how it started

You have your Lebanon and I have mine

You have your Lebanon with her problems,
and I have my Lebanon with her beauty.
You have your Lebanon with all her prejudices and struggles,
and I have my Lebanon with all her dreams and securities.
Your Lebanon is a political knot, a national dilemma, a place of conflict and deception.
My Lebanon, is a place of beauty and dreams of enchanting valleys and splendid mountains.
Your Lebanon is inhabited by functionaries, officers, politicians, committees, and factions.
My Lebanon is for peasants, shepherds, young boys and girls, parents and poets.
Your Lebanon is empty and fleeting,
whereas My Lebanon will endure forever.

Khalil Gebran

This blog is my labour of love to my Lebanon. I have decided to dedicate the next 365 days to posting 1 thing every day that I love about Lebanon, both people and land. I will be posting 1 post a day, except for Sundays, when I will repost one post from the older ones.
It’s always with a positive mind and a loving heart that we can change the world. So my next posts are dedicated to everything I love about Lebanon. This is a glimpse of my Lebanon, a land of true beauty, love, kindness, and natural grace. And yes as cliché as it is I ‪#‎livelovelebanon‬

10 thoughts on “how it started”

  1. Hi Karen, My dad Karam Skaff (son of the late Sadie Karam – Skaff and David Skaff of Lebanon) is 87 years old and loves your 365 Days of Lebanon. He has asked me to print up each of your articles individually to make a book. I know that your website with all the articles won’t evaporate, but is there anyway that you can make each of your articles more printer friendly (at times gaps between the headline and an article)? (Maybe make a printer friendly PDF for at the end of each article you publish). Or do you have any thoughts of publishing your work in book format with all the wonderful color photos??? Maybe you can team up with Aramco World Magazine (my dad is a subscriber) or something of that nature to get your stuff published in print format. Please let me know. I have no time to do print each article for my dad.
    Merci Beaucoup – Shukraan, Gregory Skaff

    PS take a look at some of my stuff

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  2. Gregory i am having technical problems on my blog today. so i am not sure whether you received my previous message.. i am in italy at the moment.
    first of all please sends my regards to your dad and thank him from me for reading my blog. if he ever comes to lebanon, i would love to meet him.
    secondly, i am doing a book out of my post by the end of the 365 days as i have been receiving a lot of e-mails about turning them into a book. you’d be able to get it from my website and if you message me on the side, i would love to write a note for him. it will be out just before next christmas…
    i’ve been debating for a while whether i should turn them into a book, and that is the message that i read this morning before i boarded on the plane and i spend the hole trip saying to myself, i have to do this. thanks to your message .
    i would love to check what you are doing. can you send me a link?

    much love from Italy

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  3. Hi Karen, Thank you for your prompt reply. I sent my dad a PDF of your response to my inquiry. At 87, my dad is a bit old fashioned about things and he kept reminding me to do all this printing for him on my black and white laser printer. I am really too busy to do this. My parents have been to Lebanon twice in their lives (I have yet to go) and I have had an invitation by an former customer / co-tenant I placed here (where I live) at 33 Garden St in Boston by the name of Dr. Jihad Achkar who was a visiting Harvard Medical Fellow (very prestigious) at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear in the otolaryngology (diseases in the Ear and Throat). You may want to do a blog about Jihad and his experiences in the USA and Beirut medical field when you visit him in Beirut his email is Jihad Ashkar My dad would really appreciate and surprised if you sent him an email from you; his email is . I know you are very busy. Best regards, Gregory W. Skaff

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  5. Karen,
    I recently discovered your blog and it has touched something deep in my heart.
    Your words are so poignant, so poetic, so joyous and melancholy.
    My family has lived in the “Ghourbeh” for over a century and although we are so far from Lebanon in time and space, you make it so familiar. If everyone saw the beauty in life and in Lebanon
    as you see it, it truly would be “qit3at samaa’ “.

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    1. Hello Christian. Thank you for this lovely message. I believe so too. You know sometimes it’s not easy living here. There are days where you hate it and days where you absolutely love it. Yet somehow there is always some kind of daily interaction that brings this mundane life to a more delightful social lubricant be it. There is a lot of beauty here but with time it’s been getting further and further away from the city and people don’t have time to appreciate them. So I build this blog as a way of appreciating everything that is lebanon.

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