The Waiting Game

Home Coming

I thought for sure that when I came into the house, I'd be elated. Boy was I wrong. The furniture hadn't been rearranged, there weren't any real telltale signs, just small things that a wife knows. For instance, the couch and coffee table were barely a few inches apart. The telephone was there right next to the remote control. I stood in the hallway, noticed this, and realized, without a shadow of a doubt that hubby hadn't been sleeping in bed for the last two weeks. He'd been living on the couch.My heart breaks for him, because he has no family here in the US. The family arrived without short order, lots of hugs, tears, and a recount of my evacuation. God, I can still remember all this as if it were yesterday.

I returned to America as a shell of my former self. My heart and mind were in Lebanon, with the family I'd left behind. I spent all my time on the couch, watching the tv, flipping between CNN and the arabic channels. Now, I don't need to understand the language to know the horrors of the war. I cried almost everyday as bodies were pulled from the rubble, torso's with no head, babies, children, all dead in a senseless war. My mother and hubby insisted that I shut the tv off, but it was hard to do. We were calling Lebanon daily, and the usual quiet of the conversations were taken over by bombing in the back ground. In Beirut, my in-laws are only a short 8 minute drive from Dohoia, where the Hezbollah reign. I didn't need anyone to tell me that once the Americans were out, the bombing was stepped up--I heard it through the phone, saw it on television. I got out, my kids got out--5,000 on the day we left--but so many others had no where else to go. They endured something that was so unexpected, and took a beautiful land back decades. There is no Rafic Hariri to step in and rebuild with a passion for his homeland this time--because they killed him. A country I one roamed freely is now bombarded with political assissignations, no president, a government who doesn't show up because they don't like the issues on the table. It's a nightmare. And I will be heading back come July. We should've went back last year, but I was a mess, and thought things were going to flare up again, but it was fine. This years, things are worse, but we have family that we need to see, a wedding to attend, and a place to relax.

One can hope, right?

TTFN