My Body Held Onto My Trauma. EMDR Helped Me Let Go.

The Lebanese Civil War ended when I was a kid, but the pain lasted far longer

This mosaic in the Eshmun Azar Temple, locationed in the southern Lebanon port of Sidon, was restored after sustaining damage during the Lebanese civil war. Photo: MAHMOUD ZAYYAT / Contributor via Getty Images

I can still vividly recall the look on my high school history teacher’s face when I raised my hand and asked why the Lebanese history books stopped at 1975. It was 1992 and my mind could not fill the gap with the obvious: No one wanted to talk about the Lebanese Civil War.

I was born at the end of the war and by the time I turned five, it was over. Business was booming with reconstruction projects. The Lebanese joie de vivre was back in full swing. I spent the years of my youth dancing on the Beirut rooftops of the same buildings where militia snipers had nested; eating in restaurants with intact, bullet-filled walls that acted as mere architectural statements; and kissing boys in movie theaters that used to be our neighborhood’s shelters of choice. But still no one spoke of the war. It was as if not mentioning it would erase it from our memories.

A flavor of reality hit once I graduated from college. The good jobs were out there in the Persian Gulf and furthering my education meant moving to the United States. So following the Israeli War on Lebanon in 2006, I packed my bags and moved first to Dubai, then to the United States, to join an ever-increasing Lebanese diaspora. I was…