It was a year ago when Jomana Siddiqui visited Lebanon, where her father was born â and is now buried. She planned to return there soon; this time, she thought, she would take her two teenage daughters.
Instead, Siddiqui, who lives in California, now worries about relatives there. As she watches from afar the violence and the recent escalation in Israelâs military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Siddiqui thinks about the people she met during her visit, the kindness and generosity she encountered.
She thinks about her fatherâs grave â when, or if, she will get to visit it again. Her voice cracks with emotions. Itâs been gut-wrenching, she said.
âItâs like the universal story of the Lebanese people,â she said. âThey have to keep leaving and not knowing when they can come back.â
From the United States to South Africa, Cyprus, Brazil and beyond, many members of Lebanonâs far-flung and large diaspora are contending with the ripples of the violence â grieving, gripped by fear for loved ones and for their homeland, trying to find ways to help.
Some 1,400 Lebanese, including civilians and fighters of the militant group Hezbollah, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September, saying it aims to push Hezbollah away from the countriesâ shared border.
For Lina Kayat, who moved to South Africa almost 36 years ago but still has a big family in Lebanon, the violence and tensions there have echoes of earlier turbulent chapters.
âWe lived through a civil war for a long time; I was like seven years old,â she said. âIt feels like history repeating itself. ... Itâs the unknown of who is going to get killed next.â
Kayat, who lives in South Africaâs coastal city of Durban, speaks daily to her family, including her mother and her sister.
âThey are very scared and very worried about what is going to happen,â she said.
Generations of Lebanese have grappled with whether to leave to seek better opportunities or escape various times of tumult â from a 15-year-old civil war to military occupations, bombings and political assassinations â or stay in a Lebanon that despite its numerous scars retains its allure for many. Lebanon â home to multiple religious groups, including Christians and Sunni and Shiite Muslims â takes pride in its large emigrant communities, which include successful businessmen and celebrities of Lebanese heritage.
The current military escalation unfolds amid fears that fighting could spread in the region and comes as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza nears the grim one-year mark.
âIt happening on top of Gaza is almost too much to bear,â said James Zogby, president of the Washington D.C.-based Arab American Institute.
âIt almost makes you physically ill just trying to fathom the extent of the trauma,â added Zogby, whose father was born in Lebanon.
Already, Lebanon had been on edge and struggling under the weight of an economic meltdown, the fallout from a massive 2020 port explosion and other crises. Itâs been without a president for two years.
Against such a somber backdrop, Zogby wonders what will become of the displaced.
âWhoâs going to care for them? Where do the health services come from ... when the country is already as overstretched as it is and on the verge of collapse?â he said. âAt what point does it finally collapse? And who will care?â
Fueling the pain, he said, is his anger at the U.S. response to the devastation in Gaza and now the escalation in Lebanon.
âThereâs a sense of powerlessness, a sense of almost despair that, you know, it can get out of control. And as long as nothing here happens to restrain it, it will get worse.â
Akram Khater, director of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, said that since the earliest diaspora, Lebanese who left have been contributing heavily to the economic well-being of Lebanon, sending large amounts of remittances.
Watching the escalation in Lebanon, where he was born and raised, has been re-traumatizing, he said.
âI find myself amidst a swirl of emotions that are unresolved and that derive from this recurring nightmare,â he said. âYet, even amidst this our community comes together to create solidarity and provide solace and comfort for each other.â
Recently, hundreds of Lebanese flags filled the night sky in Dearborn, Michigan, as some attended a rally to support Lebanon and protest the Israeli offensive there.
At Sao Pauloâs international airport, two Lebanese brothers whoâve been living in Brazil, recently had a solemn reunion. They said eight of their loved ones â their sister, brother-in-law, four of their nephews and two of their nephewsâ children â were killed in Lebanon in one of the attacks.
Hussein Zeineddine, one of the brothers, had been on vacationâŻwith his family in southern Lebanon when the area was hit by Israeli attacks, he told The Associated Press. He and his family moved to a safer location until they could book flights back to Brazil. âMy wife was crying and asking us to leave. We left just with basic items. And then, shortly after, my sisterâs house was bombed,â he said after his arrival.
âIt will be tough here. But it will be tougher for people there,â he said.
In Cyprus, Rosaline Ghoukassian said the overwhelming majority of Lebanese donât want this war. She relocated to Cyprus with her husband Raffi Garabedian and their daughter Maria after the 2020 ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut's port that killed more than 200 people. She said she'd been disenchanted with Lebanon's political leadership and also lamented Hezbollah's influence.
âWe knew this was coming,â she said. âThe problem is in Lebanon. ... Because we donât have a good government.â
Their decision to leave Lebanon was never about money but safety, as their daughter explained in a letter she wrote in class in Cyprus: âI donât want to go there because I was saved in the explosion, and I donât want to go live there because I donât want to die.â
The family chose to stay.
âIâm not here to make thousands of euros. No. Iâm here just to live. To be happy, to be safe. This is what I want. To live,â Garabedian said.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel the day afterâŻHamasâ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which the militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Since then, Israelâs military response in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Back in California, Siddiqui said coping with it all has been challenging.
âYou grab the phone; you hesitate to open it because youâre afraid of what youâre going to see, but you kind of have to.â
She talks to friends and others in her circle who can relate.
âWe all feel kind of sad, depressed, helpless, rundown,â she said. âWe can do things like fundraise and donate and protest or anything like that, but at the end of the day, it still weighs on you.â
AP journalists Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg; Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo and Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed reporting.
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