When I came to the United States in 1972, I did not arrive as an empty person waiting for America to give me an identity. 

I brought Lebanon with me. 

It was present in the languages I spoke, the food I missed, the prayers my mother taught me, and the way my father understood work. It was in the church bells of Kabelias, the orchards of Anjar, the streets of Beirut, and the long truck rides beside my father. It was also in the names and faces of relatives I had left behind. 

Some things fit inside my suitcase. Most did not. 

At twenty-one, my attention was not on explaining my cultural identity. I needed to find work, understand my surroundings, and learn how to manage daily life in Michigan. I had already studied English in Beirut, but speaking it all day with Americans required another kind of education. 

I listened carefully. I asked questions. I made mistakes. 

There were foods I had never seen, expressions I did not understand, and systems that seemed ordinary to everyone except me. Even shopping could become an experience when the shelves offered more versions of one product than I knew existed. 

Can you imagine coming from Lebanon and standing in an American grocery aisle trying to understand why one kind of cereal needed so many boxes? 

Over time, unfamiliar things became familiar. I worked. I bought a car. I met people. I learned the roads and stopped needing written directions for every trip. 

Then I met Nadine. 

Through her, I became part of another family with its own Serbian background, habits, celebrations, and foods. Our marriage did not require either of us to remove the families that had formed us. We carried those families forward and made room for something new. 

The same was true of becoming American. 

I did not have to stop loving Lebanon in order to love the United States. 

Lebanon was where I learned that family members contributed because they belonged to one another. My father worked long hours and spent time away from home because the household depended on him. My mother managed what he brought home and held the family together through faith, worry, discipline, and humor. 

My grandparents taught me through work that did not come with applause. In Anjar, I operated the fanning mill and learned that rushing spoiled the grain. I worked in orchards, helped collect eggs, and watched adults turn whatever the land provided into food, income, and something to share. 

Those lessons did not disappear when I crossed the Atlantic. 

They followed me onto construction sites, into pizza shops, through airline shifts, and eventually into management and business ownership. America gave me more places to use what Lebanon had already begun teaching me. 

That is how I have come to understand the relationship between the two countries. 

Lebanon formed me. 

America gave me room to continue. 

My pride in the United States became deeper after I became a citizen. At first, my concerns were practical: work, marriage, rent, transportation, and building a secure home. Later, I understood that citizenship involved more than living inside the borders of a country. 

I came to value the right to vote. I had seen what political instability and civil conflict could do to ordinary families. I knew that peace was not something people should assume would always be there. 

I also came to appreciate the systems people sometimes complain about without considering what life would be like without them. Taxes were never pleasant, but I understood that programs such as Social Security and Medicare gave people a measure of dignity and security later in life. 

Having seen other parts of the world, I did not consider those things burdens alone. I saw the privilege inside the responsibility. 

Still, Lebanon remained close. 

News from home could change an ordinary day in America. The civil war was not a distant headline to us. My parents and siblings were there. Within nine months, my brothers Sam and George were killed. 

That kind of loss does not respect geography. 

I was living in America, building a future with Nadine, while part of my family’s world was being destroyed overseas. There were days when I belonged completely to the life in front of me and still felt pulled toward people I could not protect. 

Perhaps that is what it means to live between two countries. 

One gives you the beginning. 

The other gives you the next chance. 

Neither becomes unimportant because the other exists. 

When Michael and Teddy were growing up, I wanted them to understand that their father had not appeared in America at twenty-one without a past. There were grandparents, villages, sacrifices, and family losses behind the house and opportunities they knew. 

At the same time, I wanted them to appreciate the country where they were born and the responsibilities that came with the freedoms they inherited. 

That was one reason I began writing. 

I did not want Lebanon to become only a place they heard mentioned during family meals. I also did not want America to become something they accepted without understanding what it had allowed our family to build. 

People sometimes ask where home is. 

Truth be told, my answer has changed with the years. 

Home has been a village in the Bekaa Valley, an apartment in Beirut, my brother’s house in Michigan, a room I rented after sleeping in my Mustang, the homes Nadine and I built, and the places where our sons eventually established themselves. 

But belonging is not only an address. 

It is knowing what you carry and knowing what you have chosen. 

I carried Lebanon with me. 

I chose America fully. 

One did not replace the other.