Home, ideally, is where an individual or a group belongs ‘territorially, existentially, and culturally’ (Hedetoft and Mette 2002: vii). Although not the only criterion, nationalism shapes many people's sense of identity and belonging (viii). A sense of ‘homeness’ is a major determinant of identity, that ‘elusive but still real psycho-sociological state of being in sync with oneself under given external conditions’; affectively defined, these two scholars argue, ‘home is where we feel we really belong’ (vii, emphasis in original). When the feeling of harmony between self and place is non-existent because of a mismatch between one's cultural, ethnic, political and/or civic affiliations, belonging, as they explain, splits into ‘being’ in one place and ‘longing’ for another (vii). Thus, ‘be-longing’ becomes a ‘longing-to-be … at home’ (viii), a longing that creates a rift not only between the self and its true home but also within the self, as long as the home for which one yearns is gone, unreal or out of reach.

As I have shown, home in Lebanon, or Lebanon as home, was for many characters simply gone, along with pre-war childhood haunts of which only memories remained, unreal when it was narrowly defined in ideological terms, or out of reach due to deeply entrenched traumas dating from the war. Yet, many tried to recapture it by various means. Embittered by absent or domineering fathers, some male protagonists sought to develop their personal identities away from patriarchal authority, partly associated with their fatherland. To do so, they searched for – and with varying degrees of success found abroad – alternative figures, such as friends, lovers and mentors, who allowed them to establish new networks for self-identification.