafik has plenty of. He’s even found a hobby—searching for treasure. A few months ago he dug up some copper bracelets and rings. He proudly shows them off. “They’re antiques. We had no custom here of burying the dead with jewelry.”

The little bracelets, too narrow for an adult wrist, pass from hand to hand as we sit in a circle in the courtyard at the Nassers’. Tomorrow Rafik intends to continue his search. He can’t bring us. “We’re too close to the border with Syria—someone will notice us, and we’ll have problems.”

The next day he changes his mind. It’s Sunday afternoon, everyone is resting. Even the border guards.

We climb up a gentle hillside. The worst heat has already eased up, but the sun still burns on the back of the neck. We move slowly. We take a few breaks—Jihan explains she’s not used to such a hike; after all she’s lived her whole life in Beirut. We pass a parcel of land with almond trees—it belongs to an Orthodox priest; we pass a cottage Rafik’s brother built on his own scrap of land. The figs from his garden are meant to be our reward for a mission accomplished. Nothing grows at the Nassers’ farm for the moment—they have no money for irrigation. The ground is bone-dry and stony.

“See for yourself. Could nature create anything like that?” Jihan points at a rock reminiscent of a cave-entrance. Rafik and Yussef are already wrestling with the boulder. A long metal bar serves as a lever. Rafik pushes, shoves, heaves. Sweat beads on his forehead and runs down his back. The rock, cracked in two from the three men’s labor the day before, opens up from time to time. Rafik tries to squeeze stones into the gap; Yussef peers inside, shining a flashlight. They make several attempts. Rafik grits his teeth and puts all his strength into the struggle with the boulder. His sneakers slip on the sandy ground and the rock doesn’t budge, as if offended that someone would dare move it.

“I hope we’ll find something. We promised everyone we’d share it around. Our friends have already planned vacations!” cries Jihan from a safe distance, looking intently at her husband and son.

Finally the rocks surrenders, crashes to the ground, shatters—an avalanche of stones rolls down the hill.

For a moment we hold our breath. The opening is like a magnet—it attracts everyone’s gaze.

There’s no cave, just another rock. Rafik leans on a neighboring boulder and catches his breath. “Not this time, then next time!” he says, shrugging off the whole situation, and bursts into laughter.

 

Destination: Emigration

“We knew there was nothing there,” Jihan will say later, as usual with a gentle smile on her face. “The point isn’t to find anything, just to do something together. To hope together that there’s treasure buried in this dry ground.”  

The Nassers, like many Lebanese, are now stuck in timelessness—suspended between longing for the past, when things weren’t so tragic (because, for instance, electricity was available for 10 hours a day, not five), and the unforeseeable future.

Even Rafik, a joker who’s constantly bursting into laughter, is unsettled. “I never thought of emigrating before. I mean, I’ve never even left Lebanon! Not even for fun. But the time has come. How are we supposed to get old here? After all, nothing is going to change in the next ten years. So long as Hezbollah stays in power and so long as the wealthier Arab countries align with Israel and Iran is just waiting to strengthen its influence in Lebanon, the situation is going to get worse.”

Jihan is worried too. “I don’t know if moving out to the country was a good idea. Now we’ve got two homes to maintain; our two daughters have stayed in Beirut. The electricity costs a fortune.”

“At least there are these goats. Once all the food is gone, I’ll be drinking nothing but milk!” jokes Rafik. The Nassers are trying to become self-sufficient—next year they plan to plant vegetables and install solar panels. But they don’t know if they’ll succeed. It’s a major expense.

They’re also considering emigrating to the United States—Jihan is already planning to apply for a visa now, because the whole procedure can take up to 10 years. If they succeed, they’ll go to Chicago—to Jihan’s parents’. They emigrated 15 years ago, to help their son raise his baby. Like many other Lebanese who’ve left the country over the last century and a half, they didn’t come back. Today the Lebanese diaspora is much larger than the population of Lebanese in their home country (4.7 million). It’s estimated that in Brazil alone, where Jihan’s mother was born, there are between 3 and 10 million Lebanese.

Hanadi has also thought about leaving: to France, to get a law degree. “I even applied for a visa, I looked at apartment listings. But in the end I decided I couldn’t leave.”

