In the end of the day, it’s just another person getting off a plane on a Tuesday, in Boston or Istanbul or Manama or Paris or Dubai, straining for equanimity in the savagery of forced reinvention. As generations of Lebanese have had to do before us.
As the country is sinking, people are fleeing the ship. Until the end of August some 260,000 passports were issued. Do they smile in the photo? Where are they going? And who do they leave behind?
Populist accusations that refugees are stealing Lebanese jobs ignore the fact that Lebanese employers are happy to hire non-citizens and pay them much lower wages than what they would pay to Lebanese workers and not pay social security fees.
