The Relics of the Past: A Tribute
“And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." - Gibran Khalil Gibran
The loss of a loved one is often a testament to one’s courage, patience and strength. It is a moment where all the intricacies of your life pale into the background... all your deadlines become a blur of numbers, all your priorities turn into obsolete tasks. On March 6th, 2015, I lost someone very dear to me. However, I did not lose her in vain, because I know she lives on after death in her legacy, in those of us that loved her.
Raheel Jabbour was a woman of many historiographies. Ironically, I never knew this about her until I saw her at her end: to me, I got to know her from the very beginning. I got to know her as a person who was more than just my grandmother, but a courageous and loving human being. Upon hearing of her sickness, I rushed to Lebanon to be with her. Though she could not speak, I felt that our bond became stronger than ever. When our relatives and friends would come to visit her, they would reminisce about their experiences with her and I began to see her through a different light. I began to see her from the perspectives of these people: as the courageous friend, as the loving aunt, as the caregiver of so many. I had collected a set of historiographies about this woman and I got to know her through the light of these stories. In my recollections, she is the woman that I went to the beach with every summer, she is the woman that I would play cards with on her couch, and she is the woman that told me entertaining stories about her mischievous siblings. I was her younger companion, her only granddaughter, and I will always cherish my historiography of Raheel.
I often feel embittered by the fact that I got to know so much of my grandmother in her final days. Unfortunately, this is the price we pay for being the Diaspora youth of Lebanon. The circumstances of our life have caused us to live far away from our grandparents. These circumstances have caused us to clutch on to our memories with them as one of the only means of knowing who they were, or who they continue to be for those of them that are alive. Grandparents are genuinely artifacts of the past, they are a crux of our identities and they leave behind a legacy for us to carry forward as our generation replaces theirs.
Political instability incurs overwhelming costs upon our nation: death, unemployment, poverty, and inequality. All these aspects of political instability can be quantified in numbers. However, your lifetime spent apart from your family is something you cannot quantify. It is the sad realisation that we have to live far away to benefit from infrastructures that our home country cannot provide. At the end of the day, this is the most painful cost. I think this pain is something that a lot of youth outside of Lebanon can relate to.
I have no creative solution at this point in time that could remedy such circumstances. However, when we think of Lebanon, we should remember that politics can affect our lives more critically and fundamentally than we want to believe. Living away from Lebanon can often deceive us into thinking that we have escaped from the political instability it harbors, but we haven’t escaped anything. The loved ones that we left behind remain there, and so a part of us will always be inextricably tied to this small country that sits on the Mediterranean Sea.
Nour Chehabeddine
For My Grandparents Izat, Amira, Saeed, and Raheel
In Loving Memory,
Raheel Jabbour
7 October, 1935 - 6 March, 2015
“And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." - Gibran Khalil Gibran
The loss of a loved one is often a testament to one’s courage, patience and strength. It is a moment where all the intricacies of your life pale into the background... all your deadlines become a blur of numbers, all your priorities turn into obsolete tasks. On March 6th, 2015, I lost someone very dear to me. However, I did not lose her in vain, because I know she lives on after death in her legacy, in those of us that loved her.
Raheel Jabbour was a woman of many historiographies. Ironically, I never knew this about her until I saw her at her end: to me, I got to know her from the very beginning. I got to know her as a person who was more than just my grandmother, but a courageous and loving human being. Upon hearing of her sickness, I rushed to Lebanon to be with her. Though she could not speak, I felt that our bond became stronger than ever. When our relatives and friends would come to visit her, they would reminisce about their experiences with her and I began to see her through a different light. I began to see her from the perspectives of these people: as the courageous friend, as the loving aunt, as the caregiver of so many. I had collected a set of historiographies about this woman and I got to know her through the light of these stories. In my recollections, she is the woman that I went to the beach with every summer, she is the woman that I would play cards with on her couch, and she is the woman that told me entertaining stories about her mischievous siblings. I was her younger companion, her only granddaughter, and I will always cherish my historiography of Raheel.
I often feel embittered by the fact that I got to know so much of my grandmother in her final days. Unfortunately, this is the price we pay for being the Diaspora youth of Lebanon. The circumstances of our life have caused us to live far away from our grandparents. These circumstances have caused us to clutch on to our memories with them as one of the only means of knowing who they were, or who they continue to be for those of them that are alive. Grandparents are genuinely artifacts of the past, they are a crux of our identities and they leave behind a legacy for us to carry forward as our generation replaces theirs.
Political instability incurs overwhelming costs upon our nation: death, unemployment, poverty, and inequality. All these aspects of political instability can be quantified in numbers. However, your lifetime spent apart from your family is something you cannot quantify. It is the sad realisation that we have to live far away to benefit from infrastructures that our home country cannot provide. At the end of the day, this is the most painful cost. I think this pain is something that a lot of youth outside of Lebanon can relate to.
I have no creative solution at this point in time that could remedy such circumstances. However, when we think of Lebanon, we should remember that politics can affect our lives more critically and fundamentally than we want to believe. Living away from Lebanon can often deceive us into thinking that we have escaped from the political instability it harbors, but we haven’t escaped anything. The loved ones that we left behind remain there, and so a part of us will always be inextricably tied to this small country that sits on the Mediterranean Sea.
Nour Chehabeddine
For My Grandparents Izat, Amira, Saeed, and Raheel
In Loving Memory,
Raheel Jabbour
7 October, 1935 - 6 March, 2015
