My husband is in West Beirut...

The physical distance between my hubby and I is hard enough to take, I have not seen him since January 2nd of this year, but now I am also worrying about his safety.

I keep reminding myself that aged, 30, and having spent 28 years living in Beirut, and surviving it all, that he obviously knows how to carry himself. I mean I trusted it enough to land in Beirut 3 times in 2007. To visit Beirut and surroundings when some Lebanese I know in Montreal wouldn't even set foot in Lebanon last summer.

I told people if my karma was to die, it wouldn't matter if I was in Beirut or Montreal. I was correct, the closest to danger I was in was early June, when my husband took me near the waterfront in Beirut at the exact location where an explosion would be 2 days later killing and injuring several people. I'm thinking that was June 13th, 2007. We were in Cyprus by then. I was unphased, my reaction being "Can I see the damage when we get back to Beirut"?

Hopefully things have really calmed down where my husband is. Generally when you are chatting your loved one you don't want to hear "Hold on sweetie, I'm moving to the other room where there is less chance to get hit by a stray bullet"

It's so foreign to my mind that people would just go out in the streets with guns. And yet gangs have guns here too. Thankfully I live in a nice suburb where gang violence is rarely an issue. Thankfully as well, Montreal isn't known for it's murders. On average we get 50 murders a year. About 1 a week. For the size of the city, it's reasonably safe. Also worth mentioning that of those 50 murders, a certain percentage is family violence [generally hubby kills wife, but other combos seen too] or gang settling of accounts. Being the random person getting killed is rare. I think our rate of pedestrians being hit by cars and killed is probably just as high as our murder rate.. :P
Of course you have a better chance of getting your car stolen or broken into :P

Anyways I knew it wasn't easy to marry a Lebanese national, the long process before he's given a Visa, but I didnt' expect the last mile to be this hard... I know it's more a matter of weeks before he gets a VISA, then months.. but it just makes my resolve harder. I never thought I'd be able to handle a long distance relationship, but I guess it really depends with who you are in a relationship. I love my husband more every day. The distance so far has not killed things between us. I can't wait to hold him again. I dream often of the day I will finally be able to pick him up at Pierre Trudeau Airport [and in my mind it's forever going to be Dorval Airport].

The past 4 days have been really stressful. Especially Friday morning. He wasn't online, there was no reassuring email in my mailbox and he didn't reply my text message. I knew it was entirely possible that there was no electricity, or no internet, or cell service so jammed that messages weren't getting through. I got to work I was a bunch of nerves, and finally I checked my cell phone again, and there was message, he was asleep when I SMS'ed him. Everything was ok.

Of course while the internet connection to Beirut has been flaky at best, and MSN messager has also been flaky at best, it's been far worst since the sectarian violence in Beirut. Because of course, everyone, their mother, and their friend in a hijab has been contacting friends and family to tell them they are ok. So the traffic makes it worse. It makes it almost impossible to chat. There is no flow. Convo just dies. Makes it hard to connect emotionally, and it is that connection that keeps Samer and I close, and has for years before we were lovers. Without that connection I feel this incredible yearning and longing and well... makes me grumpy and miserable.

I keep praying things will calm down and he will be able to visit the friends he wants to visit before leaving for Canada. Spending all his time in Beirut a virtual prisoner of his home is probably not what he had in mind when he returned to Beirut.