The Beiruter

Christian was 24 when the country began to unravel, and 26 when he decided to let go of it. The moment was not dramatic. No airport breakdown with his family, no grand farewell, just a silent evening, a laptop screen glowing in the dark, and a visa confirmation email that felt more like resignation than relief.

He had spent years trying to make it work: working freelance consulting, clinging to dwindling contracts, struggling to make some “fresh dollars” to survive the rapid devaluing of the Lebanese Pound. Within three years, between 2019 and 2022, the Lebanese Pound lost 90 percent of its market value, while Lebanon’s economy operated with no less than seven foreign exchange rates for the US Dollar. In short, Christian’s wages also plunged. 

 “You start by cutting down on the small things. Coffee out, cab rides. Then you start cutting parts of yourself. Your plans, your energy, your expectations,” he told The Beiruter. So he took a job in Saudi Arabia, and he left.

Ramzi Bou Ismail, political psychologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Justice and Conflict Resolution at the Lebanese American University, explained that long-term instability rewires an entire Lebanese generation’s psychological relationship to the homeland, he pointed out. 

You start by cutting down on the small things. Coffee out, cab rides. Then you start cutting parts of yourself. Your plans, your energy, your expectations.

“Over time, young people internalize the sense that the state will not provide protection, opportunity or justice,” he stressed. A fractured national attachment emerges, emotionally tethered to Lebanon, yet cognitively alert to its risks and betrayals. The choice to leave, then, becomes less about economic ambition and more about existential self-preservation. Belonging is no longer simple; it is ambivalent, suspended between the pull of memory and the push of learned pessimism.

Psychologist Raghida Melki reflects on the emotional landscape that shaped this relationship with Lebanon. “When we talk about home, it is usually a place where you feel safe, grounded, and connected. But when there is constant political instability, financial collapse, or social breakdown, one comes to a difficult choice: “to stay and struggle, or to leave and grieve what they had lost.”    

The ones who stayed

Jennifer was 21 when everything broke. During the 2019 uprising, she went to the protests, and she stayed even after the tear gas. She felt there were glimmers of collective possibility: the uprising gave way to a wave of civil society activism. But when the crisis set in, she was suddenly not a revolutionary, but just a fresh graduate in a country without electricity, with a weakening currency, and no clear future. “It felt like I had come of age just in time to watch the country collapse,” she told The Beiruter.

With a degree in graphic design and a Canadian passport, she could have left anytime she wanted. But she chose to stay. She took on three freelance jobs, moved in with her parents again. “There was so much heaviness at home. We were all grieving something: money, dignity, routine. Some days I couldn’t even speak,” she explained. “But now, I want to be here, not just for what Lebanon was, but for what it's becoming.”

Photo by iam hogir, Pexels

A bond that survives

On a recent trip to see his family back in Lebanon, Christian decided to come back. He missed home. “I realized I cannot keep imagining my life elsewhere,” he said. “I see things I didn’t see before [in Lebanon]. Startups. Creative collectives. Ideas growing where there used to be only survival.” 

Jennifer currently works in a small co-working space in the Gemmayzeh district that houses designers, developers, and environmental startups. Five years ago, the area was in ruins, flattened by the August 4, 2020 Beirut Port explosion.

Now, she says the city hums again with ambition. “We were raised to think escape was the only dream worth having, but maybe staying is its form of rebellion. Choosing to believe in this place again is a kind of healing,” she explained.   

Bou Ismail explains that in the aftermath of trauma, like leaving a destroyed home, some people develop a stronger resolve to transform the system rather than abandon it.  And while hope may seem fragile in a country that often fails its people, it can still be found, not in grand reforms, but in “micro-communities, activist circles, and family networks,” where young people locate pockets of agency and belonging. 

What we are seeing now is the emergence of a generation that, despite everything, refuses to fully sever its bond to the homeland. That is not naive; it is resilience, but whether it will translate into systemic change remains an open question.

“Psychological healing in a national context like Lebanon’s is not linear,” he stressed. “It is cyclical, marked by periods of hope, disillusionment, resistance, and adaptation. What we are seeing now is the emergence of a generation that, despite everything, refuses to fully sever its bond to the homeland. That is not naive; it is resilience, but whether it will translate into systemic change remains an open question.”                   

Melki explains that staying could be a form of “post-traumatic orientation.” “Many of them reach a point where they try to reimagine their lives, despite all of it. They’re building projects, helping their communities, creating art, starting businesses,” she stressed.

Even for those still amid struggle, imagining a future is itself an act of quiet power. Even when they simply try to think ahead, this is already a powerful sign that they are processing the trauma and adapting in their own way, Melki pointed out.                                                                                                                     

She says she sees hope not as naive optimism but as active resilience. “When young people, who have every reason to give up and leave, choose to stay, choose to rebuild, and even believe that things could get better, that is a form of strength.”