Bedouin

by Laura Turbay

What I recall most is the sun, refracting on the window of Beirut’s Rafic Hariri airport and splintering into a thousand golden feathers like a Phoenix’s wings, a fitting welcome to the place my family once called home. Lebanon reminded me of Colombia where I spent my pimply adolescence hopscotching between Cali and the United States. It was in the slightly dinged-up look of the airport, the lingering smell of gas-exhaust, and the families that clapped once the plane reached the ground. “Arab-speaking Colombia,” I thought, as I peered into Delphic black Moor eyes and wondered if I could find myself in their reflection. 

Lebanon is no more than a 4,000-mile strip of land along the Mediterranean; it is the second smallest country in continental Asia. Yet what it lacks in size, it makes up for in copious history. Once called the Paris of the Middle East, Beirut, the Arabesque oasis tucked between Europe and Asia was mesmeric. Its Mediterranean Ocean and bucolic snow-topped Cedar Mountains, were relished by Bridgette Bardot and Marlon Brando. But that was before the 1975 civil war between Islamic and Christian fundamentalists tore the country in half, dividing Beirut into East and West, and prompting the exodus of one million people fleeing martyrdom. 

My father's grandparents (from both sides) left Lebanon on a boat bound for Colombia prior to World War II. They feared another famine like the one committed by Turkish and Allied forces in 1918 that wiped out a third of the Mount Lebanon population, around 200,000, and considered by some, a Maronite genocide. My great-grandparents landed in Barranquilla, a port city known as the “Golden Door” for its wide reception of immigrants, largely Syrian and Lebanese. When the immigration officer asked for their names, “Tarabay” was deemed unpronounceable. With a swift brush of ink, the name became “Turbay,” and our heritage, erased. We were no longer Lebanese but ironically, we were “Turcos,” (Turks) a common Colombian nickname for Arabs. 

When a person immigrates, they take their culture with them: family traditions and idiosyncrasies; food and values, the reminders of who they are. It is why my family—near and far—drink Chamomile tea before going to bed and why my grandmother’s coveted kibbeh recipe remains unchanged after three generations. Nostalgia often sits at our dinner table, lingering by the hoummos. “When I die”, says my grandmother, “bury me in Tannourine, Lebanon. Next to my mother.” I, an irrevocable obstinate, refused to live in a world of inconclusions, a repeated tale with no ending like “1,001 Arabian nights.” I would go to Lebanon in this life, not the next. 

We would meet in Frankfurt, my father and me. From there we would take the next flight from Lufthansa to Beirut. “Lufthansa is safer… than Turkish airlines,” said my dad, and by “safer” I knew he was referring to the brutal Ottoman occupation of Lebanon a millennia ago, the same one that drove my family away in the first place. Turkish airlines was perceivably unsafe based on a fossilized memory stitched together from generations of passed-down remembrances. A delusion. Lebanon itself was a delusion to us. The country that bore our family name was nothing but a big fat question mark. 

The plan was to meet up. But a flight delay landed me on Lebanon’s national carrier: Middle East Airlines (MEA). Most passengers were Lebanese — shocker — but I quickly learned that there were two types: those who lived in Lebanon and those who didn’t (expatriates or expats). “Expats” are those who leave in search for a better life, ending up scattered across the globe, largely in Brazil, Canada, or France. They send remittances back to their families in Lebanon, a 

a sort of filial duty that accounts for 25% of the Lebanese economy. The divide between residing and non-residing Lebanese weighs heavy, a Berlin wall of patriot hypocrisy.

The term for Arab desert dwellers is Badawi (or Bedouin in English). It is where Tarabay’s are said to descend from. It is also another word for nomads. Like their seafaring forefathers, the Phoenicians, who traded purple dye along the Levant region in 1500 BC and to whom we owe the first alphabet, they never laid stake to their own land. They preferred to live as vagabonds, from Latin “vagari,” which means to “wander.” As my name begets, I too, lack a clearly defined home. I float on clouds, from one plane to the next, unbound by delineated borders. 

Strangers often approach me and ask: “Where are you from?” I guess my answer depends on who is asking. Throughout my various travels, I carry with me a purveyor of dreams: my navy-blue American passport. And when the nice lady behind the ticket counter asks me what my citizenship is, I reply “U.S,” but the square black letters on it do not belong to me. I am not from the United States, nor Colombia nor Lebanon. Badawi. I am everywhere and nowhere at once. Here too, I am in the black-Arial letters of this page.

Laura Turbay is a Journalism student (MA) at the City University of New York where she investigates migration psychology. She graduated from Boston University with a degree in Business before becoming a full-time writer — from poetry to marketing to journalism.

She enjoys international travel (particularly in the Middle East) and explores music as a means for human connection.

Twitter: @laura_turbay