Yass is a Lebanese man from Senegal. At the beginning of his forties, he tells his history with a sense of humor; this one-man-show presented in Paris is entitled “My name is Yass and I come from far away”. Yass is a second-generation-African immigrant (his mother was born in Senegal just like him). Yass lived in Senegal and in the Ivory Coast; he almost never knew Lebanon: he just had an idea about it through his very oriental mother.

As for his father, who was born in the South of Lebanon, he introduced him to the Lebanese culture through the songs of Oum Kalsoum. Yass says that “the Lebanese people live in one of the greatest countries in the world, a country of contrasts with an extraordinary soul. I would dream of it as my country. Before 75, my father always wanted to take us there. Then, the war waged”. However, Yass managed to spend three weeks there in 1991, while he was 21 years old.

During his first journey to Lebanon, his father told him to visit Harouf, his native village in the South. “He wanted me to go see his sister, my aunt that I never met before. I went in taxi from Beirut.” When he arrived, he asked about the road to the village and reached his aunt’s house. “I knocked on her door. Although she neither saw me before nor knew that I was coming, she directly guessed who I was! What a strange situation, I had the impression that I had known her since a lifetime”.

In his aunt’s house, there was no electricity, and no refrigerator. “But she made an extremely delicious plate for me, with vegetables from her garden and eggs from her henhouse. She took me to the village to introduce me to everybody, she was really proud! People I met there had an incredible interior health. When I went there, I wondered what I could do to thank them for their great welcome. I went to see the baker of the village. I gave him 500 dollars to deliver meat to my aunt everyday. I know that he did it, I’m so glad. As for my aunt, I never saw her again, she died later on, I will never forget her”.

If you are also Lebanese, if you are an immigrant and desire to tell an episode of your life in which you describe the contact you have with Lebanon, send us your little story at redaction@ iloubnan.info, and we will put it online on iloubnan.info.