Instead of Paris, she moved to her family village, where that year, she started getting a project on its feet. She wants to create a community center for all the inhabitants of Aita, Sunnis and Orthodox Christians, because she still believes this country can be changed from the grassroots. “In Beirut it didn’t work out, but maybe here it will take off.”

 

Together, But Separate

Aita el Foukhar, a village in the fertile Beqaa valley, is apparently a bastion of tolerance. “Yes, throughout the whole civil war, there were no incidents noted here—on the Aita Wikipedia page you’ll find information about mutual acceptance and so on. The reality is more complicated. The village isn’t really integrated. Orthodox and Sunnis live together, but separately.” 

They’re divided by a symbolic line—a street that divides the Sunni and Orthodox parts of the village. 

The community center Hanadi is creating will stand right on this axis, on the Christian side. At the moment the ground floor is finished—it’s a structure with arched stone vaults handmade by Syrian stonemasons. 

Before winter comes they still have to build the frame of the upstairs floor, also out of stone, and the roof. And in spring, specialists will fill in the structure with compacted earth blocks. Hanadi is now testing the first specimens. “A specialist who was assessing their durability recommended increasing the density of the clay. We have to d a bit of experimenting.”

Using earth blocks is a nod to Aita’s past. Once people mainly built here with environmentally-friendly materials; pottery also flourished here—the name of the village means “temple of pottery” in the Syriac language, used to this day in liturgy. 

“Our ancestors used what was available in the area. We should do the same,” according to Hanadi, who’s fascinated by the possibilities. “Resurrect knowledge that died out with the depopulation of the countryside and share it with others.”

A few men in the village still remember how to make the blocks. Hanadi relies on their experience. She also intends to find out more about the village’s pottery-making past and build a kiln that anyone could use.

“Aita is immersed in history. The village was occupied by the Syrian army until 2005. A Palestinian terrorist organization built a detention center in the mountains; Arafat enjoyed coming here. But no one talks about this—as if it never happened. Okay, the village didn’t suffer in the civil war, but years of terror and uncertainty made people less trusting of one another. They became cautious. That’s why a safe space, where you can not only talk openly, but also search for solutions, is so important. This village has no café—how can we integrate the community and brainstorm about the future, since there’s no place to do it?”

 

From Beirut to the Countryside

Hanadi—as usual—has set herself ambitious goals. As a young woman, Sunni but not religious, with a non-local, Beirut accent, and somewhat alternative appearance, at first she didn’t inspire trust.

“They looked at me suspiciously, like a Beirut girl who got bored with protesting and who moved to the countryside and was acting like she owned the place. In time they started taking me seriously—because they could see the first results, including this building. For now we’re not revealing what we’re building there—it’s too abstract. Plus it’s a delicate issue, because after all we’re building on the Christian side.”

That’s why Hanadi had to ask the priest for his “blessing.” “My parents advised it. They claimed that if we just do what we want, not asking anyone their opinion, then people might take it the wrong way and cause problems—sending inspections after us and so on. Even before, there were conspiracy theories around the village that the Nasser family wanted to take over the village. Because in 2018 I organized a party!”

But not just any party, because it was secular. “There’s rarely anything going on in the village. If there is some event, it’s either initiated by the priest—Sunnis aren’t very celebratory—or a political party. That’s why if you want to organize something, people immediately think you’ve got an ulterior motive—you want to build up political capital! But back then I couldn’t even vote, because I wasn’t twenty-one yet!” Hanadi raises her voice, as always when something makes her laugh or drives her crazy.

Organizing the event wasn’t easy at all. “My parents refused to get involved. The young people I encouraged to help didn’t trust me at first. But that passed! I talked them around. . .”

Today Hanadi could run for office—she’s turned 25—but she has no intention of it. She’s never had political ambitions. She prefers to act independently.

But to do that she needs money. “It’s because of financing that many initiatives fall apart. There was no shortage of ideas in our village; my dad wanted to found a school, but the municipal board didn’t approve it because of the high costs. I don’t rely on politicians, I try to get the funds myself, though there are fewer and fewer grants for projects in Lebanon. That’s why I’m hitting up different organizations, writing up projects to make them fit into a given call. For instance, the UN gave us financing for a program on women’s emancipation. Of course we’re not pursuing all the possibilities for financing. We’re avoiding organizations that want us to do PR for them and put their logo all over the leaflets, websites, social media. We just want to achieve our goals, not advertise an NGO.”

Hanadi can’t stand having something imposed on her—at first she didn’t even want to get vaccinated for COVID-19, just because someone was telling her to. She wants to do things her way—dress how she wants, sit how she wants—often “not like a girl.”

“I don’t intend to adapt. I’m not going to dash to the kitchen to make coffee when guests come over to my parents’. I drink and smoke, even though my parents didn’t like that at first. Once I was drinking a beer on the street in Aita. Someone told my dad. He called me and yelled at me that this isn’t Beirut and I need to be a little careful. Well, I didn’t obey. Because I want to stay myself.”

 

Fawdaa Means Chaos

When we wake up on Tuesday, September 19, not even a drop of water comes out of the faucets in the Nassers’ house. They have to refill the reservoir—in Lebanon there’s no water supply system, water is delivered in cisterns. “It’s really stressful when you have to constantly be careful and economize as much as possible,” says Jihan. She smiles as if wanting to pep herself up. But even a smile doesn’t erase the fatigue and concern from her face. Jihan has been sleeping badly for three years now. Last night wasn’t the only time. Hanadi also had a rough night. She was dreaming about chaos. “It’s strange, I usually don’t have bad dreams. In this one I had superpowers and I posed a threat to the rest of society, but I don’t know why. Then some protest started up and yes—that chaos. It consumed us.”

“Fawdaa”—chaos in Arabic—has now been going on for over a hundred years, ever since the United Kingdom and France divided up the Middle East into spheres of influence after the First World War.

The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (later officially confirmed in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres between the Ottoman Empire and the Entente Powers) assigned Syria and Lebanon to France, and Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine to the UK. The division was reminiscent of the colonial dismemberment of Africa. “There was no logic behind it. Just simplistic thinking: there’s nothing there but sand, we’ll just draw a line. Who cares about the tribes living in these territories, might as well ignore the course of rivers, communication channels and the geographic layout of the land. Everything was done completely carelessly.” This is how the historian James Barr summarized the deal between the two colonial powers.

These artificially drawn borders remain a flashpoint of conflict between Syria, Lebanon and Israel. On disputed territory, arms smuggling and terrorism flourish.

Aita El Foukhar lies barely three kilometers from the border with Syria. You can see it from the highest hill in the area. We drive to it in the evening. It’s already getting dark. “On clear days you can even see Palestine. Dad always says so, I’ve never managed to,” says Yussef. 

The lights are on in Aita—it’s past 7 p.m., the generators have started running. The neighboring village is enveloped in a veil of fog. The sky is turning orange. The lights of the houses sparkle like fireflies. “It’s a good thing there’s still electricity. That’s proof we still live in the twenty-first century,” says Yussef with a bitter smile.

But for how long? Rafik is afraid that winter will completely cut them off. “And then what? Are we going to sit here in the dark?”

Hanadi doesn’t think about that. She’s focused on solutions, on her goals. That’s what’s most important now. That’s what keeps her alive. But really to move forward and permanently heal the trauma of unsuccessful revolution, she also wants to look into the past. “Only then will I understand who I really am. Where I come from. Maybe there—in our village’s past—I’ll find the strength to change this crazy country.”

 

More and More Lebanese Want to Leave the Country

Nearly half of Lebanese want to leave their country, according to research by Arab Barometer conducted between 2020 and the spring of 2021. That’s twice as many as in 2018. Of those surveyed, 44 percent are fed up with corruption, 29 percent have fears about security, and 22 percent want to leave for political reasons. In 2021 alone, 78,000 people left Lebanon—more than four times as many as in 2020.

Between 2017 and 2021, over 215,000 Lebanese chose emigration. By comparison, that’s as if 1.7 million people left Poland.

Currently around eighty percent of Lebanese live in poverty. Some decide to travel to Europe on the dangerous maritime route. In just the first nine months of 2022, 2,670 people attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea, more than twice as many as in 2021 (1,137 people). The destination of migration has also changed: smugglers are increasingly directing boats to Italy, not to Cyprus. A recent catastrophe on the coast of Syria on September 22 killed over a hundred out of 150 Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians who were trying to leave Lebanon.