Almost a Canadian

I am an Immigrant. I left Lebanon, the country I called home for most of my life, and headed for what I believed to be a better world.

After a long processes involving the slow and inefficient Canadian bureaucratic system, I finally arrived to Canada on the 14th of June 2008 as a sponsored spouse of a Quebecor-Canadian citizen.. Three years to date. Which means that now I am entitled to go through yet another slow and inefficient bureaucratic experience to change my status from "Permanent Resident" to "Official citizen". How that will change my identity is something yet to be seen.

I have waited for this day for as long as I remember. My Dream to come and live in Canada began when I first got introduced to Canadians. They traveled 10,000 KM so that they may teach use such topics as history, math, science, literature and other school topics, at the American styled high school that I attended. Needless to say, I fell in love with them for they where different from my Lebanese teachers in that they were more open minded, inspirational and knew about dyslexia and how to treat one who is as learning disabled as me. I fell in love with their way of life, their mentality, their tolerance for other views, and especially their open mindedness. I heard many stories of Canada and the geography and abundance of nature. More than anything I learned of the cooler weather and yearned for it, for Lebanon, although it experiences all four seasons, is a rather hot country by comparison... not as hot as say the UAE, but hot still... and humid.

The other reason why I wanted to leave my home and live in Canada was because I had had enough of the dire political, economic, and social conditions of Lebanon. The Lebanese, though they are very well educated, seemed to be very close minded to me and I had a hard time relating to people let alone striking interesting conversations that stimulated my mind. Lebanon was also a place of limited recourses and with corruption as rampant as it was and still is today, I knew that my career options where limited. So I dreamed of living in Canada.

Skipping far too many details, I finally ended up where I wanted to be. Canada. The land of my dreams. Only it is one thing to dream of an ideal place and a totally different thing to live in it.

I was ecstatic for the first few month before reality began to kick in. My wife did her best to educate me on the Canadian way of life, and I must give her credit for doing such a great job, but this did not stop me, a rather very westernised and open minded Arab of a strangely mixed background, from experiencing culture shock. Having lived in Lebanon most of my life, as open minded and progressive as I was, I developed habits, norms, and ways of doing things that are purely Lebanese. We all are the sum of the environment we grew up in. So yes. I experienced culture shock and suddenly things that looked wonderful, like universal health care, public transportation, subsidised education and so on, began to lose their lustre as I experienced them first hand.

For instance, I am a strong advocate of universal healthcare, and I believe that human is entitled to free healthcare and that it is the duty of the elected government to provide proper services to its constituents. I was however disappointed to realise that there are where not enough doctors and that waiting times where horrendous and that the health care system was just as inefficient as the bureaucratic system. The other thing that struck me as odd is that I found less people in Canada that I could hold a decent discussion with. People, though legally literate, knew very little. I was seriously disappointed with the level of education people had. This is not the Canada I learned about. I learned about a Canada that was big on education and understanding other peoples and cultures. What I witnessed in reality is far too much apathy, laziness, carelessness and lack of interest in anything other than being selfish. People are like that every where though, so I should not be as disappointed as I was and I know that due to the vastness of Canada, I have yet to discover what I know for certain to exists.

However, what I have discussed so far in terms of my culture shock is not very significant or so disappointing that I would dislike Canada. On the contrary, the services being offered and the freedoms I am entitled to where a stark difference from Lebanon and certainly better. If I complain it is not because I am not impressed, it is because I know there yet much room for improvement.

The greatest real and hard felt culture shock I did experience, however, was not the coldness of the weather, but the coldness of the people. In Lebanon everyone is touchy feely, men hug and kiss men, women hug and kiss women, men hug and kiss women. We are a warm, passionate, and hospitable people, and like most Mediterraneans we are hot headed, outspoken, and argumentative. Certainly I could live without the argumentative and hotheadedness but being a passionate and emotional person who lived in a passionate and emotional environment I miss hugging people. I miss kissing people. I miss being cozy and friendly with anyone and everyone. This I believe was the most disconcerting of my Canadian experiences. That and the post traumatic stress I experienced.

Having been born and raised in war time Beirut, I grew up not knowing how affected I was by those atrocious events. Until I came to came to live in Canada, a country that has not experienced war, state torture, lack of security, electricity rationing, water rationing, and total disregard for humanity in recent history, with Native oppression and the FLQ crisis being the exception but not the daily norm and insecurity of Lebanon, I had no idea what living a life of peace was like. In fact there was so much peacefulness that I, who has lived a stressful life not knowing if a bomb was going to go off and kill me, my friends and loved ones at any instance, felt totally out of sorts now that the source of stress that I had grown up with had been lifted. The stresses of daily life here in Canada where docile in comparison to what I experienced in Lebanon. So for my first two years I experienced a hell of time with my post traumatic stress. But like everything else in this world, it eventually passed and now I am comfortably living at peace with myself and my past.

