Hama/Syria. Some of the smiles I have never forgotten/Photo taken with permission
This November 2, I celebrate twenty years of living as an expat.
I left Lebanon, my home country, on 2 November 2006, heading first to Amman. From there, my work took me to a dozen cities and countries around the world, many of them in conflict zones and sometimes in extremely dangerous circumstances. I was fortunate enough to work in Syria during the war, Iraq and Mali, but also in Geneva, Cairo, New York and Cyprus, and ultimately back to Jordan.
The last ten years have been relatively stable in terms of duty stations, and have also kept me closest to my home country, Lebanon.
The first ten were a whirlwind, at times overwhelming, crushing and difficult.
So what have I learned from these twenty years, both professionally and personally?
Lesson No. 1: “Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.” Hermann Hesse
I love this quote because it is what I used to tell my eldest son when he was still young and moving with me from one school to another. Moving is difficult, but even more so for those you carry along with you, especially children who are uprooted from their familiar surroundings, schools and friends and taken to a completely alien world. For them, it is difficult to understand why.
So I taught myself that home is within me, within my heart, my mind, my spirit and my memories. It is also in the people I get to meet, whether at work, in a new supermarket, on the street or in a park.
Whenever I had the chance, I spoke to people. Talking to strangers has been one of my favourite things to do since I was a child, because with strangers, you don’t have to prove anything. You simply long for a feeling, a connection or someone to make you laugh.
In all these encounters, I found comfort and a familiar feeling of home.
Home is a feeling, and it is within you. If you believe it, you can feel it. And if you feel it, you’re okay.
Home is not just what you leave behind, but what you keep taking with you along the way: the people you meet, the moments you share, the feelings you experience, all building on one another to create something you carry with you forever, wherever you go next.
Lesson No. 2: Instead of just embracing local culture, export yours
In the UN, one of the first things we do when we arrive at a new duty station is attend training on local customs and habits, what is politically correct and incorrect, and what to watch out for to keep ourselves safe and out of trouble. While this is definitely important, I found that sharing my own culture, without imposing it or challenging local customs, was a wonderful way to bridge gaps and sometimes even defuse tensions, whether at work or on a personal level.
In Jordan, where people traditionally greet each other with two kisses on the cheek, I insisted on the Lebanese way of giving three kisses, so much so that all my friends eventually started doing the same. At the office, some colleagues started greeting me with a bonjour and insisted on learning a few French sentences, while I learned how to eat “mansaf” properly.
By insisting on sharing my own customs and habits, I found myself recreating a little bit of home wherever I went.
Lesson No. 3: Leave your pride and your fear on the shelf
This mostly applied to start-up missions and hardship duty stations.
People tend to think that working for the UN is all about privileges and immunities, and those blue or red United Nations laissez-passer (UNLP) that you see being photographed and abused so much these days. But in reality, in a start-up mission, a senior staff member will have to roll up their sleeves just as much as an intern would.
Don’t be surprised if you’re a director and you’re asked to share a two-metre office with three or four other staff members. Often, we even shared the same desk.
Nowhere will your commitment to the UN be tested more than in a start-up mission.
You will find yourself doing things you never imagined were part of your job: going from floor to floor asking staff to leave their offices and seek immediate shelter, even though you’re not a security officer; doing a headcount every time a bomb goes off; visiting sick colleagues in hospital because there is no one else available to check on them; being sent to a military airport to receive a UN official; learning how to assemble a UN flag and its stand, and position it perfectly in the centre of the television frame when a Special Envoy suddenly decides to hold a live press conference; sending reports to UN Headquarters about whether you can see smoke or hear gunshots from your office; taking decisions that should be taken by an SRSG because they’re temporarily out of contact; or staying locked inside your car while rebels knock on your windows, trying to talk to you.
All this while keeping your head cool.
Lesson No. 4: Do not seek the perfect duty station
Strangely enough, it was in Geneva, a dream duty station for so many, that I felt the need to leave.
Who wouldn’t dream of having their morning cappuccino at the Salon des délégués, with its magnificent painted frescoes, where UN staff rub shoulders with diplomats and delegates? Or taking a lunch break at La Perle du Lac, or skating along Quai Wilson?
And yet, despite everything being seemingly perfect, the work, my wonderful colleagues, my life, something was amiss.
Perfection was simply not for me.
So I left for Syria.
Syria was the toughest and most challenging duty station of my career, not only because of the war but also mentally. Many times, when the bombs were falling around us, we would ask ourselves why we were really there and whether it was worth it.
And yet, Syria gave me the most rewarding year of my career.
In Syria, I recruited local staff who had never worked for the UN or any other NGO and trained them from the ground up. It was in Syria that I took decisions and went out of my way to protect our local colleagues, some of whom I had seen injured right before my eyes. It was in Syria that we had to come up with innovative ways to transport cash under extremely dangerous conditions just to make sure our staff were paid. It was in Syria that I witnessed firsthand how local communities in Aleppo and Hama were living in what felt like ghost cities, and where the smiles of young girls, amid everything surrounding them, broke my heart.
I was confined to working and sleeping in the same place, yet the Syrians I met opened their doors to me wherever I went. My local colleagues became more than family.
It was in Syria that I discovered that the perfect duty station was not a place, but the people who made it.
Lesson No. 5: Take care of your mental health and of others
In Syria, we were under constant shelling, day and night. A friend of mine, who had never been to a conflict zone in her life, was scared stiff when she arrived at the duty station. Every time a shell landed, she would jump out of her seat in fear.
So I taught her what our parents had taught us growing up in Lebanon: how to distinguish between incoming and outgoing fire. At first, she thought I was joking, but eventually she became the expert at telling one from the other, and without even realising it, she stopped paying so much attention to the shelling.
Sometimes, all you can do during difficult times is laugh and crack a joke. And that’s okay. Because cracking a joke when your life is under threat can sometimes help someone else keep their mental world from falling apart.
Taking a disciplined approach to physical activity is also key to protecting your mental health.
In Syria, after working hours, when I moved from my office on the left wing of the third floor of a hotel to my room on the right wing, where we slept, I insisted on practising Ashtanga yoga in whatever tiny space I had left, under the constant noise of incoming and outgoing shells.
It was there that my practice evolved the most in my life, because it finally had a purpose: to re-anchor my thoughts, my feelings and my sense of direction. It gave me purpose.
Whether it was yoga, drawing, cooking or learning a new language, all of us found solace in anchoring ourselves in something during those difficult times.
Lesson No. 6: Embrace change as the catalyst for happiness
One of the things I learned from moving so often was not to fear change, but to welcome it.
Every new duty station meant leaving behind a life I had just managed to build: a home, friends, familiar streets, favourite places and daily routines. And just when everything started to feel comfortable, it was time to pack up and leave again.
Of course, there were moments when I wondered why I kept doing this to myself.
But I also discovered that some of the happiest and most rewarding moments of my life came from finding myself in completely unfamiliar places, surrounded by people I had never met, trying to make sense of a world I knew very little about.
Change was not always easy, and it certainly did not always make me happy. But it pushed me to discover things about myself that I would probably never have discovered had I stayed where I was.
Looking back, I realise that some of the best things that happened to me happened because I was willing to leave something else behind.
Lesson No. 7: Dig deep into the history of the place
One of the things I have always tried to do when arriving at a new duty station is learn about its history, beyond what we read in our UN reports or hear in security briefings.
In Cyprus, I had the opportunity to learn about the work of the Committee on Missing Persons, which has spent decades locating, exhuming and identifying the remains of people who disappeared during the conflict, and returning them to their families.
