Dear Dad,
I have a story to tell you.
It’s about something that happened to me in Lebanon after I left a very happy life in Canada; after you worked so hard to bring us peace and a passport. I still think I let you down by leaving it all and moving back to your place, your city, Beirut.
It’s a beautiful summer day, me and Rosemary Sayigh, a very passionate historian for Palestine, we’re going on an adventure to discover a lost Palestinian library in Tyre. I still know nothing about the history of Palestine exactly as you left me, a 12-year-old kid brought up in European schools. I still love Palestine because of you, but have not studied it, and I never went there. I’m so excited, this place where the lost Palestinian library is at called Al-Mashouq (The Beloved); I love this name, and I know you do, too. I didn’t know the legend behind the name, though. I was told that a long time ago, a Lebanese woman fell in love with a Palestinian man in this place, but their love was forbidden because the Lebanese and the Palestinians hated each other. The couple insisted on their love and died at this settlement, alone, in exile. You know I’m thinking of you and mom, the difficult love we inherited …
When I was sitting in the taxi on my way there, I thought of the people in my life since you went away, couples in Lebanon who have experienced difficult love like you and mom. Did they ever make it? When mom met you, she was not religious, she said, even though she came from traditional Tripolonian lineage. She told me how her childhood was hard, loved ones died in the civil war, or migrated and never returned, leaving her heartbroken. Beloveds leaving and family secrets ripping her heart open, like how she was told her estranged father is actually her uncle who married her widowed mother to keep the kids in the family. Feeling disconnected from the “pure Lebanese family.” she fell in love with you, the Palestinian rebel everyone hated in her family. She connected with you to own her life as an outsider, I think, but she doesn’t say that to me. I feel it, though. After all these years since you’ve gone, she hasn’t returned to the “pure Lebanese family.” She stays in Canada, where you’re buried, but I came back to find you in the city where you both fell in love.
I met the women in your family who were either active in resistance projects in 1980s in Lebanon or married to revolutionaries and fida’iyeen. Strong unbreakable women keeping up in the struggle of being refugees in Lebanon. I got to see and experience the strength I come from, dad. Revolutionary, feminist, indigenous Palestinian women. But wait, let’s go back to the taxi ride on my way to the lost library at Al-Mashouq with Rosemary. We take a taxi to Saida. We then find another random servees heading to Tyre. We’re now riding along the highway there; we drive past the seaside chatting gaily about random things. We get through the first checkpoint just by flashing our AUB ID cards to the army guy, super lucky he didn’t care that these are not proper proof of residency. We continue riding along on this sunny morning. Suddenly, the driver emerges from the invisible background of our chatter and locks eyes with me in the rearview mirror because something I said caught his attention.
“What did you say your father’s name was?”
“Hussein Al-Sayyed,” I say after a short, confused pause.
“And from where?”
“Ein El Helwe originally. From Akka, Palestine. Why?”
“Was he the radio broadcaster who spoke about Palestine? He moved to Malta?”
“Yes, that’s my father. Do you know who he was?”
(Because I don’t, I say in my mind, I’m still finding out … )
It turns out that Mohammad the driver had visited you in Malta back in the 80s! Isn’t that amazing, Dad? He remembers our house there, Mom, the PLO office, the Algerian ambassador who was your best friend. He remembers the news of your death announced in the refugee camp’s newsletter.
Many years later, Rosemary tells me during supper at her apartment, “Amany, in all my life as an anthropologist, this was the most remarkable thing that has ever happened to me.” I’m glad she felt this way, Dad, because all I could think of is the time I wasted thinking you and mom failed in marriage just like Lebanon and Palestine failed to live together happily. I wish I could get back the years, struggling to see the legacy I come from just by being your daughter: love, Al-Mashouk, the legacy of fighting through difficult love until it becomes eternal, lighting the way for generations to come.
Thank you, Dad, for giving me the best story of my life that led to the best ending in the world.
With love,
Your Amany
PS: Thank you for naming me so poetically, I love it.
Amany Al-Sayyed teaches writing at the American University of Beirut where she also works independently on documenting her Palestinian father’s cultural anti-colonial production in Lebanon (1960-80). Born and raised in Euro-Canada, she continues to document this resilient history of exile and overcoming in Beirut where she lives and creates with other similar voices