From my geography classes, I once learned that Canada was the second biggest country in the world after Russia. I did not however, comprehend the vastness until I came to live here. You see, one thing we Lebanese pride ourselves for is that fact that we can swim in the sea in the morning and be up on the key slopes by afternoon. Lebanon is a very small country, not bigger than 10,500 sq KM (actually slightly less too) about the size of Cape Breton, which is a part Nova Scotia, one of Canada's smaller Atlantic provinces (and one of the more beautiful places my wife took me too in Canada). The distances where so overwhelming, to visit a friend on the other side of the country would take several days by car where as one can do the tour of all Lebanon in an exaggerated day. That is something that my mind is still trying to grapple with. But that too shall pass.

But am I really disappointed with Canada? not really. I expected my dreamy rendition to eventually harmonise with reality and to be honest, Canada, in spite of the coldness and aloofness of people is still a much better place to live in than Lebanon, given the constant political and economic upheavals there. so yes. I can say that I am happy living here even if I am not living the way I would like just yet and in spite of the culture shock and the post traumatic stress ordeal I went though.

The truth is ever since I came to Canada, there are days where I feel like I am re-born. I feel like an infant all over again, a toddler, barely able to mutter words let alone sentences. Everything is too big... everything is too loud... everything is impressive at first glance but later... everything feels the same. I feel like I am re-born as an infant... except that my body is still my current age, 33 (though I feel more like 66) and my mind has all the memories and experiences of a 33 year old (though some will say that because of what I have been through my mind is more that of a 50 year old but thats another story all together)

I find myself learning everything anew... speech... mannerism... motor skills... it is as if 33 years have been erased and now I am reliving all of those missing years all over again but with the awareness of an adult...

I feel like I exists out of time, though I feel its passage, ebbs and flows...

I feel the severity of the change that is taking place right before my eyes...

the passage of time that keeps mixing up my memories of the future with the past muxed and interlaced in spiral formation with the present... never beginning.. never ending... there is no point of reference whether I am at some middle or any discernable spatial or chronologic point in this multidimensional form of existence...

my memories have become irrelevant... my experiences have become obsolete... and all my personality traits have become outdated...

I am both old and young.... I am an infant and I am a geriatric and everything in-between....

I feel like a neutron star, collecting star stuff and, with the precision of time, bursting that stuff of life out in to the vastness of the universe....

I feel like a black hole... a remnant of a supernova...a collapsed star.... a quantum singularity from which not even light can escape...

I feel like I jumped so high that I reached escape velocity and am now hanging in 0G waiting anxiously to fall back to earth like a meteor... a shooting star... will I burn up in the atmosphere and disintegrate? Or will I land with such high and devastating nuclear holocaust impact? or will I land as I have done in the past when confronted with such a dilemma; softly and with a grace enviable of mighty monarchs....

Witness the awesome glory of the ancient rising dragon as he falls out of the rebirth of the spiral of time and takes on the mantel of becoming Canadian.

Anyway, back on earth, I sit at the porch and contemplate what it means to me to become a Canadian. It means that now I belong to a country that respects my existence and my rights as a human being. It means that I now will carry a passport that will allow me to travel almost anywhere in the world without being discriminated against or treated like trash an insignificant and eyed with the general suspicion. I am someone who believes in my inalienable human rights, and to be honest, I find this hole notion of visa's, border control and what not to be an infringement on our rights, but that is another story in itself and I might eventually blog about it.

Becoming Canadian also means that I can now finally relax with the knowledge that I belong somewhere where I can live in peace and harmony with nature, and where I have the opportunity to be what I want to be without the restrictions of the socio-economic conditions of Lebanon.

Becoming Canadian means I no longer have to worry about being affiliated with a Lebanese political leader (or any of his minions) to get ahead in life. In Lebanon, one has to really on the favour of one of the many political leaders to get ahead in anything including, but not restricted to getting a decent job.

Becoming Canadian means that I can now full heartedly call this beautiful country HOME.

I can't say that my life in Canada is perfect. I originally intoned to come here and make it big as a film maker. I think my greatest disappointment is that I had to give up on that dream, not because I am not a good filmmaker, but simply because I do not have a network of friends in the field. My experience is vast but I have absolutely no experience as a Canadian filmmaker. I know I should struggle to achieve my dreams but I am tiered and exhausted from all the struggling I did back in Lebanon. And I am getting too old and spent to take on such an endeavour. What I need now is peace, quite, and solace... and without a doubt I need more loving friends. So yes i have given up on my filmmaking dream but the truth of the matter is that filmmaking not my original dream. The idea to become a filmmaker developed from a much simpler idea. My original dream was to write fiction novels, dyslexic as I am, and this is the dream that I have begun to rediscover by coming here to Canada and this is what i will attempt to struggle for, though i am going through writers block at the moment and instead of working on my half finished novel you find me here blogging.

I am looking forward to the day when I can call myself Canadian. I already am in some ways, but what i mean is to officially have the right to call myself as such.

Sigh... time to go and brush up on my Canadian history for the citizenship exam.

Soon. Soon I will be a free Canadian.