Abir Lattouf grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese civil war, spending most of her childhood living in bomb shelters. After becoming an international business graduate and holding positions at Kraft Foods and Mondelez International, Lattouf moved to Arlington, Massachusetts, in 2016 with her husband and three children. Her family moved to Harvard in 2017, where she began working with Haschig Homes Real Estate Group. Lattouf recounts her experiences growing up in Lebanon during the war and her transition to the United States.
When I was a child, we were always moving from one shelter to another. I went to the neighborhood school, which was a two-minute walking distance from home. My mom was a preschool teacher there. Every time there was a bombing, we either went to the school shelter or my mom would pick us up really fast, and we would go back home. This happened on a weekly basis. Sometimes we spent months without going to school because of the bombing.
Abir Lattouf. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
If it was not wintertime, we would leave Beirut and go to my grandparents’ mountain house in the village because it was safer. It was our haven and a place where we found peace and love from our extended family. This was the best time because you could get disconnected from everything that was happening in the city and the country, living in the mountains and having fun with your cousins and friends. We always had other families over because they were also escaping the war in Beirut, so we lived in a packed house.
I remember the last time we were escaping Beirut, we also had family over at our house. There were around 20 to 25 people there because they saw that this was a safe place to be when there was bombing: It was in a building, it was the ground floor, and it was surrounded by other buildings. However, for some reason, my dad and the other parents decided that we needed to go to the mountain house. We gathered our stuff, and we left in seven or eight cars. Usually it took us less than an hour to get from Beirut to the mountain house, but this time all the roads were blocked, so it took us eight hours to get there. The next day, a bomb came in the room where we had just been staying. If we had stayed there for even 24 hours more, I think everyone would be dead.
The war went on up to when I was 15 or 16. Peace was finally there in the early ’90s. We were able to live a normal life. The country was thriving again, regaining its reputation as the Switzerland of the Middle East. Everyone wanted to ski on our slopes, swim in our sea, party in our clubs, and try our food. Our faith in a better future was restored. Or so we thought.
I was in my second year of college when another type of instability hit the region. People were putting bombs in cars, and random explosions were happening around the country. But this happened when we were adults. In Lebanon, at 18 you can party, you can drink, you can drive. We felt that we were able to do everything. It was some kind of group therapy, to get over the atrocities of war. So, my friends and I used to go to class, and after that we’d go party till dawn. When there was an explosion, we would call our parents, tell them that we were fine, and then go back to the club and continue. We were a bit reckless—I wouldn’t want to be in my parents’ shoes at that time. But I think because we grew up in a war zone, the car bombings were something very minimal to us. I felt like, “OK, I’m done with this. I just want to live my life. I don’t care what’s going to happen.”
When my family decided to come to the U.S., it was a good period in Lebanon. Everything was stable, we had the best of everything, my husband and I had good jobs, and we had three kids. But we thought that something was going to happen soon because when you live in an unstable region, you learn the hard way that things change every 10 to 15 years. One can think of it as a curse: living in a piece of heaven not knowing when the dream will end. We had enough of this instability, so we thought, “Maybe it’s time.”
At first, I was very hesitant because we didn’t know anyone in the U.S. No one at home was supportive either. Everyone was saying to us, “Where are you going? You have a great life here! How are you going to make it there?” But then I was like, “What’s the worst thing that was going to happen?” We were going to go on this adventure. If things didn’t go well, we could always come back.
We came here and we rented an apartment in Arlington. It was in January. The snow was knee-high. I had been working a full-time job in Lebanon, but when I came here, I stayed home. It was a very, very tough period for me. All my life I had been working, so it was the first time that I was a stay-at-home mom.
When you come from what people call a third-world country and you’re going to the U.S., it’s terrifying. What if I don’t fit in? What if they always look at me as an immigrant? I speak English, but I don’t have an American accent. They will always know that I don’t belong. Maybe I won’t be able to find a job. Maybe my kids will be bullied because of their skin color. Every time my kids got home, I asked them tons of questions. “How did you feel? Did anyone talk to you? What did they say? How did the teachers treat you?” I was really, really worried about them.
After six months, I said to my husband, “I can’t do it anymore. I need to go back.” I took the three kids and flew back to Lebanon on an 11-hour flight alone. It was the summer, so my husband was not able to fly with me because of work. Once I got there, it took me one or two weeks to realize that I was leaving a big opportunity behind. Lebanon is always going to be my country. And I make sure that I transfer the culture to my kids. We always speak Arabic and French at home. My kids love going to Lebanon twice a year and seeing their grandparents and cousins. But this was not where I wanted to be, at least in terms of day-to-day life. I needed to go back to the United States. So we came back after four weeks, and everything started from zero again. I made up my mind. This is where I want to be. I need to have a life here.
The main fear I had was that my family would not be accepted in the community. This did not happen. It was super welcoming, especially when we moved to Harvard. It was literally like in the movies: We would go out and come back and find cookies and cupcakes at the front door with letters from the neighbors welcoming us. Even to this day—and we’re very involved in the community—we’ve never felt that we’re different, that we’re not welcomed, or that my kids were not included in something. On the contrary, at school they have a great experience. We became really good friends with so many families. And we were never in conflict with anyone since the first day we moved here.
When you’re raised in a war zone, not everything is necessarily a bad memory because you learn to appreciate what others consider a given. I have good memories of my childhood thanks to my brave parents. But the anxiety stays with you until you grow up, and you’re always living in this uncertainty. Especially when you have a family; you don’t want your family and kids to go through what you went through. So we don’t take things in the U.S. for granted. We really appreciate what this country has offered us and especially the opportunity to raise our kids the way we really want. I don’t know if it’s only our experience, but people here are more united by things that really matter. They don’t care where you come from because honestly, everyone in the U.S. came from somewhere.
Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of interviews with Harvard residents conducted by Bromfield senior Olivia Ren in fulfillment of the school’s community service requirement. The text has been edited for clarity and length.
About Harvard Voices
Although Harvard is a pre-dominantly white and middle-class community, we still have so many different types of people here with diverse identities, backgrounds, experiences, and more. My hope is that my project will amplify the voices of the residents of our town who are less heard or have intriguing stories to tell. The series will interview a diverse array of people—perhaps an immigrant, a small-business owner, or even a neighbor from across the street. By publishing their stories I hope to dispel stereotypes, build unity, and demonstrate that everyone, from neighbors to complete strangers, has an interesting story to tell. No matter who it is, each resident here has something to contribute to the community, and we all have something we can learn from them.
—Olivia Ren
