Dear Norway
Dear Norway
You probably do not know me yet. No reason so far. To you, I am probably no more than a mere French guy who’s been around a few times for business. To me, you could have been no more than a cold and expensive piece of land on too high a latitude, even for a French guy. It only gets weirder when you realize I am also Lebanese, and that I grew up in a much warmer place than you would have thought. And that despite my rather hypothetical inclination to warmer climates, to me, you are more than a checkbox on a places-I’ve-been map.
I do not know if I can call you home, or even if I want to. I already have two of those, and that is more than overwhelming for most people. But you see, lightning struck me twice while roaming within your realms. The first strike was a hell of an experience. I was on a short business trip to Oslo, and I was stunned when I heard this song on the TV, by sheer chance, while randomly flicking through channels to keep the lonely silence of the hotel room away. “They don’t make movies”. It was a Monday evening, and Norway would never again be the same to me, and nor would music.
The second strike was bitter-sweet. More bitter than sweet. So bitter actually that I had to cry on someone’s shoulder, and only yours was available on this cold night. And boy did I cry in the loneliness of my hotel room. I had just heard a song. It said everything a long time immigrant like me tries so hard to hide deep inside for so long, for the only sake of belonging, for acceptance.
“I want to go home for Christmas”.
I know, I am not supposed to have two homes, two allegiances, but I cannot help it. Would you take in a kid who has forsaken their kin? Would you trust an immigrant who spits on their homeland? And still, would you trust a nobody if they did not look and talk and eat and joke and live like you do?
I want to go home for Christmas. I want it so bad that I am still awake in my lonely hotel room, against any and every sound reason to go to sleep, writing these lines while listening to the same damn song which got me there.
I want to go home for Christmas. But I can’t. It is too dangerous. Or too expensive. Or too God damn complicated with three kids, the worst economic downturn a country has ever known and a war raging a few kilometers south.
I want to go home for Christmas, it has been so long. My loved ones are dying one after the other in this God forsaken land, and every Christmas brings less gifts and more sorrow to them. I want to go home for Christmas, but most of my family has left, most of my friends are gone. I do not know if they miss their home country as much as I do, if they hide it as bad as I do, but I sure know I miss them, and what is a home country made of, if not family, friends and memories? I want to go home for Christmas, while it is still there. Even if it is an ultimate goodbye.
“I want to go home for Christmas, let me go home this year.”
So, dear Norway, you are the only ear listening to me right now, you are the only shoulder I can cry on tonight. I want to go home for Christmas, and I have a feeling you understand. I know I have nothing in common with your children, save for the fact that we are human and that we mostly long for peace and harmony, or so we like to think. My ears are deaf to your language, and yours to mine. I do not know much about your history and how you came to be what you are, and I am not sure I ever will. It has taken too much a toll to adapt to a new home, I do not think I can take it another time. I do not know if I can even call you home or even if I want to, but I sure would like to call you a friend. A real one. You can only cry on a friendly shoulder.
So, dear Norway, I bid you farewell this evening, and I hope the weather will not be as cold next time, if there is a next time, who knows. And I pray that in the meantime my people will have reconciled and moved beyond the divide, that my loved ones will stay in good health, that my friends will have not forgotten, that this God forsaken land will have fared better than what you could expect. That the great country that adopted me 18 years ago will remain a parent forever, that I will not be orphaned another time. That the bitterness will not have gotten the best of me.
And I sure hope I will go home for Christmas. Maybe not this year. Maybe not next year. But hopefully soon rather than never. But if by some magic spell, this was the price by which atonement is obtained for this small land on the verge of oblivion, for my home country to get better, if it could be all it takes for time to warp on itself and obliterate the past 48 years of sorrow, if it could make a spell powerful enough for all my fellow Lebanese to wake up from this long nightmare and sleepwalk to their kitchen tables to have a warm coffee, as if nothing bad had ever happened, then yes, and gladly, I would not go home for Christmas. Ever.
Still, I am eager enough to believe we could pull it off if enough people of good faith put their heads to it, and bitter enough to know it just won’t happen. Ever.
And yet, I want to go home for Christmas. One day.
Yours faithfully
Rabih
