Click the link below to read the Interview of the WLCU World Secretary General Dr. Nick Kahwaji posted in Albalad Newspaper on 16 December 2011
Original Interview in Arabic
As well as, you can read the English Translation here below:
(By Supreme Education Services)
Nick Kahwaji
Longing for my home country is killing me…. And also revives me.
The longing for his home country is refreshing him and at the same time is making him to suffer.
He is drinking in a dose of both resistance and hope. The resistance from those days made him a geographic refugee but without planting any roots of belonging in his soul.
The dream of going back is playing in Nick Kahwaji’s mind. The dentist has sacrificed perfection in his profession in order to start the social movement on wide world scale to become a Secretary General of WLCU. (World Lebanese Cultural Union).
It took only a small step of going back to plant the essence of his “ABRA” soil deep into his soul.
From his idol poet Gibran steps he made it his daily dream to follow and from his anger against the war, which destroyed his home, church and village he developed the strength to go back to his first crib which comforted him when he was a baby and welcomed him as a doctor.
The war didn’t allow him to stay there, he had to leave. But the word return was the only word in his dictionary.
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Q&A
Q: What is your daily motto?
A: Work, family and hope.
Q: Are you at peace with being an expatriate?
A: It’s a daily struggle.
Q: Do you fear time?
A: I wish that day had 30 hours; 24 are not enough.
Q: Is homesick your friend or enemy?
A: Homesick is my friend, because it connects me with Lebanon, but at the same time it’s my enemy, because longing for my home country is killing me.
Q: Do you look at being an expatriate through sweet or bitter lens?
A: Tears and smiles.
Q: What is your most favorite Gibran’s body of work?
A: It’s THE PROPHET, specifically the chapter of Gibran’s return to Orphalese.
Q: What is your favorite village?
A: Abra.
Q: What do you see in the expatriate’s mirror?
A: It could be waste, loss and the end of culture and even history.
Q: If you look into your soul in the mirror what is the question you ask yourself? What is your answer?
A: The question is: Why didn’t you go back to Lebanon yet? The answer is: I’ll go back one day; just as Mikhail Naimy and Gibran did.
Q: Who is Nick Kahwaji? And what was the turning point in your life you would like to talk about?
A: I am a refugee from South Lebanon. War enforced me to leave and come to Canada. I am breathing a daily dose of oxygen with the hope of return to my homeland. I am a dentist; I’ve been in this profession for 30 years. Also I am Secretary General of WLCU. My life altering moment was when I was forced to leave Lebanon in 1967 for Belgium where I continued my studies and then returned to Lebanon in 1983 before I left for good in 1989 for Canada with my then pregnant wife.
Q: When you touched down at the Beirut airport what was the first emotion you felt?
A: When my feet touched the Beirut ground I felt like I have found my soul again. It’s true; the happiness is surrounding me every time I visit Lebanon, but the sadness run through me each of the 17 times I would have to leave.
Every time I come close to Lebanon the memories overtake me.
Q: Today you are the Secretary General of WLCU, what is next in store for you?
A: I have lots of faith in our strength and teamwork to stop the bleeding of human refugees leaving Lebanon. We worked very hard to register WLCU in UN and continuously work to enter the education factor into the WLCU agenda and get more support. Today the University becomes world organization that UN recognizes as the authorized agent.
Q: You lived part of your live through the Lebanese war; what is left in your memory of those days?
A: The oppression rooted in my heart has insured me that war made me lose a big part of my life that could have been lived in a different way. That war made me lose my friends, my youth and destroyed my village and my church. With all these pains and sorrows inside me on daily bases, I’m seriously thinking to return permanently to Lebanon.
Q: Between your profession as dentist and your social life so apart, how do you deal with the compatibility between the two?
A: I invest 6 days of the week working as a dentist and trying to overthrow the routine imposed by my profession to work for the WLCU on the seventh day.
Q: You have a good deed in the Lebanese general public; what made you to decide to take the work in that field? And how do you apply that to the emigrant level?
A: It’s said:”You can’t tell the magnitude of the tragedy till you lived it”. The Augusts’ war had left scars in my memory and in the memories of all Lebanese, for that we combine our efforts and work on a global campaign to rebuild “AIN ABEL Hospital” in south Lebanon, given the importance of it to the people who live there.
Q: “TURATH LEBNANI” magazine was made possible through your efforts; when being read by expatriates do you think they can sense the soil of their village in it?
A: As a matter of fact the magazine is ten years old; if you go back and read the previous articles you feel as if it was published today. The purpose of this magazine is to connect the Lebanese’s immigrants with their homeland. Every time I visited Lebanon I felt that we have to work harder to connect Lebanese immigrants with their homeland and instill the identity of Lebanon before it could be lost forever.
Q: “I will reborn with each new day” a quote from Gibran; Do you believe in it? And do you indentify with it as an expatriate?
A: I feel I am reborn every day when I’m in Lebanon and every time we open new branch of WLCU around the world. As the homeland is emitted in the hearts of people who do not know their origins the soul is reborn.
Q: Was the birth of Lebanon abroad natural or Cesarean?
A: Natural, but it needed a lot of care, because it has faced too many challenges. The most important challenge we have faced was to remove the fear in the hearts of expatriates and changing the picture reflecting the political and security situation in their minds.
Q: Wings are no longer broken in Vancouver where Gibran’s statute is installed and it’s not broken in Caracas either. What does that mean?
A: It means that each and every one of us has wings to soar and endorse his home country’s culture.
Q&A: What do you say to:
- Lebanon? - I love you
- GOD? - I believe in you
- Canada? - I love you as well
- All dentists in Lebanon? - I am one of you
- Nick Kahwaji? - Take better care of your family
Q&A: To whom you would say:
- You are my favorite history character? kamil Chamoun
- I do not forget you? My Grandfather
- You are my favorite author? Gibran Khalil Gibran
- I apologize to you? My wife, because I do not give her enough time
- I owe you? My village and my country