Playing Tennis in Beirut: Sisterhood and Transnational Aches

ABSTRACT Drawing on sibling literature and theory, this essay spotlights the aches of being a Lebanese expat, missing playing tennis with my sister in Beirut, and (literally) falling to a sports injury in England in the immediate aftermath of the August 4 2020 explosion. As the narrative unravels the ways in which such transnational aches overlap, I explore the phantom geographies of how Lebanese living outside Lebanon continue to live within Lebanon, enduring certain syncopated pains and processes. In doing so, I show how the repercussions of recent events—including the nuclear-level blast set within a pandemic—ripple through the lives expats live as exiles, missing loved ones. I also write about tennis, a sport that is not traditionally ‘owned’ by immigrants, yet is currently being negotiated by them on professional circuits; and about doing so in Beirut, in a country in which progress, personal growth and national development, are inherently foreign, frequently thwarted. In this manner, this is an article about both playing tennis in Beirut, and playing tennis with Beirut—engaging in a perpetual back and forth tension of loss and departure, but also, charge and pursuit.