Growing up in a small town on the beach in Lebanon, and moving to the suburbs of Massachusetts was a drastic change. As a first generation immigrant, my ethnicity is extremely central to my identity as it tells the story of my moving to the United States and also acts as a reminder and connection to my home and family. I came to the United States from Lebanon when I was 8 years old with my mother, father, and brother. However, my father first came to America as an 18 year old to attend college at Northeastern University and pursue his dream of becoming a civil engineer. He left his parents, sibling, and my mother behind. A few years after he went back and married my mother and brought her to America. They lived in a small one bedroom apartment in a not so safe neighborhood while they were trying to build a brighter future for their future family. My parents and brother moved back and forth multiple times before we decided to reside in the states.
My dad left behind his life as a successful engineer in Lebanon to take a chance and come back to America to give his family better opportunities. He went from having his buildings be a part of Beirut’s skyline to owning a gas station. He lived in America while my mother, brother and I stayed in our small town in Lebanon. Eventually my father moved us all here so he family could be together. My parents had enrolled my brother and me in an American school while living in Lebanon so the language transition was not a problem. Despite a few pronunciation errors my dad had a tight grasp on the English language. My mother however, was a different case. We helped with her English; whenever she asks, “What does this mean”, or, “How do I spell this?”, we could teach her. Regardless, she would still write everything down in arabic, phonetically. I never understood why she would spend so much time on seemingly insignificant words like tendinitis but she would just reply, “People work hard in different ways.”, in Arabic, of course. This explained why my father would come home from twelve hour shifts and still stay up to help my brother and me with our homework, or why I would stay up until the sunrise perfecting projects and essays.
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My parents perseverance taught me to do the same and be a responsible person. They held me to high standards. I was taught to always work hard and that average was not good enough. This also brought my brother and I close together, which was extremely important in our culture. We have an inseperable bond despite our 7 year age difference. I consider him one of my best friends and someone I can look up to. I am very thankful for having someone this close to me in my life. We always defend each other and if I get in trouble, he does too. This has always made me feel as if I had someone looking out for me and someone who will always help me when I am in trouble.
Since birth, I was taught family values through our culture. Whenever my mother saw my brother she would yell “yo’borne” at the top of her lungs, I would laugh at how crazy she was to still baby him like this even though he is twenty three years old. Then I realized this is one of the most powerful Lebanese phrases. It is essentially telling someone to bury you, in hopes that you die before them, because you cannot imagine a life without them. Lebanese expressions such as this helped shape my life. If there wasn’t a word to describe how I’m feeling in English, odds are there was one in Arabic. These idioms taught me the passion and emotion behind being Lebanese.
From the weird looks I while speaking our language, to the airport security searches, I would not trade my culture for the world. It is what I am used to. Being Lebanese taught me how to express myself and gave me all my knowledge and wisdom that I have today. It has given me my identity, in this “foreign” country. Although my preferences may have changed, I haven’t. My background defines my identity and I could not be more grateful.
