Return to rural roots

LEBANESE LEAVE BEIRUT: ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, TRASH CRISIS, PANDEMIC

Many people seek a new life on family farmland or plots.

At 28, Thurayya left behind the Beirut neighbourhood where she was born and moved to the family farm, forced there by Lebanon’s bruising crises.

“Living in the city has become very miserable,” she said from the lush south Lebanon farmland planted with avocado trees that is now her home. “The quiet violence of city life sucks you dry of energy, of money... It was just too much.”

Lebanon’s unprecedented economic crisis, the coronavirus pandemic and last year’s massive and deadly explosion of chemical fertiliser at Beirut’s port have dimmed the cosmopolitan appeal of the capital.

Many are turning their backs on urban life and heading for their ancestral towns and villages, where they can cut down on living costs and forge new connections with a long-forgotten agricultural inheritance.

In October, Thurayya moved to the south Lebanon village of Sinay only weeks after her Beirut landlord said she would quadruple the rent at a time when electricity generator bills and transport costs were already spiralling beyond reach for most.

“It didn’t make sense for me to stay in Beirut,” Thurayya said. “It’s pitch dark, there is garbage everywhere and you don’t feel safe... it’s hostile.”

Now, when she’s not working remotely for a nonprofit group, Thurayya spends much of her time in her family’s farmland.

She has turned to YouTube to learn how to prune trees and pestered local farmers for tips on how to best tend to a plot she hopes to one day take over.

In a country where no official census has been held since 1932, there is little data on the demographic shift to rural areas, which are largely underprivileged and underserved.

But a long-standing trend towards rapid urbanisation seems to be slowing partly due to diminishing job prospects in major cities, where the cost of living is 30% higher than in the countryside.

A spike last year in the number of construction permits outside Beirut suggest such a movement, according to Lebanon’s Blominvest bank. Information International, a consultancy firm, estimates that more than 55 000 people have relocated to rural areas. UN-Habitat Lebanon said that some mayors and heads of unions of municipalities had also reported an increase in the number of people moving, although it had no data on these claims.

“The lack of rural development plans and the highly centralised nature of Lebanon are expected to ultimately deter a counter-urbanisation in the long run,” said Tala Kammourieh of the agency’s Urban Analysis and Policy Unit.

Another Beirut escapee, graphic designer Hassan Trad, was ploughing a field near the southern village of Kfar Tibnit and said he now steers clear of the “suffocation” of city life.

“My return to the village is an escape from three crises,” the 44 year old said. He pointed to the economic collapse, the pandemic, and the trash crisis that has long left festering piles of garbage strewn across the city.

Trad said schooling for his children cost about half what it is in the city but, more importantly, he can grow an agriculture business to supplement his salary working remotely for a newspaper.

Writer Ibrahim Nehme, 35, who was severely wounded when the Beirut port blast ripped through his home, has sought solace in his family’s village of Bechmizzine. “I am connected here, I am rooted,” he said.