The Faraway Witness!
by: Eli Atmé
United Australian Lebanese Movement (UALM)
April 19, 2005 - Brisbane, Queensland

It is still easy to recall clearly the joy of sitting alone beside a tree, in exile now, and far away, silently listening to the sounds of wind. Waiting patiently, I anticipated and watched the movements of a flock of birds flying eastwards, eagerly wanting it to carry my message to the land of Cedars, where I use to watch my grandfather plowing his fields and the animals are grazing on the gentle slopes of my village. The natural ravine streaming down the spring water to the valley floor...I have yet to find a land so full of warmth and as rich in beauty as my hometown.

Year after year, thousands of Lebanese exiles follow the rise and fall of domestic Lebanon civil resistance and wonder when it will all end. For some, exile has been a personal liberation, freeing them from the trauma and limitations of tyranny. For others, exile has been a kind of incarceration. No matter where Lebanese exiles go they cannot escape their own homesickness. They meet at conferences or dinners; they exchange some words in their Lebanese dialect and laugh at their shared secrets–their native mother tongues and the unspoken sadness of exile.

As the struggle against the Syrian occupation drags on, the Lebanese Diaspora has grown, scattering political exiles from Europe to the United States, to a far down under land called Australia, from the hills of South Lebanon to the hills of California, from the mountains of Mount Lebanon to the mountains of Canada. Altogether these hundreds perhaps thousands in political exile, a community made up of students, guerrillas, and liberation bureaucrats. Some are private individuals who just couldn’t tolerate the Syrian siphoning away their profit anymore.

Many political exiles have grown old and gray; some are now getting ready to go home and some now they just realized they have to wait some more, the story is repeated all across the globe. Some of us have chosen paths away. Others have had these paths thrust upon them. Exiles deny the legitimacy of the status quo. As a result, we have found ourselves, in some way or other, dispossessed. Our consciences uphold us, and our questions identify us.

Exiles seek a way back in, with convictions intact. We seek to improve not only our world, but everyone's, in whatever arenas our consciences dictate; FREEDOM, SOVEREINGHTY & INDEPENDENCE and above all a human justice to guarantee the minimum rights for our people.

Free Lebanon…Lebanon is Freedom.

* President for the United Australian Lebanese Movement (UALM) Qld. Branch
* Political Commentator

* University Lecturer