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Summer is not merely one of the seasons of the year, nor is it a passing stop between a departing spring and a waiting winter. Summer is the season when souls make peace with time, when hearts reunite after a long absence, and when one longing meets another: a person’s longing for their loved ones, places’ longing for their visitors, and a traveler’s longing for the endless road.
Perhaps this is why travel was never, for me, a decision I made at a certain stage of life, but rather a destiny I was born with.
I was born in a home whose walls seemed like a map of the world. Pictures of family members and relatives filled every corner, spread across North and South America. My paternal grandparents’ families had been taken by life to distant cities. Some settled in São Paulo, Brazil, while others made their homes in Texas, USA. Between those pictures, stories traveled like birds moving between seasons: stories of journeys, letters filled with anticipation, the longing for reunions, and news that crossed oceans before reaching doorsteps.
The letters arrived carrying the scent of a life lived far from home, and the distant names felt closer to me than the cities I had yet to leave. I listened to the adults talk about ships, planes, and ports, feeling that the world began at our own doorstep, and that distances were nothing more than threads connecting hearts.
And then came summer!...
That season I awaited like children await the morning of Eid. The doors of the house would open wide, and the home would fill with relatives returning from across the seas, carrying small gifts in their suitcases and entire worlds in their eyes. They arrived with accents blending Arabic with languages from across the earth, and with stories of cities I knew only by name. Those cities became part of my imagination long before they became part of my journeys.
There, in that house, a child named Travel was born!
That child never left me. He grew as I grew, whispering to me whenever he saw a map or heard the name of a new city. He always told me that the world was too vast to be read in a book, and that the most beautiful stories are the ones we experience with our own feet.
When I grew older, that child took me by the hand to the city of fog, London. There, I studied, lived, and learned that cities are not merely buildings and streets, but living beings with their own memories, souls, and heartbeat. From London, my true journey began, not simply as a city where I lived, but as a gateway through which I entered the world. It was there that I became one of the youngest Arab editors to dedicate his pen to writing about travel and journeys, and to searching for the stories hidden behind maps.
Since then, travel has no longer been a hobby or a profession, but a way of life. It has become part of the rhythm of my days and of the way I see the world and the people in it.
How many cities have found a place in my heart... and how I wish I had found a place in theirs too!
In every city I visited, I thought I was the one leaving, only to discover that it was the city leaving with me. I left behind a part of myself: a smile shared in a café, a passing conversation with a stranger, or a quiet moment by the sea, a mountain, or an old street. In return, every city left a part of itself in my heart, until my soul became filled with many cities, each carrying its own heartbeat, scent, and memories.
With this file prepared with the loving efforts of my colleagues at Annahar newspaper, I invite you to make every page a destination, every image a window, and every story the beginning of a new journey. Between its two covers, scented with the fragrance of the East, you will travel through a collection of our beloved Arab countries, where the heritage of each place blends with the generosity of its people, where every city has its own heartbeat, every sea its own song, and every alley its own story waiting for someone to listen.
Wishing Lebanon and our Arab countries well every summer... and wishing every summer brings a world that is more peaceful, more humane, and more capable of bringing hearts together, just as travel always does.
Discover more about the summer dossier and related stories: