For two Lebanese Brazilians, belonging spans countries and generations

For Naima Yazbek and Natalie Nassif, moving from Brazil to Lebanon brought family history into daily life. Their experiences, reported by Al Jazeera, trace how belonging can shift with language, citizenship and the people around them.

Yazbek moved to Lebanon in 2009, initially intending to stay for two months. She was seriously injured in the Beirut port explosion in 2020, left the country and returned about a year later. Nassif first visited in 2005 and moved there in 2013. After the explosion, she spent three years in Brazil before returning with her husband.

Neither woman’s connection to Lebanon settled questions of identity. Yazbek does not hold Lebanese citizenship; the country’s nationality law generally allows fathers, but not mothers, to pass citizenship to children on equal terms. Historian Diogo Bercito describes “return” as an emotional and genealogical bond that can coexist with feeling like an outsider.

Their ties also run in both directions. Nassif teaches Portuguese in Beirut to children with Brazilian roots, while wishing her own Arabic were stronger. She says she feels connected to both cultures, missing Lebanon when in Brazil and Brazil when in Lebanon.

The scale of these connections is difficult to measure. Brazil’s foreign ministry estimates that up to 10 million people of Lebanese descent live in Brazil, while about 20,000 Brazilian citizens live in Lebanon; the latter figure does not specify how many have Lebanese ancestry. Lebanon has not held a population census since 1932.

When Al Jazeera reported from Beirut in August 2026, Nassif was living amid continued Israeli strikes, with Israeli forces remaining in parts of southern Lebanon despite a US-brokered agreement two months earlier. For her, returning also meant reconnecting with the streets and people her grandmother had described.