Lebanon’s Returnees Find a Homeland Battered and in Need of Their Help Lebanon’s Returnees Find a Homeland Battered and in Need of Their Help
The New York Times
Some who left the country in successive waves of emigration have felt drawn back to aid recovery efforts after the bloody and destructive war between Israel and Hezbollah.
As the war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah intensified last September, Abed Al Kadiri sat glued to the television in the art studio where he was working in Kuwait.
Mr. Al Kadiri watched as Beirut, the Lebanese capital and city of his childhood, was ravaged by Israeli bombardments. He was distraught about what members of his family, including his mother and 13-year-old son, along with his friends, were enduring there. He began having nightmares and panic attacks and was unable to sleep.
Determined to support his family and help his country rebuild, Mr. Al Kadiri decided to book a ticket home.
“Lebanon was going into an apocalyptic phase,” Mr. Al Kadiri, 40, said on a recent morning in the outskirts of Beirut. “Going back was the only best option.”
Lebanon’s large and influential diaspora — estimated at nearly three times the size of the country’s population of 5.7 million — has been trickling back, hoping to offer physical and financial support for a country devastated by one of the bloodiest wars in decades in the Mediterranean nation.
