Will the Emigrants Return?

... Professor Kamal al-Yaziji, one of the teachers of the Arabic Department at the American University of Beirut, spent a period in the United States in scholarly study for the doctorate, and during that time he was able to make contact with the Lebanese emigrants and to learn the extent of their desire to return to their first homeland. We thank Professor al-Yaziji for favoring "The Woman's Voice" with this engaging and delightful article, in which he speaks of a portion of our people beloved to our hearts — the talk of an aware and confident man who is not swept along by sentiment.

During the year I spent in the United States, I was able to meet many sons of the Arab countries generally, and of the cherished Lebanese homeland in particular. There were gatherings, there were visits, there were invitations, in which affection, open-handedness, and nobility of character appeared in their brightest colors. Were I to set about describing the emigrants' devotion to the visiting compatriot, and their sincere longing for their first homeland and their distant kin, space would close in on me and eloquence would desert me. I shall therefore content myself with saying: the longing of the Lebanese at home for his kinsman abroad is in no way less than the yearning of the emigrant for the Lebanese at home. Indeed, this feeling of theirs passes beyond the relative to the stranger, and beyond the known to the unknown. The emigrant delights in every Lebanese for the fragrance of the first homeland that clings to his garments, just as the resident brightens at everyone who arrives from the lands of exile, for he is a living, speaking message from every emigrant to every resident. I experienced this myself, for in the affection I met with, relatives and strangers stood equal, as did old friends and newly made acquaintances. What I received, for example, from the great man of wealth Mr. Massoud Hbeika, the gentle man of letters Mr. Farid Njeim, and the gallant and devoted Espiridon Rizk was in no way less than what I met with in the homes of my kinsfolk — the Yaziji, Khoury, Salibi, and Aswad families — which proved to me that this abounding hospitality toward an ordinary person was nothing but a symbol of the longing the emigrant harbors for the mother country.

Yet if we sound out the emigrant on the subject of returning to Lebanon for good, he takes fright, and his thoughts turn toward the fortune he is still gathering with the sweat of his brow and the blood of his heart, and he asks what would become of it in a situation that has not yet attained complete stability in all its aspects. True, the leaders of the nation have, since the blessed era of independence, exerted many efforts to make the emigrants eager to come back with their money and their belongings to their first homeland.

They made ready for the matter: they founded a special ministry for emigration, appointed capable officials to the project, and sent the ambassadors and consuls ample instructions toward the achievement of this aim. God knows that those entrusted with the matter have spared no effort in publicizing Lebanon and in making the return to Lebanon attractive to the emigrants. But publicity alone is not enough, and confining ourselves to enticement will not bear the fruit we hope for. For the problem is not, at bottom, a simple problem of sentiment, but a highly complicated problem of "interest." The emigrants are of many classes: among them are merchants, workers, employees, members of the liberal professions, and the retired, who live on the reserve they saved up in the years of their struggle. All of them look at the "return project" from the angle of interest first of all. There is no escape, this being the case, from taking practical measures of a kind to satisfy sentiment and interest at one and the same time. This is an innocent and sincere word in which we sum up the point of view as it appeared to us among each of these classes:

1 — The Men of Capital

This is the class whose return to the country concerns us first of all, because of the increase in the country's wealth and the broadening of the possibilities of work that would follow from it. Yet not one of them thinks — at the present time — of transferring his business to the country, and that for two principal reasons. The first is worldwide: the instability of the monetary situation among the nations and the multitude of restrictions imposed on the movement of imports and exports. The second is local: the public services' want of further organization, and the pressing need to facilitate transactions and to put affairs of every kind in order. If we accomplish that, many men of means will come back without publicity or enticement.

2 — The Salary Earners

These earn their daily bread by toil and unremitting work. Rarely can they amass great fortunes; rather, in the course of one week they spend most of what they managed to earn the week before. The thought of returning never crosses their minds — whatever longing for Lebanon stirs within their breasts — and this goes back, for the most part, to two important reasons. The first: work here is not plentiful, and they have not yet forgotten, since they left the country, that they left it precisely out of a desire for work and in search of a livelihood; how, then, should they cast themselves a second time into the mire of unemployment?! The second: the guarantees the worker and the employee enjoy over there have no counterpart in any other country in the world. The hours of work are limited; life is insured against want, sickness, and accidents; and he enjoys, besides, the protection of a strong and active union that safeguards his rights and wards off from him every injustice and exploitation. Where is he to find such guarantees outside the land of Uncle Sam?! The policy of enticement will therefore avail nothing unless it is joined to an endeavor to create work and provide guarantees.

3 — Members of the Liberal Professions

At the head of these: the physicians, the lawyers, and the engineers. Their hours are crowded with work and their waiting rooms packed with people, so much so that they raise their fees out of a desire to "thin out" their clients, while their colleagues among us resort to "underbidding" to win clients. Sentimental publicity in such a matter is doomed to failure; the effective measure lies in founding development projects, so that scope opens up for such men, and the country profits by their knowledge and their experience, and takes pride in what is in them and in their achievements.

4 — The Retired

These are the men whom unremitting work has worn out; they have closed the chapter of struggle in their lives and gone in search of rest wherever it offered itself. The policy of enticement has succeeded among these more than among any others, for here interest has fallen in with sentiment, given the quiet to be had here and the comfort of being among one's own people, alongside the lowness of prices. And though financial and administrative affairs do not concern them much, they fear they may not find in the homeland a substitute for the free atmosphere in which they live in their expatriation; and so we see them hesitate to sacrifice ample liberty for the longed-for rest.

5 — The Rising Generations

This discussion would not be complete did I not devote a word, however brief, to the rising generations. I am sorry to say that no tie binds them to the homeland of their parents — save only the tie of curiosity. They like to pay a visit to this country, for no reason but to become acquainted with the country their parents came from. But that they should prefer it to the country in whose shade they grew up — that never crosses their minds. They are Americans in every sense, and few of them speak an Arabic free of foreign accent. The emigrant's son is American in tongue, American in mind, and American in heart. There is thus no hope of bringing him back to the fold: the broad democratic order in whose shadow the young emigrant prospers is dear to him as his own life, and he will accept no substitute for it under any circumstances.

Finally, the emigrants, for all the difference of their stations and inclinations, agree in their concern for the future of their children, choosing for them the place best suited to their upbringing and to the future of their lives. There is no disputing that the possibilities of learning and advancement are broader in the American lands than they are here; and so the emigrant may sacrifice his own comfort and his longing for the sake of his children's future. If we wish to win him over, we have no choice but to place the pursuit of learning within the reach of every student, and to smooth for the educated the paths of progress and fruitful work.

The sum of the matter is that the emigrant stands between two forces: an attracting force, which is longing for his country and his people; and a repelling force, which is care for his material interests. The publicity we have carried on until now has confined itself to nourishing the first force; as for the second, and the more important, we have not yet managed to deal with it. Let us press on with administrative reform in sweeping fashion; let the public services be organized decisively; let development projects be founded on a wide scale; and let the realization of economic, social, and cultural guarantees of every kind be taken up — and then we shall see delegations of emigrants coming back with their money, and devoting their intelligence and their experience to the benefit of the nation and the good of the country.

Kamal al-Yaziji
The American University of Beirut