Visiting its laboratory and seeing the painstaking work being done there gave me a completely different understanding of the island, its history and the wounds that remain open long after a conflict has ended. Cyprus was no longer just a beautiful Mediterranean island with lovely beaches and restaurants.
And then there was Mali.
When I first visited Timbuktu, I was fascinated by its history. A city that many people associate today with isolation, insecurity and conflict was once a great centre of learning, scholarship and trade, home to extraordinary libraries and manuscripts, and part of a rich African intellectual civilisation.
Understanding that history changed the way I looked at the place and its people.
Every country has a history that goes far beyond the crisis that brought the UN there in the first place. And if you don’t take the time to discover it, you risk spending years in a country without ever really understanding where you have been, why you were there in the first place, or the people and the purpose you were meant to serve.
Lesson No. 8: Invest in doing the right thing
Working for the UN means working within a system of rules, regulations, procedures and hierarchies. Some are necessary, others can be frustrating, and some can make even the simplest decision unnecessarily complicated.
Over the years, I learned that following the rules and doing the right thing are not always the same thing.
There were times when doing the right thing meant challenging a decision, questioning an instruction, finding a different way of getting something done or refusing to accept that something was impossible simply because it had never been done before.
I also learned that respect for hierarchy should never be confused with unquestioning obedience. We are there to serve the principles and values of the United Nations, not the personal interests, ambitions or preferences of the individuals who happen to occupy positions of authority.
The UN Charter does not belong to any Secretary-General, Special Representative, director or manager. Nor do the principles it embodies change depending on who happens to be in charge.
Never confuse loyalty to the United Nations and its principles with loyalty to the individuals who happen to run it.
Lesson No. 9: Speak up
Speak up when you hear something wrong being said, when you witness an inappropriate gesture, or when you read a report that deliberately conceals or distorts the truth.
Speak up when you see a contract being awarded to a vendor who has a conflict of interest, when prices are deliberately inflated, when someone receives entitlements they are not eligible for, or when appointments are made without transparency and candidates are earmarked for positions before the recruitment process has even begun.
Do not convince yourself that these things are none of your business, or that someone else will eventually deal with them.
Over the years, I learned that remaining silent does not necessarily protect you. Sometimes, it simply makes it easier for the same things to happen again.
And when you do speak up, document everything. Keep records, put things in writing and protect yourself. Because speaking up is one thing; being able to substantiate what you say is another.
Lesson No. 10: Do not sacrifice yourself and your family for the UN or any other international organisation
One of the most important things I learned over these twenty years is never to confuse who you are with the organisation you work for.
The UN does not define your worth, your abilities or what you are capable of achieving. It is an organisation you choose to join and work for, but it should never become the measure of who you are.
I have often heard people say that the UN took them to places they never imagined they would go. But I see it differently. The UN did not take me anywhere. I made the decisions to go, to take risks, to move from one duty station to another. And while we may not always choose how or when our journey with the UN ends, we certainly get to decide what we do with our lives afterwards.
And while I gave a great deal of myself to the organisation, I also learned that no job, no title and no career is worth sacrificing yourself or your family for.
I have never regretted my experience with the UN. But looking back, I realise that it is not so much what the UN taught me, but what I taught myself during all my years of service with it.
And to those who are struggling today, who feel trapped, disillusioned or afraid of what comes next: do not fear. The best is yet to come.
I don’t regret any of it.
A final personal reflection
Those who know me, or have followed my writing over the years, know that I have been a fierce critic of the United Nations. But there is an important distinction to make.
The truth is, I have always believed in the ideals of the UN and the goals it was created to achieve, because they are noble goals.
I have also always believed that the UN’s greatest strength is its staff, and its greatest weakness is its rigid, anachronistic bureaucracy and the politics that so often stand in the way of its own mandate.
And while I will continue to criticise a United Nations that, as an international body, seems to have lost its backbone, I do not believe the world would be a better place without it.
So invest in its people. They are, after all, its greatest strength.
That is, if there are any left.
