Don’t Ask the Trees for Their Names: Stories of Leaving and Becoming by Oula Ghannoum & Loubna Haikal

Author:Oula Ghannoum & Loubna Haikal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gazebo Books
Published: 2025-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

Come with me from Lebanon

by Kilda Eid

22 December 1979.

Winter had settled in. I stood at the precipice of my world, hoping to be rescued from my predicament, ‘Am I really leaving Lebanon tomorrow?’

The cold wind blew across my face. Above the drooping, barren trees, the pale blue sky was turning grey at sunset. I gazed west towards the house where I had grown up, trying not to cry.

It hurt to breathe. My heart raced. My ears were deafened by the roaring of my thoughts. How could I be so reckless? How did I not think of the consequences for those I loved most? How could I leave Lebanon? Eighteen years of my life were engraved in its soil.

§

My parents had moved to Rayak in 1958. My father was promoted to the position of sergeant in the Lebanese army at the Rayak military airport base in the Bekaa Valley. There was a central train station and a large agricultural institute, attracting people from different regions and diverse social and religious backgrounds. Rayak is the place where my four brothers and I were born and raised. We loved this town and its people. Our house was always full of guests. My mother, a nurse, used her experience to provide vaccinations for free to the people of the town.

§

I had a beautiful childhood in Rayak. I was the centre of my father’s world. For the first years of my life, I slept only when wrapped gently in his arms. As I grew, my love for him deepened: he was my father, my friend and my mentor. Every day, a little after dawn, he would take me on his bicycle along the railway tracks shaded by acacia trees.

‘I have Kilda in one hand and the four boys in the other hand,’ he’d say – bursting with pride over me. How satisfied he was when I received an honorary award from the Minister of Education for achieving first rank in the Bekaa district and second rank in Lebanon in my baccalaureate. Though girls at that time were encouraged to marry and raise children, he offered me the opportunity to travel to France to complete my studies. He did not offer the same opportunity to my older brother, who had achieved higher grades with less effort. I didn’t accept the offer. I loved my parents and my life in Rayak. Lebanon had good universities. I didn’t know then that fate would take me to shores much further away than France.

§

My mother, stricter on me than my father, had tried in vain to interest me in handcrafts but eventually gave in to my desire to read, and bought me books and magazines. She was very concerned about the large number of school friends who came to our house during the school strikes, which occured every week during the early phase of the civil war. This was in 1978. My mother greeted everyone with a cheerful face, but in her heart, she was afraid that I would be influenced by the wrong crowd.

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